Tenth Amendment Center

As usual, our liberty is under attack by the federal government. An appeals court has just upheld a ruling that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay are not entitled to habeas corpus, and thus, cannot challenge their detention in court.

So, once again, the federal government, through its court system, has overstepped the restrictions of the Tenth Amendment, by assailing the Constitution and its principles of limited government. What a surprise! An agent of the government upheld the actions of the government!

As reported by Reuters:

An appeals court on Tuesday upheld the part of a tough anti-terrorism law signed by President George W. Bush that took away the rights of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention before U.S. federal judges.

The United States Constitution brought into being a government of limited powers, which is quite unusual in the pages of world history. This government is one in which the only powers it has are those that are listed in the Constitution itself. “Positive grant” is what this is called in Constitutional legalese.

Fearful that liberty would still be violated by politicians hungry for power, the Founding Fathers added the Bill of Rights. To ensure the principles of limited government through positive grant, the Tenth Amendment was enacted. It explains this concept quite clearly:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Thus, under the Constitution, the federal government is a government of specifically listed powers rather than one of general or unlimited powers. The issue here, then, is what constitutional right the federal government has to exert such power – the limitation or elimination of habeas corpus – over people in its jurisdiction.

The only place in which habeas corpus is even mentioned in the Constitution can be found in Article I, Section 9:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

But, don’t just believe what you see here. I suggest you read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and then ask yourself this: what exactly is the power of the federal government in regards to habeas corpus?

Let’s examine this a little further:

1. As enshrined in the 10th Amendment, the federal government operates under the principle of positive grant – meaning that it can only exercise powers specifically listed in the constitution.
2. According to the Constitution, the only reference to limiting habeas corpus is “in cases of rebellion or invasion”

Since the qualifiers for suspension do not exist, the federal government cannot restrict, limit, or eliminate habeas corpus for anyone. Period.

Of course, there are war-lovers out there that feel the government can suspend habeas corpus because we’re at war. We must put up with invasions of civil liberties – and we must trust the politicians to make us safe.

In fact, one of the biggest reasons we even have the Constitution is to protect us from politicians, like the ones we currently have, during times of stress or danger. Yes, some constitutional provisions do mention exceptions, but there are no exceptions specified for simply being “at war.”

Anytime this issue comes up, invariably you’ll find people who claim that the Constitution doesn’t apply to foreigners – only Americans. The important point is that the Constitution doesn’t apply to Americans, it doesn’t apply to citizens, it doesn’t even apply to “people.” It applies to the federal government.

The body of the Constitution tells the federal government just what it is allowed to do. In some places it explains how the government is supposed to do things. The Bill of Rights tells the federal government what it is not allowed to do. Nothing more, and nothing less.

What you won’t find there, is the ability to restrict habeas corpus except in the specific instances mentioned above.

The essential point is that until a suspected “terrorist” receives due process – a fair and impartial trial – you can never know for sure whether or not this person even IS a terrorist! So, even if you think that foreigners shouldn’t have any rights, you still can’t be sure that they’re terrorists without due process – well, unless you trust everything your government does.

The Bush administration has now established procedures where it can lock up suspects for life without giving them access to an attorney, an appearance in court, and without the ability to tell anyone.

Now that we’ve allowed the government to have this power, the power to restrict inalienable rights when the president tells us it’s necessary, the question to ask is this: What group is next? What will be the next group that the politicians will determine to be unworthy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?

Consider this scenario:

You get arrested by some government agents because you’ve been misidentified as a foreigner who has worked with what the feds call a “terrorist organization.” They rush you out of the country on a CIA plane and take you to a prison in Eastern Europe. The jailers torture you endlessly to get information from you. You tell them nothing because you know nothing!

You tell them you’re an American and you’ve done nothing wrong, but this doesn’t stop the CIA torturers and the foreign thugs working for them. You’re told that you’ll never get released and you’ll never be allowed even a court hearing – because terrorists like you are just too dangerous to allow such liberties.

