In recent months, we have heard voices on the Left cry “foul” at the town-hall tactics of  Americans upset at current political leadership. Leftists profess to be shocked — horrified! — to see Americans defending themselves passionately, unapologetically, and confrontationally.

The confrontational tactics the Left now finds so troubling include such activities as  holding up really big signs and shouting.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of political hypocrisy in my lifetime, but the Left griping about confrontational tactics has got to be some kind of record.

Of course, leftists have no problem with strong-arming when they do the strong-arming. They’ve been using such tactics for decades to beat up on the rest of us.  As if anyone needed reminders –

• Many people remember when “peace” activists were seizing college buildings, disrupting higher education, burning flags, throwing excrement and bricks at law enforcement officers, and assaulting and intimidating administrators, faculty, and other students.
• For decades, activists allegedly for causes like “peace,” “civil rights,” “welfare rights,” and “fair trade” have freely trampled law, property, and the rights of others.
• When leftists have taken power, they have used it freely to push around the opposition. One of many examples:  During the Clinton administration, almost every conservative and libertarian think tank in the country found itself targeted by an IRS audit.
• Thuggish tactics by left-wing union activists are so common that the phrase “union goons” has entered the American vocabulary.
• “Community organizing” — ala Obama and Hillary Clinton — is famously governed by Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” a guidebook to underhand political knife-fighting.

And while more moderate leftists refuse to engage in such tactics, they seldom refuse to take political advantage of the chaos and fear they cause.

Dwarfing these instances is the long list of technically legal strong-arm maneuvers the Left has used to assault the rest of us. Government agencies campaign for their causes and give our tax dollars to groups like ACORN. Government collects fees for public sector unions, which use them (or fungible replacement dollars) to crusade for leftist causes.

Under the leadership of the “tenured radicals” that dominant many universities and other tax-exempt organizations, many of those institutions have become political entities, emitting constant propaganda attacking traditional values and promoting more government regulation and spending.

Here’s a mental exercise to put it in perspective: Think of all the political vandalism you have seen over the years: The traffic signs defaced, the slogans painted on bridges and viaducts, the literary garbage slapped on private property, etc. etc. Just how often have you seen that done to convey a right-wing message?

So the correct question is not, “Should Americans who pay the bills and make things work have become so passionate and confrontational when threatened by government?”

The correct questions are:

(1) What took them so long?” and

(2) Will they become passionate and confrontational enough to save the country?”

Rob Natelson, a former conservative activist and business owner, is a constitutional law professor at the University of Montana who writes mostly about the American Founding.  His views are his own, and not necessarily those of any other person or institution.

During its decline from a republic to a democracy, lying Leviathan prattled about being a “government of, by, and for the people.” But the beast increasingly forsakes that pretence as it continues sliding into tyranny.

One instance of the State’s new and brutal honesty came last fall when Congress bailed out billionaires despite our overwhelming opposition. Another around that same time saw the criminals running New York City overturn a law on term-limits that voters had twice upheld. More than ever, government is of, by and for Our Rulers.

And then there’s the Feds’ dogged quest for a national ID card. Four years ago, these bozos tried to turn your driver’s license into just such a monstrosity with their infamous REAL ID Act. This dictate required licenses to include “defined minimum data elements,” most likely biometric identifiers such as fingerprints or retinal scans and RFID tracking chips. It would also make even more of our business contingent on the State’s whims: before we entered a courthouse or opened a bank account, among other activities, we’d have to produce our REAL ID for a bureaucrat’s approval – or rejection.

Congress passed this monumentally anti-constitutional legislation without even debating it, then deputized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to implement it. Reincarnated Nazi Michael Chertoff was Secretary of DHS; he spent much of his time – and millions of our taxes – trying to ram REAL ID down the nation’s throat.

