It’s hard to cover everything that needs to be addressed in this 6+ minute video, but I’ll touch on a few of them below.

Here’s a few observations:

1. Turley is absolutely correct that “decades of precedent” in the courts oppose the view that the federal government is not authorized to enact a national health care plan. But, what he fails to point out, is that under the original meaning, intention and understanding of the Constitution - these kinds of powers would have been unthinkable. The court is, in plain English, wrong. Learn more here.

2. Neither the host nor Turley seem to have any clue about nullification - or its current efforts. Nullification has nothing to do with getting a positive ruling from the Supreme Court. It’s when a state passes a law simply refusing to implement a federal law. In fact, it has a long history in the American tradition. It’s been used to resist laws against free speech, fugitive slave laws, the use of the militia in war and more. Hardly “right-wing” at all. Learn more here. Continue Reading

by Bob Greenslade

With the nation in the midst of an economic crisis, many groups and individuals are questioning the massive spending and so-called economic stimulus bills recently passed by Congress. This includes bailouts and appropriations known as earmarks and pork-barrel spending. Since the constitutionality of federal spending is never part of the debate, we need to re-visit Congress’ power to tax and spend. Continue Reading

by JR Dieckmann, Great American Journal

For far too long, Congress has been violating the Constitution by passing legislation that gives them powers that were never authorized by the Constitution. In every case, those powers represent rights that were intended to be reserved to the states and to the people.

How has Congress committed these grievous violations and gotten away with it? By claiming that “to provide for the common defense and general welfare” is an enumerated power granted to Congress under Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. It is not. It is a general statement describing the section content and justifying the need to levy taxes.

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”

If “[to] provide for the general welfare” were intended to be an enumerated power, just that one statement alone would render the rest of the article unnecessary. It would allow Congress to do whatever it wanted, so long as it could be explained as being for the general welfare of the country. The framers’ intent in writing the Constitution was to limit the power of government, not to grant it unlimited power. Continue Reading

From the Associated Press:

A year after warning America of its addiction to oil, President Bush is expected to renew concerns about energy security in his State of the Union address.

More…

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says the administration over the years has spent nearly $12 billion in developing new energy technologies. He cited the president’s $2.1 billion “advanced energy initiative” in the State of the Union a year ago.

The powers of the federal government are limited to only those specifically delegated to it by the Constitution. Those powers, under any circumstance, can not be expanded constitutionally by the government, no matter how worthy the cause.

Like police powers, most energy authority is based in the states.

As the Supreme Court recently affirmed in United States vs. Lopez, the Constitution establishes a federal government of enumerated, and thus, limited powers.

Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to “achieve energy efficiency or diversity.” Other than the specific power of the federal government over federal territory, any power in those locations to regulate environmental affairs belongs to the states, as the 10th Amendment makes clear.

An accurate reading of the Constitution, therefore, brings much of the Department of Energy’s authority into doubt. Arguments based on the General Welfare clause to justify its actions are quite unfounded.

The General Welfare clause is not properly defined as allowing the federal government to do anything it wants to as long as Congress and the President thinks it’s for a common “good.” If this was the case, the founders wouldn’t have wasted their time writing the Constitution with a list of specifically enumerated powers in the first place!

As many of the founding fathers made quite clear, the General Welfare Clause was meant to confine the exercise of enumerated powers in the Constitution. It was not meant to be, of itself, the source for unlimited power for the government to care for the “common good.”

Consider these statements:

“Our tenet ever was… that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated, and that, as it was never meant that they should provide for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which the enumeration did not place under their action; consequently, that the specification of powers is a limitation of the purposes for which they may raise money.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”
–James Madison

As for oil, and energy “policy” in general, the President’s proposals are absurd. Central planners in the DOE are to tell us what technologies are best for the nation, have the greatest promise, etc. Then, they start spending taxpayers’ money to determine if they can do a better job than markets in developing alternatives to oil. Our continued dependence on oil, coal, and the like, should make it quite clear that such central planning has done nothing more than prevent new technologies from emerging and becoming viable.

If the central government would’ve followed the 10th Amendment, and kept its hands out of energy decades ago, we might be in a much better situation than we are today.