The big problem, though, is that you’re not able to prove that you aren’t a terrorist. You’re not even able to prove that you’re an American citizen. Why? Because you no longer have the right to challenge your detention as a foreign terrorist! You don’t get an impartial judicial hearing, you aren’t allowed an attorney, you can’t confront your accusers, and you definitely won’t get a trial by a jury of your peers.

But, as the President, the Congress, the Courts and much of the media have told us, you don’t deserve those rights because you’ve been accused of being a “terrorist” and a “foreigner.”

Fear-mongering? Sure. Call it what you’d like. But the abuse of power is not the real thing to be concerned about; it’s the power to abuse. And that power is real.

As the Founding Fathers knew so well, the greatest threat to your liberty comes from your own government. That’s the reason they wrote the Constitution. Going further, that’s the reason we have the Tenth Amendment – to limit the power of the government - to stop it from doing things that will infringe on your liberty.

Well, we shouldn’t worry about all this because your government would never do anything so awful…right? All those prisoners in Guantanamo and Eastern Europe must be horrible terrorists – and foreigners too! If they weren’t, your government would definitely let them go, right? Yeah. Sure.

If you really believe that, just go back to your TV. Go watch some sports or a fun little sitcom. You have absolutely nothing to worry about because your government is “protecting” you.

Once again, politicians in Washington are working hard to raise the cost of health insurance for you and your family. But, of course, that’s not how they sell it to us. They make the claim that they’re working together across party lines to help millions of Americans afford health insurance.

As the George Bush stated in his weekly radio address:

“From my conversations with Democrats and Republicans, it is clear both parties recognize that strengthening health care for all Americans is one of our most important responsibilities”

Based on this statement, it’s also quite clear that both parties have chosen to abandon the rules of the Constitution. As the 10th Amendment states so plainly:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Here’s a simple challenge for anyone reading this post: review the US Constitution, and try to find health or health care mentioned anywhere. You might have a tough time, because it’s not there.

Therefore, since getting involved in medical care or the medical insurance business is not within the purview of the federal government, such activity is simply not authorized. Health care, health insurance, drug policy, and the like, must be “reserved to the States…or to the People,” no matter how noble the cause may seem to be.

One fact is nearly indisputable, though: health care in America is in bad shape, and it’s getting worse each year.

We are often reminded that more than forty million Americans go without health insurance, and that this is the fault of the greedy corporations making billions and not due to anything the government has done. We’re told that it’s the health care providers, it’s our employers, or it’s our own bad decisions.

According to the politicians, our declining health care system is anybody and everybody’s fault, except the federal government. This just must be true, because they care about us so much, and would never lie, right?

But, it wasn’t always this way. For decades, the healthcare system in the U.S. was the envy of the whole world. Not too surprisingly, there was far less government involvement in health care at that time as well.

The mess our health care system is in is not the result of too little government involvement, but rather, too much! Obviously, the politicians would never tell us this.

Such honesty would prevent them from having even more power over our day-to-day lives.

Instead, we are told that more and more government involvement, regulation, and decision-making over our health and well-being will solve our problems. But, government is already responsible for nearly two-thirds of all health care spending. They have given us Medicare, Medicaid, billions of research dollars, and countless thousands of pages of regulations.

Even the so-called conservatives, with George Bush leading the charge, have continuously expanded federal power and strengthened government control over our health. With Bush’s prescription drug program, Republicans saddled us with the largest expansion of medical socialism at the national level since the introduction of Medicare. Leftists and socialists should be cheering!

Has all this spending and “regulation” reduced the price of health care? Has all this government “intervention” increased the quality of health care?

No. And this should be quite obvious. Every single year health care gets more expensive, and less accessible, with reduced quality as well. As a result, the politicians spend and regulate the industry more and more each year – to save us, of course.

The important question is this: Who is better off from all the “help” the government has given us? Is it the companies that get favored status, we the people, or the politicians themselves?

If these meddling politicians really cared about people; if they really cared about YOUR health, they’d be doing everything possible to get the federal government out of health care entirely.

Forty years of declining quality and rising prices should make it obvious to even the casual observer that all this government intervention is failing. More intervention is only likely to do the same.