All our money bought him was the biggest revolt against DC’s diktats since 1861. Departments of Motor Vehicles in many states vehemently objected to overhauling their systems just to please DHS; the governors of those states just as vehemently protested the enormous expense of said overhaul and waxed indignant about REAL ID’s invasions of privacy. If anyone’s gonna tyrannize Montanans or Mainers, by gum, it’ll be their local masters, not Washington’s overlords. Legislatures put teeth in the dissent as states passed resolutions and even laws against complying with REAL ID.

At this point, we might expect Feds who constantly bray about democracy, who eagerly slaughter their own serfs as well as foreign ones for its glory, to throw in the towel on a national ID. Have not the people spoken, indeed, shrieked, that they’ll have nothing to do with this abomination? But Our Rulers never weary in their evil-doing. Nor do they hesitate to show us exactly how stupid they think we are. And so a litter of senators introduced the “Providing for Additional Security in States’ Identification Act of 2009″ (PASS ID) last week. Essentially, they stripped the name “REAL ID” off the old bill, slapped a new title on it, and tweaked a few of the details.

Just as they did with REAL ID, the Feds insist that PASS ID is not a national ID – oh, my, no. So what if every American has a uniform card that he must constantly show to government’s goons? That’s not a national ID, you silly citizen, you! If you were as wise as our legislators, you’d realize that both REAL and PASS ID are simply driver’s licenses with “strong security standards.” Or so say politicians who also assure us that they’re bossing this democracy according to the will of the people. True, REAL ID had some “troubling aspects”: it would have forced states to link their databases, which “could provide one-stop shopping for identity thieves and the backbone for a national identification database.” But ”PASS ID addresses those privacy … concerns…” Thus do its sponsors hallucinate about the differences between two identical bills while figuring they’ve snowed us yet again.

PASS ID does depart from REAL ID in one important aspect: it bribes the states to cooperate with a whole lot more of our taxes. Remember the indignant governors, grousing about REAL ID’s violation of our rights? Surprise: that no longer troubles them a-tall. Indeed, members of the National Governors Association so pant to push their hot little hands more deeply into our pockets that they now support REAL–er, PASS ID.

PASS ID also thoughtfully eases the burden on DMVs. Bureaucrats there need not curtail their three-hour lunches nor keep their feet on their desks past 3:30 each afternoon as they bring their little fiefdoms into compliance. But you and I will still be jumping through REAL ID’s hoops as we seek to satisfy the DMV numbskull that our birth certificates are authentic and we live where the State’s records say we do. Of course, the approximately 423 documents that substantiate such claims already reside on various government computers, but unless you bring a copy with you for the numbskull, you’ll be walking rather than driving to work. Actually, you may still be walking even if you produce every single paper the numbskull demands: after paying PASS ID’s higher taxes, who’ll have money left for licenses that cost many multiples of their former price?

Naturally, Our Rulers have our best interests at heart as they impose this totalitarianism. They repeatedly cite “the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation to enhance the security of driver’s licenses” as though anyone other than the stooges on Leviathan’s payroll gives said Commission an iota of credibility. Heck, even some of the stooges damn the Commission, especially those it set up as fall guys for the Fed’s role that tragic day.

Our Rulers also aver that PASS ID “helps fight terrorism” despite experts’ frequent refutations. “Going back to 9-11,” says Bruce Schneier, author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World, “every one of those terrorists had an ID. Some of them had forged IDs, some used their real name, and some of them got real IDs with a fake names [sic] by bribing a motor-vehicles clerk.” Nor is this just one man’s opinion. International consensus notes the missing link between ID and security: “Harvey Mattinson, a consultant at the information technology arm of GCHQ [Government Communication Headquarters – ‘one of the three UK Intelligence Agencies’], said that the only real value of identity cards would be to help state bodies share information about people.”

