Tenth Amendment Center

State resistance to REAL ID is growing. The Associated Press reports from New Hampshire:

The New Hampshire Legislature took a baby step Tuesday toward rejecting what they say amounts to the creation of a national ID card.

The House Transportation Committee voted unanimously to recommend barring the state from complying with the federal REAL ID Act, which sets standards for driver’s licenses. The full House next considers the bill.

REAL ID, Passed in 2005 and due to take effect in 2008-9, turns your driver’s license into a de-facto national ID card. This is yet another step towards a totalitarian police state in America.

The Act mandates that all driver’s licenses carry the same information, no matter what state issues them. 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, your information will be in a national database that puts everything at the Feds’ fingertips.

Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security is given the power to require “biometric” information on these licenses/ID’s in the future. This means that what appears to be a harmless-looking driver’s license could eventually contain a retina scan, fingerprints, DNA information, or radio frequency technology. We don’t know just what right now because REAL ID keeps this power open-ended. DHS will tell us…someday.

All this is supposed to help us fight terrorism, somehow, because the nineteen 9-11 hijackers had driver’s licenses. In order to be “safe” you’ll soon be required to have the proper “papers.”

Any refusal to comply by the States will mean that their residents will lose the ability to get on a plane, receive social security, and potentially, to get a bank account or a job. So, the feds are doing little more than blackmailing them into compliance and submission.

Wait a minute! That doesn’t sound legal, does it? First, a little constitutional background.

The US Constitution was written under what’s referred to as “positive grant.” This means that the Federal Government can only exercise powers that are specifically given to it by the Constitution – nothing more. This is where the Tenth Amendment comes into play – reaffirming positive grant:

“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.”

Pretty simple, right? Right. If a power isn’t delegated to the U.S. government by the Constitution, then that power belongs to the States or the People. It seems that the only people who could possibly confuse this one sentence are politicians, lawyers, and federal judges.

It’s worth repeating. If a power isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution, the feds can’t do it. Period.

As New Hampshire representative Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry) said:

“We have to uphold the constitution,” he said. “We will not be blackmailed by the federal government.”

Sherman, you’ve hit the nail on the head! Obviously he’s read the Constitution. There’s not a single thing mentioned about ID’s, or licenses, or driving, or funding the states, or anything of the like. What does that mean? You’ve got it – it’s unconstitutional (against the law!) for the federal government to get involved in these things.

But, you might say, the Constitution is outdated! There were no driver’s licenses when the constitution was written – there were no cars! Right. There were no such things. But that doesn’t mean the law is “outdated” or bad.

In fact, the idea of strictly limiting the federal government is as good of an idea today as it was two centuries ago. Why? All you need to do is pay attention to what’s going on in our country right now. If you don’t keep the government in check, as many of the founders warned, governments will always grow and grow into a despotic beast.

Today, the government is larger than ever. Has that correlated with a better adherence to the law? Not at all.

Size of government notwithstanding, REAL ID is still unconstitutional. It doesn’t matter if the politicians think that it’s absolutely necessary. It doesn’t matter if they think the Constitution is outdated. None of it matters. The Law is the Law. The only legal way to approach this is through a Constitutional Amendment, and not by ignoring or violating the Constitution.

If the politicians were so confident that this program was necessary, and that We the People would approve of it, they would have presented it as a constitutional amendment. Instead, debate was light, and the bill was added to another, which passed 100-0 in the Senate.

It seems that abiding by the Constitution is pretty rare. Instead, addendums, riders, and backroom deals are the way of politics in Washington.

Think about that. Do you want to live in a society where the government has to follow the rules, or do you want to live in a society where politicians follow only the laws that they like?

Federal standards for identification are not authorized by the Constitution. It doesn’t matter whether they’re enforced through “laws” or economic “incentives” to the States. The politicians, by trying to force this on us without amending the Constitution to allow it, are showing utter contempt for states’ rights and the principles of the Tenth Amendment.

Bottom line: REAL ID violates the Constitution.

Legislators in New Hampshire (and elsewhere) should be applauded for their courageous opposition to this unconstitutional nightmare.

Long live the resistance!

The war on drugs continues unabated. As the New York Times recently reported:

Frustrated by government policy and inaction, a group of advocates for medical marijuana sued two federal health agencies on Wednesday over the assertion that smoking it has no medical benefit.

The group, Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, filed the lawsuit in Federal District Court, challenging the government’s position that marijuana, “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

Although the lawsuit is well-intentioned, it’s clearly misdirected. Whether or not marijuana has a medical benefit is not the issue; whether or not the war on drugs should exist at all is the issue.

The Drug War knows no bounds. The Tenth Amendment clearly limits the federal government to powers that are specifically listed in the Constitution:

“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.”

But yet, national laws, including those that are definitively prohibited by the Tenth Amendment, are continually held to be superior to state and local laws; all to the detriment of your personal liberty.

The fact is that you have a right to do what you want with your own body. Self-medication, for example, is a right protected by the Ninth Amendment. More importantly, though, there is nothing listed in the constitution giving the federal government the power to prohibit people from using drugs or medicine.

Therefore, the federal government has no right to violate local drug laws or force you to change your personal choice. Doing so is in direct violation of both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. But, the Constitution be damned - that’s what the politicians are telling us!

In Murray Rothbard’s book, For a New Liberty, you can see the inherent problem with the drug war – it simply gives the federal government power over you in ways that no free person should want:

Propagandize against cigarettes [or marijuana] as much as you want, but leave the individual free to run his own life. Otherwise, we may as well outlaw all sorts of possible carcinogenic agents – including tight shoes, improperly fitting false teeth, excessive exposure to the sun, as well as excessive intake of ice cream, eggs, and butter which might lead to heart disease. And, if such prohibitions prove unenforceable, again the logic is to place people in cages so that they will receive the proper amount of sun, the correct diet, properly fitting shoes, and so on.