The solution to all today’s medical problems is to get government out of health care. At the very least, we need to end all this massive federal regulation, end Medicare, and repeal all mandatory coverage laws. The result of these early steps would be better care at a lower cost for seniors, the growth of charity hospitals and free clinics, and more options and lower prices for the rest of us.

The best way to make health care more efficient and more affordable is to take the government and politics out of it. If we are to survive this awful mess, we need to follow the tenth amendment and get the federal government completely out of health care, drugs, and everything else not specifically authorized by the Constitution.

This is just what is needed to help the sick and the poor, and that’s exactly why the politicians aren’t even talking about it.

There’s been some attention of late on the aggressive use of “signing statements” by the executive branch. As the Boston Globe reported:

Bush has claimed that his executive powers allow him to bypass more than 1,100 laws enacted since he took office. But administration officials insist that Bush’s signing statements merely question the laws’ constitutionality, and do not necessarily mean that the president also authorized his subordinates to violate them.

But Democrats said they wanted to know whether Bush has followed through on his claims that the Constitution gives him the power to exempt executive branch officials from laws that Congress has passed to regulate the government, including affirmative action hiring requirements, a ban on all forms of torture, and oversight provisions in the Patriot Act.

The American Bar Association last year sounded an alarm about the escalating use of signing statements. ABA president Karen Mathis testified that it is “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers” for a president to sign a bill and then instruct the executive branch that parts are unconstitutional. Presidents must either veto a bill and give Congress a chance to override their judgments, or they must sign it and obey all of it as written, she said.

Presidential signing statements are nothing new. From the administrations of Monroe through Carter, the executive branch issued a total of 75 signing statements.

In a remarkable increase in the use of signing statements, President Bush issued at least 435 signing statements in his first term alone. And, as we see in the above article, he’s now used it to ignore or challenge well-over one thousand laws! Previous presidents would now and then tack on a comment to new statutes, but Bush is the first to use signing statements regularly to invalidate essential parts of new laws. It is important, therefore, to understand the implications as well as the constitutionality of such actions.

Previously, when presidents would sign a bill that Congress had passed, they would add a “signing statement” if they felt the bill might be interpreted in such a way so as to encroach on the powers of the executive branch. Bush has done this as well, but in addition, he has used these statements not only to protect presidential powers, but to nullify acts of Congress.

As laid out in the Constitution, the President has the ability to nullify an act of Congress, and that is by use of the veto.

But, rather than follow the law and veto bills which he feels are repugnant to the Constitution, President Bush is using these signing statements as a way to nullify them, in practice, as they “relate to the executive branch.”

In reality, signing statements used in this matter are nothing more than a line-item veto – a presidential decree – the use of which is quite contrary to the Constitution and the separation of powers.

Back in 1988, the Supreme Court already laid down the law in regards to line-item vetoes. In Clinton v. New York, the court held that such a veto was unconstitutional, and that the president could only approve or veto an entire law. The executive branch, therefore, does not have the power to veto, or approve, individual provisions of a law passed by Congress.

The reason that the Court ruled the line-item veto as unconstitutional is because they violate the Presentment Clause of the Constitution. This clause lays out the process quite clearly:

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.

Following the Presentment Clause, if a president feels that part of a bill is unconstitutional, the entire bill should be vetoed. A veto is the only way a President can prevent a bill from becoming law. As the Tenth Amendment makes so clear, if a power is not given to the government in the Constitution, then it doesn’t exist. Period. Nowhere in the Constitution is the President given the power to ignore provisions of a law. Nowhere in the Constitution is the phrase “signing statement” or anything like it even mentioned!

Therefore, in direct violation to his oath of office, George Bush is using signing statements to ignore or negate laws passed by Congress. His absolute duty, if he feels these bills are illegal, would be to veto them. But, as we all know, this just doesn’t happen in America today.

George Bush, like so many presidents before him, is raising himself above the law. Following in the footsteps of so many of his predecessors, he is showing utter contempt for the Constitution and the separation of powers that exist to preserve our liberty.