No wonder Leviathan obsesses over ID. “State bodies” not only “share information” about us, they also pin our names to our addresses so that we are easy to find and fine. The State’s usual motive for its crimes – money – explains its lust to identify us, too. Linda Lewis-Pickett, president and CEO of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, “think[s] each state agency has looked at DMVs as revenue generators – ‘Come in and pay taxes and give us money.’” After we pay those taxes, the drivers’ licenses and plates those DMVs dispense generate further revenue when officials track us to a billing address.

There’s a further benefit in matching names with citizens: it controls us and quashes dissent. Few patriots are brave enough to speak out against Leviathan’s evil when its lackeys can respond, “Papers, please.” Perhaps that’s why the Constitution empowers government merely to count citizens but never to identify them – unless they vote in Congress (Art. I, Sec. 7) or run for the presidency (Art. II, Sec. 1). It is rulers, not us, who must identify themselves lest they wreak wickedness against us (Art. I, Sec. 7).

Which brings us to the author of the REAL ID Act, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI). None too happy that we’ve scrapped his legacy, this heavy-handed dunderhead thundered, “Maybe governors [who objected to REAL ID] should have been in the Capitol when we knew a plane was on its way to Washington wanting to kill a few thousand more people.” Sensenbrenner also snarls that PASS ID, REAL ID’s twin even if it lacks his name on its legislation, sends us “right back to where we were on Sept. 10, 2001.”

Would that it did.

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

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Regardless of whether you felt REAL ID represented critical improvements in security standards or a federal government ID system outsourced upon the states, Secretary Napolitano recently affirmed that, at least by name, that Title II of the Act was dead:

“By Dec 31st, no state will have issued a REAL ID compliant identification document.  We cannot have national standards for driver’s licenses when the states themselves refuse to participate.”

But, just how dead is it?  As politicians, we see firsthand how often things are simply retooled, renamed and resubmitted.  And in the case of REAL ID, which has its roots in failed attempts to implement AAMVA’s Driver’s License Agreement (DLA), it would not be the first time the concept behind a “one license, one record” national ID card was being repackaged.

The DLA started as a dismal failure with few states coming on board because it allowed for foreign data sharing and would have left AAMVA in charge of the biometric and technological standards of what had previously been a state’s sovereign document.

Because AAMVA is a 501c3 with foreign voting members, the DLA essentially left many important driver licensing decisions in the hands of a non-governmental organization that has virtually no state oversight.  With few initial takers, the DLA was inserted into early versions of REAL ID in an attempt to resurrect it.

Now that it appears REAL ID will be replaced with PASS ID, it will be interesting to see how many vestiges of REAL ID and the DLA will remain. Although initially less prescriptive, PASS ID retains many of the core aspects of REAL ID and still puts DHS in charge of current and future rulemaking processes.

The bill is largely silent on RFID and foreign data sharing, and rather than including language that would formally prohibit such practices, PASS ID neither specifically calls for nor prohibits them. This leaves many to wonder if such controversial issues are simply being kicked down the road to future rule making processes that would take place after the states are already part of the system.

Once a state is PASS ID compliant, in practice it would be very hard for them to drop out even if the rules are subsequently changed.

PASS ID still contains provisions that States be able to verify licenses with each other, although exactly how is not defined.  A pilot verification program is being created, and while PASS ID makes it voluntary for states to participate in the pilot, the law makes it very clear that such a process ultimately can be done only in a manner that is approved by DHS.

Whether or not DHS will give its approval to any process other than the one that comes out of the pilot program is unknown, but I have doubts based on my personal experience with the DHS “Enhanced Drivers License” program in Michigan.

In that case, the State of Washington did the pilot, and the project called for the use of “facilitative technology”.  In practice this ended up meaning not just the use of RFID, but a very specific kind of RFID.  DHS said we could use another technology if they approved it, but it quickly became clear that the only type they would greenlight was the kind used in Washington.

Not using RFID was completely off the table. The flexibility we were initially promised ended up only being the flexibility to either participate or not participate.

