by Jake Towne

Recently, the U.S. Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, responding to a reporter’s question of whether the Constitution gave Congress the authority to enact individual health insurance mandate, kept repeating, “Are you serious?”

Now, let’s give Speaker Pelosi the benefit of the doubt and attribute her impolite reply to simple disbelief. In fact, from her point of view her authority is unchallenged per a September press release, and many others such as Politico’s Erwin Chemerinsky and even the contemporary Supreme Court agree. From her press release, Pelosi states:

“The Constitution gives Congress broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production. Since virtually every aspect of the heath care system has an effect on interstate commerce, the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.” Continue Reading

In the following audio, Dave Kopel of the Independence Institute interviews University of Montana law professor Rob Natelson about the proper interpretation of the Necessary and Proper clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Click the play button below to load the audio - approximately 44 minutes long. (note: it’s a relatively large file, so it will take a few minutes to load)

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Here’s a few recent articles that Professor Natelson has contributed to the Tenth Amendment Center:

• It’s the People’s Right!
• The Enumerated Powers of States
• The Constitution: A Question of Interpretation

Rob Natelson is Professor of Law and David Mason scholar at the University of Montana, where he teaches constitutional law and constitutional history.  He is currently seeking a publisher for his latest book, The Original Constitution.

by David Kretzmann

Recently I have grown deeply concerned with the potential power grab by the central government over credit card interest rates. In a time of weak economic conditions in many industries and the overall economy in general, the White House and Congress assume they have the power and responsibility to lower credit card rates and greatly increase regulation over the industry, in order to protect the consumer. Continue Reading

by Greg Heller, The Holy Cause

“Obama Moves to Let States Set Own Rules on Emissions”

So says The Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama plans to call on the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to consider allowing states including California to regulate automobile greenhouse-gas emissions, said people familiar with the administration’s thinking.

The move will signal a major policy break from his predecessor on an issue that has divided key Democratic Party constituencies …

… Mr. Obama’s plans were described to The Wall Street Journal by three people familiar with the administration’s thinking, including one administration official. Mr. Obama was expected to outline his plans in directives to the agencies to be released at a White House event Monday. Continue Reading

by Mark Thornton, Mises Economics Blog

The financial panic that has engulfed the planet is considered by politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and mainstream economists to be a problem of regulation. I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to agree with this gang of opinion makers, but it is not a problem of insufficient regulation, inadequate regulation, unenforced regulation, out-dated regulation, or anything of the kind.

The problem is with regulation itself. With regard to financial markets, government regulates everything. There is the Federal Reserve that regulates the money supply, interest rates and everything else. There is the Treasury with its array of regulatory powers. Continue Reading

by Rep Ron Paul

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions.  We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights.

Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones.  If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free. Continue Reading

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.

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!