Once again, federal thugs from the Drug Enforcement Administration targeted marijuana growers in Northern California. According to a report from the Modesto Bee:

Federal agents raided two south Modesto homes Wednesday, uncovering an indoor marijuana farm that may be linked to an Asian crime syndicate operating out of the Bay Area.

Federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Internal Revenue Service officers and Galt police served a search warrant at a two-story house in the 1700 block of Rancho Encantado Lane at 10:30 a.m. The house was next door to a day-care center.

That brings to 50 the number of houses that have been raided from Modesto to Sacramento that are believed to be connected to the crime ring, Taylor said.

The fact of the matter here is that people have an inalienable right to do what they want with their own bodies. And, more importantly, since the Constitution does not specifically authorize the federal government to prohibit drugs, actions such as these are in clear violation of the Tenth Amendment.

Federal drug laws (the Controlled Substance Act) ban the possession of marijuana as well as a number of other drugs, while the FDA continues to legalize other drugs made by corporations that have enormous political influence.

But, the essential question is this: If a simple federal law is all that was needed to ban marijuana, why did Alcohol Prohibition in the 1920’s require a constitutional amendment?

James Madison made it quite clear that the federal government would only be able to exercise the powers that were specifically delegated to it in the Constitution. In Federalist #45 he wrote:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negociation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The Tenth Amendment gave Madison’s opinion the force of law, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

When the United States imposed a nationwide ban on the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol in 1919, a Constitutional Amendment was required. This is because the Constitution did not, and still does not today, give the federal government the power to prohibit alcohol. (or any other substance, for that matter) As we all know, this was eventually repealed. In 1933 another Constitutional Amendment was required to repeal the previous prohibition.

The federal government now argues that it is allowed to prohibit the possession of marijuana and other drugs, because they fall within the realm of interstate commerce. Obviously, this wasn’t the case back in 1919. So what changed? How could the Commerce Clause of the Constitution morph into something that would apply today?

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that the “Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several states…” This “commerce clause” is the legal bedrock for all federal regulation of business activity that crosses state lines.

We must take note, the Commerce Clause itself was never meant by the Founders to be some sort of blank check for absolute control over anything and everything we do that might have some sort of influence on some sort of commercial activity. But, that distorted view is just what all three branches force us to accept today.

In reality, though, the economic purpose of Article I, Section 8 was almost exactly the opposite of what the government has been telling us since the FDR years.

The original meaning and intent of the Commerce Clause was to make “normal” or “regular” commerce between the states. It was written to ensure that States wouldn’t prohibit the free-flow of commerce from state to state through tariffs, taxes, quotas, and the like. The idea was to ensure that trade was made “regular.” Thus, it was designed to promote trade and not to restrict it.

Since the explicit language used in the Controlled Substances Act, just like economic regulation in most every other realm, prohibits the free flow of goods, it is therefore completely repugnant to the meaning and intent of the Commerce Clause.

Even the great centralizer Alexander Hamilton specifically noted in Federalist #17 that the Commerce Clause would have no effect on such matters:

The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.

James Madison concurred in Federalist #42 that the commerce clause would “provide for the harmony and proper intercourse among the States.”

Thus, the Commerce Clause has been converted from a power to eliminate prohibitive trade barriers put up by states into all-encompassing police power over anything that the government tells us is “related” to commerce. Therefore, we vehemently reject this distorted use of the commerce clause to interfere with the right of the States and People to determine the legality of marijuana.

Since the commerce clause is not a valid argument for the increase of federal power, we must, then, ask that essential question once again. If all that was needed to ban alcohol was some legislation from Congress that would list it as a banned substance, then why did the government go through so much trouble with the Constitutional Amendments? Why is marijuana different in 2007 than alcohol was in 1919?

The answer is quite simple. It isn’t. Setting constitutional arguments against prohibition aside, the fact remains. To do something of this magnitude - something that the Constitution doesn’t authorize - would require a constitutional amendment. But, as per the norm, our politicians refuse to follow the rules that govern them. With the flick of a pen, they dictate what is good and what is bad. What is allowed and what is not.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2006), American taxpayers are now spending more than a billion dollars per year to incarcerate its own citizens for marijuana “violations.”