Likewise, if the new “voluntary” verification pilot project is treated this same way, in practical terms it will still be a mandate for a state that wishes to participate in PASS ID. Going full circle, many feel this pilot will ultimately be similar to the AAMVA Drivers License Agreement.

The pilot therefore needs to run its course before states can determine what exactly they would be agreeing to.  I also have concerns that participation in PASS ID might be linked to federal road dollars, as we continue to see legislation being introduced that links expanded car seat use, ignition interlock devices and texting bans as conditions for receiving these taxdollars. Federal road dollars have quickly gone from being a carrot to a stick.

The deadlines for REAL ID are quickly approaching, and it will be interesting to see if DHS offers automatic waivers as they have in the past or if they will attempt to use the deadlines to push PASS ID quickly through the legislative process, even before the pilot project is completed.

This will ultimately be a good indicator for the states on whether DHS wants to truly be a partner this time around or if PASS ID is simply another iteration in attempting to pass some version of the AAMVA DLA.

State Rep. Paul Opsommer [send him email] was elected to a second term in the Michigan House of Representatives in November 2008.  He represents the residents of Clinton and Gratiot counties.

In the debate over medical reform, everyone can find a public-opinion poll to support his or her position. Robert Reich, who favors deeper government involvement in health care than we already have, wrote recently, “In the most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 76% of respondents said it was important that Americans have a choice between a public and private health-insurance plan. In last week’s New York Times/CBSNews poll, 85% said they wanted major health-care reforms.”

Yet Catherine Rampell, economics editor for nytimes.com, reports there has been “no sea change in public opinion” about healthcare reform. She cites Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, who shows that public support for a government overhaul of the medical industry was higher in 1993, when the Clinton plan failed, than it is today.

Of course, we always have reason for suspicion about public opinion polls, since pollsters can get the results they want by how they frame the questions, especially the all-important preliminary questions. People aren’t laboratory rats, and some respondents may be as interested in impressing the pollster as in speaking their minds. Definitive proof of the case for suspicion was provided some years ago by an episode of the satirical BBC television program Yes, Prime Minister, the key scene of which is here.

So What?

But let’s not stop there. We may grant that “the public” want (as the British would say) the government to set up an insurance program to compete with private insurers and are even willing “to pay higher taxes so that all Americans have health insurance that they can’t lose no matter what.”

So what? By asking this question, I am not displaying naïveté. Politicians of course will use a favorable poll for cover when they do what they want to do anyway.

I mean something else: Why should the people get something through government–that is, at the point of a gun–simply because they want it? We make that assumption reflexively, but why? Fifty-seven percent may be willing to pay higher taxes for universal health insurance, but let’s not overlook what else they are willing to do: tax the 37 percent who aren’t willing to pay higher taxes. (Six percent don’t know if they are willing or not. Sigh.)

H. L. Mencken long ago defined democracy as the “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” The problem is that those who don’t want it get it, too. When it comes to government programs, there’s no opt-out provision. Alas, what distinguishes “free” from unfree countries is the freedom to speak out, not to opt out. In the latter respect, all are unfree.

What about that 37 percent who would be ignored? If they don’t count, they needn’t have had their time wasted by the pollster. As Bruno Leoni wrote, “[I]n assuming that 51 voters out of 100 are ‘politically’ equal to 100 voters, and that the remaining 49 (contrary) voters are ‘politically’ equal to zero (which is exactly what happens when a group decision is made according to majority rule) we give much more ‘weight’ to each voter ranking on the side of the winning 51 than to each voter ranking on the side of the losing 49.” (See my article  “The Crazy Arithmetic of Voting.”)

Well, it might be said, in our system the majority rules. Standing alone, this principle sounds rather ominous, so the speaker usually hastens to add, “but the rights of the minority are protected.” But really now, which is it? Do the majority rule or are the rights of the minority protected? I really don’t see how you can have it both ways.

Misrepresentatives

Our “representatives”–more aptly, our “misrepresentatives”–are supposed to sort out all this complicated stuff, but don’t bet on their squaring the circle any time soon.

