Tenth Amendment Center

Last week, the City of Santa Monica filed a brief citing the 10th Amendment in a legal battle against the FAA.  The city recently passed a local ordinance banning larger, faster jets at the local Santa Monica Municipal Airport.

As reported in The Lookout News, the FAA is attempting to block the city from imposing its own rules, and is attempting to use force to prevent the city from continuing the ordinance. Read more »

It’s commonplace these days for the government and its courts to consider the 10th Amendment to be nothing more than a “relic” - basically, not having any effect, or limiting the power of the federal government in any way.

These politicians and bureaucrats ignore the plain words of the 10th in an effort to grant themselves more and more power - at the expense of our incomes and our liberty.

A simple reading of Federalist #14 shows that the founders (even those accused of wanting too much federal power) understood that a Constitution was written as a strict limit on the power of government - and not as a grant of unlimited powers. Read more »

Cross-Posted from DailyKos.com with permission of the author, Crashing Vor

Watching Keith [Olbermann] just now, I heard him mention Antonin “Nino” Scalia’s dissenting opinion from today’s ruling in regards habeas corpus rights for detainees.

The lowlight of Justice Scalia’s opinion was the paragraph:

“The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”

While others will surely spend countless hours and buckets of ink and pixels debating the merits or madness of the second sentence, I’ve a bone to pick with the first.

Scalia has, over the years, demonstrated a profound lack of understanding of the U.S. Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court. His devotion to the concept of “originalism” selectively ignores the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, key components of the document as “originally” ratified. The codicil to the majority opinion in Bush v. Gore, in which the nation’s ultimate appeals court, where all legal precedent is finally decided, declares that the judgment in that case is not, in fact, legal precedent. Read more »

Politicians already exercise the (unconstitutional) power to tell us what we can drink, what we can smoke, how much we should earn, what many products should cost and much more.

Now, they want to tell us what kind of light bulb we should be “allowed” to use in the privacy of our own homes. Read more »

When considering the 10th Amendment, it’s essential to understand its purpose. In reading it, one sees quite clearly that its effect is to limit the powers of the federal government to those specifically listed in the Constitution - and give the rest to “the States, respectively, or to the People.”

But why is this a good thing? Read more »

by Rep Ron Paul

Oil prices are on the minds of many Americans as gas hits $4 a gallon, and continues to surge.  How high can prices go?  How can we solve these problems?  What, or who, is to blame?

Part of the answer lies in understanding bubbles and monetary inflation, but especially the Federal Reserve System.  The Federal Reserve is charged with controlling inflation through interest rate manipulation, however, many fail to realize that creating money, and therefore inflation, is really its only tool.  When the Federal Reserve inflates the dollar as drastically as it has in the past few decades, the first users of the newly created money go in search of investments for their dollars.  They must invest this money quickly and aggressively before it loses value.  Read more »

Although the founders wrote the US Constitution to limit the powers of the federal government, politicians from both sides of the aisle take the position that their power is far beyond what was ever imagined.

And now, John McCain’s new advisor, Michael Goldfarb, is making the claim that the executive branch has “near dictatorial powers” Read more »

by Rep Ron Paul

Recently Congress sent the latest Farm Bill to the president. The bill features brand new federal programs, expansion of existing subsidies, more food stamps and more foreign food aid. This bill hits the taxpayer hard, while at the same time ensuring food prices will remain elevated. The president vetoed the bill, citing concerns over its costs and subsidies for the wealthy in a time of high food prices and record farm income. Nevertheless, this over-reaching, government-expanding Farm Bill will soon be law. Read more »