Sooner or later a new question will have to be asked amongst “We the People”: Does the federal government have the power under the Constitution to stop cities and states from legalizing marijuana?

The answer must be a resounding no!

Guest Commentary by Thomas Andrew Olson
Published with Permission from LewRockwell.com

Recently, I watched Lou Dobbs, and his handmaiden, Kitty Pilgrim, get all hot, bothered, and appalled by the Maine state legislature voting overwhelmingly to refuse to enforce any provisions of the REAL ID act, an unfunded mandate passed by Congress in 2005, and which is supposed to go into force in May of next year.

REAL ID is the complex workaround to Congress’ failure to sell a national ID card outright, to a frightened public, in the wake of 9/11. Instead they now insist the states individually comply with precise federal standards (standards yet to be fully developed by the Dept. of Homeland Security) for driver licensing. These will probably include the requirement that residents produce birth certificates upon renewal, plus the collection of biometric data. Then, that state DMV database has to able to be accessed not only by the feds, but all the other states. This is supposed to help us fight terrorism, somehow, because the 19 hijackers had driver’s licenses.

States like Maine protested that not only was this law an unwarranted intrusion on the privacy rights of their residents, but it was a de facto national ID card in its own right, yet another foot in the door towards a totalitarian police state. The costs of implementation would be too high, projected to be in the tens of millions in each state, and would have to be passed on to the citizens somehow.

As usual, there was no federal “carrot” with such legislation, only a “stick.” The stick, in this case, was that residents of states who failed to comply would either have to show a passport in order to fly, or they simply would not fly. This reminder was delivered, again, on Dobb’s show, by a sneering angry sycophant from DHS.

But this is standard operating procedure. The feds levy high taxes on the residents of the states, make sweeping, unfunded policy edicts, then enforce them by warning the state governments that failure to comply fully will result in those states not getting their own residents’ tax dollars returned to them (minus a cut) in the form of various subsidies.

But take heart – history has shown us that resistance is not futile. From 1973 to 1988 we were saddled by a particularly egregious and corrupting federal edict demanding that speed limits on highways be reduced to 55mph, ostensibly as a fuel-saving initiative. It was corrupt in that it was a total failure – non-compliance was legion, especially in western states with lots of wide-open spaces, low traffic, and too few cops. Car companies that produced vehicles with better gas mileage did more to save fuel than any federal speed law. But the stick remained: failure to enforce the “double-nickel” would result in a loss of federal highway funding.

In early 1987, then Arizona governor Evan Mecham, no stranger to controversy, had finally had enough, and told Washington they could keep their highway funding – he was raising the limits on all AZ roads to 65mph, and he didn’t care what Washington thought about it. Then, as now, feds and media talking heads alike were appalled by the audacity of a lowly state governor standing up for the rights of his state residents against the needs of the federal government. But his action enabled other states – and their residents – to stand up and cry “enough is enough!”

By 1988, 55 was history – Congress bumped it to 65. A few years later, it was bumped again to 75 in Midwest and Western rural areas, and allowed states far greater leeway to set standards that they believed worked best for them. In the late 90’s, Montana went so far as to revive their original “reasonable and prudent” rule for daytime travel – which essentially meant, “whatever speed you felt was safe under the circumstances.” (That was a bit of a rush, believe me, to go 115 mph on a dry, straight, open road, and cops wouldn’t bat an eye – sadly, a federal judge later put a stop to that one.)

Therefore, it’s possible, despite all the posturing by the national-security jackboots in the Congress and DHS, that Maine’s action may have opened the door for other states to follow suit. Similar bills are pending right now in Georgia, Massachusetts, Montana, New Mexico, and Washington state. The question remains whether that door will ultimately become a floodgate.

Thomas Andrew Olson [send him mail] is a technology consultant, writer and speaker in New York City.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com

Guest Commentary by Becky Akers
Published with Permission from LewRockwell.com

Maine’s state legislature “RESOLVED” almost unanimously last week that it will “refuse… to implement the REAL ID Act….” As if that weren’t enough, it “implores the United States Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act…”

What?