The upshot is that they will decide what kind of healthcare system we will have. To the extent they take into consideration what some of the people whom they “represent” want, it is only because they are looking to the next election.

All of which leads me to the question of why we even see these decision-makers as our representatives rather than as our rulers. Think about this: The average congressional district has a population of well over 600,000 people. In Montana, one congressman allegedly represents the state’s entire population of 967,440. The populations of the states range from about half a million (Wyoming) to 36.7 million (California).

Honestly now, who really believes that anyone can actually represent such large and diverse groups of people? (Credit the Antifederalists, or anti-Rats, with another legitimate concern about centralized power.) Are we playing games when we talk about representation under those circumstances?

The Fiction of Representative Government

What got me thinking about this the other day is an essay by the highly respected historian Edmund Morgan, emeritus professor of history at Yale University and prolific author of books on America’s colonial and revolutionary era. His latest book is a collection of previously published papers with the self-explanatory title American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America. (Hat tip: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel.) But Morgan departs from that theme in a couple of chapters, including Chapter 15, “The Founding Fathers’ Problem: Representation.”

Morgan begins by noting that all governments rest on consent; specifically, the governors are few and the governed are many and thus potentially more powerful than the governors. Therefore the governed must be persuaded to believe that obeying the government is the right thing to do. This is the role ideology plays: It constitutes “opinions to sustain their consent.”

“The few who govern take care to nourish those opinions, and that is no easy task, for the opinions needed to make the many submit to the few are often at variance with the facts,” Morgan writes. “The success of government thus requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor is clothed even though we can see that he is not.” (Emphasis added.)

In democratic countries such as the United States, those fictions include the idea of representation, as well as the idea that our “representatives” are mere members of the governed like the rest of us. It doesn’t take a lengthy visit to Washington, D.C., or even a state capital, to be disabused of that latter fiction.

Fictions endure only as long as they are useful, and the one regarding representation is quite useful. Morgan writes, “And just as the exaltation of the king could be a means of controlling him, so the exaltation of the people can be a means of controlling them. …In locating the source of authority in the people, they ["the men who first promoted popular government"] thought to locate its exercise in themselves. They intended to speak for a sovereign but silent people, as the king had hitherto spoken for a sovereign but silent God.”

Morgan is unequivocal: “Representation from the beginning was a fiction. If the representative consented [to the king's taxes or laws], his constituents had to make believe that they had done so.” The problem was not only that often a perfect stranger deigned to represent individuals he knew little about, but also that he had a conflicting mandate: to represent his district while also looking out for the welfare of the whole country. This second part was useful in making representative bodies into modern aristocracies. (We leave aside the further problem that for much of the history of representative government, many people were not allowed to vote.)

“The sovereignty of the people was an instrument by which representatives raised themselves to the maximum distance above the particular set of people who chose them,” Morgan adds. “In the name of the people they became all-powerful in government, shedding as much as possible the local, subject character that made them representatives.”

Morgan connects these considerations to the American Revolution, the Articles of Confederation, and the goals of the Constitutional Convention. But bear in mind that he is not a radical critic of the American political system. He’s no anti-Rat. Yet he concedes that centralization of power under the Constitution was intended to restore representation to its fictive status, since it had become more real in the small legislative districts within the states during the Confederation period. As he writes, “The fictions of popular sovereignty embodied in the federal Constitution may have strained credulity, but they did not break it.”

Alas, that topic must be left for another time. For now, as the Senate and House of “Representatives” deliberate whether to give even more control over your health care to bureaucrats, ask yourself what taxation with representation has wrought.

Massachusetts, which legalized same-sex marriages in 2004, claims that the federal definition violates its authority under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution to define marriage as it sees fit.

Click here for the full complaint.

Attorney General Martha Coakley’s suit argues that DOMA violates the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reserves all powers to the states except those expressly given to the federal government, and it points out that until DOMA’s passage in 1996 states had unchallenged authority to regulate marriage.