Once the government is given the power to limit the liberty of one group of people, it then has the power to limit the liberty of others – including you. If you approve of the government interfering with people’s rights to use whatever drugs they want, then you approve of politicians being able to decide what’s good for you as well. There is no stopping point once the government has the power to determine what is good or bad for you to put in your own body.

Thus, the drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of.

This is an abomination of everything that America is supposed to stand for. As long as this country continues the drug war, you are not free. At their root, then, those that force the drug war on you are enemies to your freedom.

In this ongoing drug war, you are always treated as a suspect and your neighborhood is much less safe. You are searched at airports and your bank accounts are spied on. While drug users who are no physical threat to anyone but themselves are put in jail, the prisons become more and more overcrowded, resulting in the early release of violent criminals on a regular basis. If you love your freedom and you want your city to be safer, this psychotic war on drugs must be ended – now.

Understandably, many Americans are afraid that ending the drug war will result in countless drug addicts, including children. In reality, though, that’s just what we have now! On top of it, we generally don’t even consider the people who are addicted to federally-approved drugs to be drug addicts. What’s going to be different – can our nation’s addiction to drugs get any worse?

According to a 2004 CDC report, almost one-half of Americans use at least one prescription drug. It should be obvious, then, that the drug war has done nothing to reduce Americans’ addiction to drugs – it’s simply controlled which drugs people use, and who can make a profit from them. It’s doubtful that legalizing all drugs could make things any worse, but even if it does, then so be it.

People will always do plenty of things that are bad for them, and there’s no reason to put them in prison for it. Think about the things you do that are bad for your own health – should the government outlaw those too?

People eat too much fast food and they forget to floss every day. They watch too much TV and they don’t count their calories. And, guess what? People swallow, snort, shoot and smoke drugs that are both legal and illegal – and it’s not going to stop. A free society just wouldn’t force you, under the threat of punishment, to be “good” to yourself all the time. That was the job of your parents - unless, of course, you want the feds to be your new “daddy.”

In all seriousness, though, if we are ever going to have a nation that respects the Bill of Rights, of which the Ninth and Tenth Amendments may be the most important, the DEA and the entire drug war must be eliminated.

If not, what’s going to be next? Orwellian telescreens in our homes and a state-mandated morning exercise routine? That would most assuredly keep the cost down on the coming national healthcare system.

Won’t that be nice?

President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative has reached the Supreme Court. As reported in the Christian Science Monitor:

President Bush’s faith-based initiative is a signature program of his administration. But not all Americans share the president’s belief that the government should work in close partnership with religious organizations willing to perform nonreligious public services, like running homeless shelters or drug counseling programs.

Wednesday, the US Supreme Court takes up a case that examines to what extent those opponents have legal standing to file federal lawsuits alleging that the White House’s faith-based initiative amounts to unconstitutional entanglement of church and state.

The case stems from a 2002 lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin-based group called the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Members of the group filed the suit as taxpayers who objected to having their tax money used to support religion.

Although the lawsuit brings up important issues of government involvement in religious organizations, it’s still missing the most important point. What’s avoided is the essential issue; the constitutionality of the American welfare state. And, no matter what the Supreme Court rules, the growth of government power will continue unchallenged.

Let it be clearly stated: Whether or not government funding gives rise to federal support of religion is an important, but secondary issue. The primary concern is the force used to support the funding in the first place.

Just like Bill Clinton, George Bush advocates new governmental intrusions into charity, education, health care, and other welfare programs with appeals for “compassion.” The faith-based initiative is openly a Bush-Republican project, yet it only repackages and grows the socialist concept of welfare. It’s called “charity” but it’s simply welfare under a different name. The politicians and pundits who promoted these initiatives were “conservatives,” but there’s nothing conservative about expanding the federal government’s role in any form of welfare or charity.

Forcing people to be generous isn’t compassionate or moral, and nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to levy taxes on one group of citizens for the benefit of another group of citizens.

As the welfare system has grown and grown in the past four decades, we’ve been exposed to countless problems and massive financial waste associated with it. Repeatedly, politicians have claimed that they know just how to make the welfare system better. We’ve seen new names and countless “reforms.” And, over and over, we’ve been told of great individual successes – always highlighting how the government is supposedly making people’s lives better.

But, despite all the highly-touted programs, the number of welfare recipients doesn’t really decline; the cost doesn’t seem to do anything but grow — and the epidemic of homelessness, drug use, teen pregnancies, family breakups, and crime — continues unabated.

The only reform deserving any real attention is that which will get the federal government out of welfare completely, as mandated by the Constitution.

Taxing, spending, borrowing, and printing of money does not lead to a prosperous society. It didn’t work in places like Russia, Japan and Germany, and it isn’t working in America either. At first, these actions seem to revive the economy, but they eventually become the source of the problem.

This is not a Republican Party issue, and it’s not a Democratic Party issue. It’s a problem of government power; the power to intrude into your life and force you to donate money to other people, whether you believe in their cause or not.

The notion that the federal government can best solve the problems of drug use, poverty, and homelessness by putting every private church and charity under the umbrella of government funding is completely delusional and economically ruinous.

Therefore, instead of continuing the expansion of the unconstitutional welfare state, Congress should immediately return the responsibility and control over charitable giving to the American people. How can this be done? It’s simple — by quickly reducing our tax burden to an absolute minimum.

If we want to improve the job we’re doing of helping the needy — the poor, the hungry, the homeless — the federal government should promptly stop taxing the American people so much. Then you’ll be able to give your own money to groups you support, and groups that know how to use your money wisely.