Go ahead and re-read it. Took me a few tries, too. Such stunningly good news knocks one’s comprehension for a loop. It’s like sunshine at midnight: so freak a treat that one can only blink and gibber. When was the last time we had news this good? Heck, when was the last time we had good news, period, from the political world?

The REAL ID Act, for those of you lacking the time and stomach to analyze Leviathan’s droppings, might better be titled “Papers, Please.” Passed in 2005, due to take effect in 2008, it finishes the job of turning Amerika into a police state by making driver’s licenses into national ID cards.

The Act requires all licenses to carry the same information, whether they’re issued in Alaska, Florida, or somewhere in between. Those who concede that free people should ask Their Rulers’ permission before driving cars they own on roads they pay for probably won’t object to providing their name, address, date of birth, gender, a “digital photograph,” and their signature – the usual data that good citizens are conditioned to yield without thinking.

But then comes this explosive little mandate: the license must also include “a common machine-readable technology, with defined minimum data elements.” Who gets to “define” those “elements”? The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of course, the busybodies who brought us airport screeners and the infamous No-Fly List. Ergo, look for our new and improved licenses to feature fingerprints and a microchip that tracks our movements. And, while the DHS is at it, why not include our financial transactions (banks already report these anyway since the Feds claim to recognize a terrorist by his moneybags), medical history (hey, keeping tabs on the psychotics protects the rest of us), and the “passenger name records (PNR’s)” airlines compile. The states must also “provide electronic access to all other States to information contained in the motor vehicle database of the State.” In other words, a national database puts everything at the Feds’ fingertips.

A nightmare, right? But it gets worse. Try obtaining or renewing a driver’s license under REAL ID. You’ll have to show four documents, everything from a birth certificate to a Social Security card. Only Felix Unger and welfare mamas keep stuff like that around. Then there’s the pleasure of paying for this: REAL ID is now priced at $11 billion, over 100 times its original $100 million estimate. Those numbers will continue climbing as more details are settled, more glitches detected. Expect to pay hundreds of dollars for your new ID – and higher state taxes, too.

The Feds will force us to flash our licenses each time we interact with them – when we board a plane (ha! There’s news!), enter a federal building (hmmm. Even jurors?), file legal papers, or collect any sort of government payout. Even folks who don’t drive will need a license lest they become legal pariahs. And economic ones, too, as the mania spreads. How else will retailers prove they’re patriotic Americans, doing their part to catch terrorists, if they don’t scrutinize our papers at every transaction? It won’t be long until supermarkets ID us before selling so much as a loaf of bread. Imagine the quandary of the poor sap whose license is lost or stolen. And what about those whose licenses are suspended for speeding, drunk driving… or, one fine day, for political dissent…?

Our Rulers claim REAL ID is another tactic in the War on (Non-Governmental) Terror. But only Leviathan and its cheerleaders in the Mainstream Media believe that papers protect us. Such naïveté makes experts in security laugh. They realize that knowing the name of your attacker may add a personal touch to your interaction but does zilch to keep you safe. That’s why God made guns and target practice, barbed wire, mace and self-defense classes, window alarms, bullet-proof doors, and common sense: those things actually protect us, all without asking the assailant’s name first.

Expensive, ineffective, totalitarian: no wonder Maine’s legislature rejected REAL ID. We might ask why they chose this particular expensive, ineffective, totalitarian measure out of the boatload dumped on us the last few years, but let’s not quibble. Nor is Maine alone. New Mexico’s House Majority Floor Leader introduced a memorial denouncing REAL ID. A Republican state representative in Montana sponsored a bill that “nullifies” REAL ID while her Democratic colleague’s competing legislation “opposes” it. The Republican uttered words seldom heard anywhere, at any time, in politics: “She would have no problem, she said, if [the Democrat’s] bill passed and not hers. ‘It’s that important,’ she said.” Similar legislation is pending in Washington State, Georgia, and Massachusetts.

Back in Maine, Senate Majority Leader Libby Mitchell believes that “…it is our job as state Legislators to protect the people…from just this sort of dangerous federal mandate.” Bravissimo! Better late than never.

Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com