It claims DOMA violates the Constitution’s principles of federalism, and it also violates constitutional provisions that prevent the federal government from withholding money to states as a means of forcing them to violate the constitutional rights of their citizens.

The suit asks the court to find DOMA unconstitutional as applied to Massachusetts and to grant an injunction preventing the enforcement of DOMA against Massachusetts.

The suit alleges that not only does the law violate the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which reserves to the states all powers except those granted to the federal government. It also alleges that the law violates Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which limits the power of Congress to attach conditions to the receipt of federal funds.

The suit states that DOMA, termed “overreaching and discriminatory,” interferes with the state’s “sovereign authority to define and regulate marriage.”

“We view all married persons equally,” Coakley said at a press conference today.

The judicial branch sees Congress’ ability to attach strings to funds as quite broad, and if the definition of marriage is linked to that enumerated power and is not seen as commandeering the state legislative or executive branches, it would likely not be seen by them as a violation Tenth Amendment.

Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back a federal law passed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that was designed to tighten security requirements for driver’s licenses, Homeland Security Department and congressional officials said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wants to repeal and replace the controversial, $4 billion domestic security initiative known as Real ID, which calls for placing more secure licenses in the hands of 245 million Americans by 2017. The new proposal, called Pass ID, would be cheaper, less rigorous and partly funded by federal grants, according to draft legislation that Napolitano’s Senate allies plan to introduce as early as tomorrow.

The rebranding effort follows months of talks with the National Governors Association and poses political risk for Obama as well as Napolitano, a former NGA chairwoman who wants to soothe strained relations with the states without appearing to retreat on a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission.

Commissioners called for federal standards for driver’s licenses and birth certificates, noting, “For terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons.” Eighteen of 19 terrorist hijackers obtained state IDs, some of them fraudulently, easing their movements inside the country.

But the Bush administration struggled to implement the 2005 law, delaying the program repeatedly as states called it an unfunded mandate and privacy advocates warned it would create a de facto national ID.

As governor of Arizona, Napolitano called Real ID “feel-good” legislation not worth the cost, and she signed a state law last year opting out of the plan. As secretary, she said a substitute would “accomplish some of the same goals.”

Eleven states have refused to participate in Real ID despite a Dec. 31 federal deadline.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Editor’s Note: As can be seen here, Real ID is a great example of how state-level activism to resist unconstitutional federal laws is an effective – and peaceful – method.  A small number of states simply saying no has the power to force the federal government to get rid of a program.  Consdier this as new regulations come into effect for Health, Gun Rights, nationalizing the Guard and more.

Want to help put the final nail in the coffin of Real ID? Take action over at DownsizeDC.org:

The REAL ID Act is a bad law passed under false pretenses. It was rejected three separate times by the U.S. Senate, and was only passed because it was added to a larger bill containing disaster relief and funding for Iraq. The Senate didn’t want it, and the American people don’t want it either. But the Republican majority leadership in Congress imposed it on us, and so now we have to fight to get it repealed.

The REAL ID Act creates a centralized federal database of personal information about all Americans. Decisions about the exact nature and scope of this program will be made by unelected bureaucrats in the Executive Branch. It seems inevitable that biometric information and electronic tracking tags will be included at some point. No one intends a bad use for this system today, but it is inevitable that it will be used in bad ways in the future.

We are promised increased personal security in return for laying this new “foundation stone” for the creation of a future police state. But those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither, and will have neither.

Many good arguments can be made against REAL ID, but they all reduce to one overpowering truth. The more information government has the less it seems to know. The more power government has the less it seems able to accomplish. Big Government doesn’t work. The federal government needs to do less in order to accomplish more. Small government is focused government. We need smaller government, not a massive new federal identification system. Please ask Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act.

Something called the PASS Act is being crafted to revive the Real ID concept, under a new name, and companies like L-1 Identity Solutions, which stands to benefit, are almost certainly lobbying hard to make it happen. We must lobby just as intensely in the other direction.

Please send your Congressional employees a message asking them once again to repeal the REAL ID Act.

Use your personal comments to ALSO ask them to…

* Stop the DHS from promoting enhanced drivers licenses
* Make the State Department lower the cost of passports
* Reject all the new forms of REAL ID, such as the PASS Act

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Last week, another bill was passed and signed into law that takes more of our freedoms and violates the Constitution of the United States.

It was, of course, done for the sake of the children, and in the name of the health of the citizenry.  It’s always the case that when your liberty is seized, it is seized for your own good.  Such is the condescension of Washington.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will give sweeping new powers over tobacco to the FDA.  It will require everyone engaged in manufacturing, preparing, compounding, or processing tobacco to register with the FDA and be subjected to FDA inspections, which is yet another violation of the Fourth Amendment.  It violates the First Amendment by allowing the FDA to restrict tobacco advertising in multiple ways, as well as an outright ban on advertising any cigarettes as light, mild or low-tar.

The FDA will have the power of pre-market reviews of all new tobacco products, and will impose new user fees, meaning taxes, on manufacturers and importers of tobacco products.  It will even regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

My objections to the bill are not an endorsement of tobacco.  As a physician I understand the adverse health effects of this bad habit.  And that is exactly how smoking should be treated – as a bad habit and a personal choice.  The way to combat poor choices is through education and information.

Other than ensuring that tobacco companies do not engage in force or fraud to market their products, the federal government needs to stay out of the health habits of free people.  Regulations for children should be at the state level.

Unfortunately, government is using its already overly intrusive financial and regulatory roles in healthcare to establish a justifiable interest in intervening in your personal lifestyle choices as well.  We all need to anticipate the level of health freedom that will remain once government manages all health care in this country.

Actions in Congress such as this tobacco bill are especially disconcerting after we thought we were beginning to see some progress in drawing down the wrong-headed and failed war on drugs.  A majority of Americans now think marijuana should be legal, taxed and regulated, according to a recent Zogby poll and over 70 percent are in favor of allowing medicinal use of marijuana.

Bills like this take us down exactly the wrong path.  Instead of gaining more freedom with marijuana, we are moving closer to prohibiting tobacco.  Our prisons are already bursting with non-violent drug offenders.  How long will it be before a black market in tobacco fills the prisons with non-violent cigarette smokers?

Hemp and tobacco were staple crops for our founding fathers when our country was new.  It is baffling to see how far removed from real freedom this country has become since then.  Hemp, even for industrial uses, of which there are many, is illegal to grow at all.

Now tobacco will have more layers of bureaucracy and interference piled on top of it.  In this economy it is extremely upsetting to see this additional squeeze put on an entire industry.   One has to wonder how many smaller farmers will be forced out of business because of this bill.

Ron Paul is a republican member of Congress from Texas.

There has been much media attention that the federal Highway Trust Fund is running out of money and going broke. Last year, an $8 billion infusion of money was required to keep funding whole, and this year Congress will have to come up with an additional $5 billion to $7 billion by August. It is projected that an additional $8 billion to $10 billion will be needed in 2010.

How hard should Michigan be crying over this projected shortfall? Michigan has chronically been classified as a “donor state” when it comes to how these federal transportation dollars are allocated. In layman’s terms, what this means is that when Michigan citizens pay federal gas taxes at the pump that that they only see roughly 94 cents of it flow back to their state. The latest rankings put Michigan 46th out of the 50 states in this regard.

On top of that, federal road dollars have become one of the top tools that Washington uses to fiscally coerce states into passing laws. If you wonder why Michigan has seat belt use as a primary enforcement offense, or has a legal drinking age of 21, it is partly because the federal government will withhold federal road dollars if we don’t comply.

Whether you agree or disagree with these policies has nothing to do with whether or not it should be acceptable for the federal government to use our money in this manner, where they play states off of each other who are all too happy to take another state’s money if one doesn’t comply. This has been threatened with a wide variety of laws regarding everything from vehicle weight limitations to outdoor advertising to junk yard control, clean air compliance, REAL ID, and more. The carrot has become a stick.

This has also helped to perpetuate a mindset where we are always chasing federal dollars, using our matching money on such things as “street beautification” at times when many of our highways and bridges are crumbling.

I also anticipate federal dollars will be attached soon to include such proposals as putting mandatory GPS units into our cars for a so called “per mile” tracking tax. Such fiscal coercion has led George Will to recently call Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood the “Secretary for Behavior Modification.”

While I join other Michigan lawmakers in their call to get the federal government to give Michigan its fair share of money (it is ironic that our “donor status” means that the federal government will give us less money by about the same amount we would need to turn around and give back to them in order to qualify for all federal matching dollars), questions regarding the long run viability of the program also offer us an opportunity to ask another fundamental question: Should the program even still continue?

If Washington stopped levying a federal gas tax, a state could then raise its own gas tax by an equal amount, making it a revenue neutral proposition for its taxpayers while guaranteeing that all the money would stay at home. Federal strings would be cut, allowing states to spend money on their most pressing priorities without fear of losing federal dollars or being forced to pass tangential laws that may or may not be in the best interests of its citizens.

If it ain’t broke you shouldn’t fix it. But in this case – if the federal Highway Trust Fund is going broke, the best thing may be to let it stay that way and put states back in control.

State Rep. Paul Opsommer [send him email] was elected to a second term in the Michigan House of Representatives in November 2008.  He represents the residents of Clinton and Gratiot counties.

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) – New Hampshire on Wednesday became the sixth U.S. state to authorize gay marriage, deepening a New England niche for same-sex weddings and the spending that comes with them.

New Hampshire’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives endorsed gay marriage in a 198-176 vote, hours after the state Senate approved the legislation 14-10 along party lines, making the state the fourth this year to back gay marriage in the United States.

Governor John Lynch, a Democrat, signed the bill, which goes into effect on January 1.

“Today, we are standing up for the liberties of same-sex couples by making clear that they will receive the same rights, responsibilities, and respect, under New Hampshire law,” Lynch said in a statement.

The law also recognizes out-of-state gay marriages and civil unions, which are legal in just a handful of U.S. states including New Hampshire. Same-sex couples who have civil unions in New Hampshire will automatically be married January 1, 2011.

Last month, the New Hampshire House rejected a similar bill. But Senate and House members met last week to approve new language giving clergy and religious institutions opposed to gay marriage greater protections, including the legal right to decline to marry same-sex couples.

Opponents, mostly religious conservatives, see gay marriage as a threat to the “traditional family” that is ordained by God and the foundation of civilization. Supporters often compare it to the path blazed by the civil rights movement.

PROTECTING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

New Hampshire’s bill says religious organizations, associations or societies will have “exclusive control” over their religious “doctrines, teachings and beliefs”.

Organizations affiliated with religious groups that operate for charitable or educational purposes can deny marriage services to gay individuals, it adds.

“The (changes) strike the appropriate balance between two important values we believe New Hampshire residents support: equal rights for all and the rights to religious freedom,” said state Senator Deborah Reynolds, a Democrat.

Senate Republicans said the amendment did little to change a bill they oppose. Republican state Senator Sheila Roberge said Democrats should support Republican calls for a referendum so voters can decide the issue.

Only a few countries, mostly European nations, allow gay marriage. Forty-two U.S. states explicitly prohibit same-sex marriage, including 29 with constitutional amendments.

Last week, California’s supreme court backed a ban on gay marriage by upholding a voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

In stark contrast, gay-marriage laws are expanding swiftly on the East Coast, especially in New England where Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay people to marry five years ago.

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