Independence Day is not about Loving Centralized Power
“We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and...
View ArticleDon’t Bother Calling Congress
It looks like a recent study has confirmed something that the Tenth Amendment Center has said for a long time – calling Congress does the average person no good. According to The Hill, two political...
View ArticleUnconstitutional Wars, Unintended Results
Last week President Obama became the fourth consecutive American president to announce the bombing of Iraq. Obama’s actions dovetail perfectly with American sentiment. According to a recent Washington...
View ArticleDid the Civil War End State Sovereignty?
Did you know that the Tenth Amendment Center has an online feedback forum where you can ask questions and make comments or suggestions? We occasionally run into questions that are so good, we need to...
View ArticleMadison and Secession
On the Tenth Amendment Center’s Feedback Forum, a member asks: “What was James Madison’s view on secession? I read some of his letters and he states that a state cannot secede at will but only by...
View ArticleFox Business: States Rebel Against Federal Government
On an episode of his Cavuto on Business show on the Fox Business Network last week, Neil Cavuto spoke with former governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson. Cavuto noted, as was sent to the...
View ArticleLove Liberty? Don’t Donate to Presidential Candidates
Texas Senator Ted Cruz made headlines last week when it was revealed that he had raised an eye-popping $31 million in less than a week for his presidential campaign. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul...
View ArticleMissouri House Kills Medical Marijuana Bill; Fight Moving to the Ballot
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (Apr. 29, 2016) – A Missouri bill that would have legalized medical marijuana was voted down by the Missouri House of Representatives last week. Had the bill been signed into law,...
View ArticleRhode Island House Committee Holds Hearing on Bill to Limit Warrantless Drone...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (April 30, 2016) – A Rhode Island bill that would restrict the use of drones by state and local law enforcement had its first committee hearing this week. The legislation would not...
View ArticleColorado Town Says “No” to HUD, Refuses Federal Funds
While the federal government always views its threats to cut off the flow of stolen money to the states as a kind of untrumpable trump card, a Colorado town has created a template for how to handle the...
View ArticleA Professor’s Defense of Nullification
Supporters of nullification cannot have a conversation on the topic without quickly encountering three arguments: that the actions of the federal government are supreme, that the Supreme Court is the...
View ArticleIs Nullification Racist?
Proponents of nullification continue to spread the message that the solutions that Americans say they want will not be found at the federal level. They painstakingly show how the principle is...
View ArticleThe Government We Deserve
We all have people in our lives who influence not just what we believe, but how we think. For me one of those people is economist and author Walter Williams. Dr. Williams is one of a handful of...
View ArticleNullification 101: A Intro to Defending Liberty
The federal government is out of control, unable to limit its spending or satisfy its insatiable appetite for consuming the people’s liberties. And these tendencies seem to get worse with each...
View ArticleState Non-Compliance is Its Own Penalty
Imagine for a moment that you are a basketball player. The opposing team has the ball and you’re playing defense. What would happen if you turned around to find that the court had doubled in size and...
View ArticleSan Diego Mayor Calls for Jury Nullification
Don’t look now, but nullification is about to spread to the courtroom. NBC 7 in San Diego reported this week that the city’s mayor, Bob Filner, has called for jurors to refuse to convict the operators...
View ArticleBook Review: Reclaiming the American Revolution
After lying dormant for the better part of 150 years, nullification has been gaining momentum in recent years. My own awareness of nullification, the idea that the states have the constitutional right...
View ArticleIs Obamacare on Life Support?
Remember a couple of months ago when the Obama administration sent letters to four states promising to use federal agents to enforce Obamacare if the states failed to? Well, it appears that smug...
View ArticleFederal Laws: To Infinity and Beyond!
How many federal laws are on the books? 500? 1,000? 5,000? Go ahead, take a guess.Give up?Yeah, well, so does the Library of Congress. In an attempt to answer the frequent question of how many...
View ArticleFederalism is for Liberals
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Emily Bazelon makes the claim that “states’ rights are for liberals”, citing the examples of state support for marriage equality and the legalization of marijuana...
View ArticleSpying on Kids to Improve Education?
Bill Gates has an idea. In order to improve academic performance, teachers should be monitored all day, every day. A preposterous waste of resources and manpower, you say? Well, not to worry,...
View ArticleJackson County, Michigan Passes 2nd Amendment Preservation Resolution
By a 9-0 vote on June 18, the County Commissioners in Jackson County, Michigan unanimously approved a resolution in support of the 2nd Amendment.The resolution promises to reject any attempt by the...
View ArticleAbortion: A State Issue, a National Nightmare
News broke recently that Florida Senator Marco Rubio plans to sponsor a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. With Rubio’s reputation recently taking a hit in conservative circles, a cynic...
View ArticleSome Utah Republicans Get It, Some Don’t
Some sentences are so contradictory, so self-evidently oxymoronic that they stop you in your tracks. For example, maybe you have a friend who says something like, “I’m a vegetarian, but I really love...
View ArticleFounders Turning in Their Graves
“A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”So said the ever-quotable Benjamin Franklin upon emerging from the Constitutional Convention debates in 1787. Franklin’s now-famous statement to an inquisitive...
View ArticlePolitical Pressure is Like Real Estate
I have a confession. I’m not one of those suave guys who always does everything right. I once put diesel fuel in my car only to find out that diesel fuel and unleaded gasoline are not...
View ArticleA Long History of Constitutional War Power Violations
Barack Obama is clearly not the first president to ignore the framers’ intent regarding the executive’s war powers. In many ways Obama is merely building upon the framework of George W. Bush, whose...
View ArticleHas Eric Cantor Read the Constitution?
Virginia Republican Congressman Eric Cantor met with President Obama on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Syria. Shortly after his conference with the president, Cantor released a statement saying,...
View ArticleWisconsin Nullifies Park Service Shutdown Order
Scott Walker is at it again.The governor of Wisconsin, who has previously publicly stated his intention to resist Obamacare, had his state’s Department of Natural Resources reject federal requests to...
View ArticleA Lesson from the “Shutdown”
We have entered week two of the federal government’s “shutdown” and, amazingly, Americans are still hanging in there. This is a fact that has chagrined federal politicians to no end. In an effort to...
View ArticleGovernor Kasich Loves Obamacare
You have to love Ohio politicians. Some of them are the only people on earth unprincipled enough to make Massachusetts politicians blush.Now it appears that John Kasich, Ohio’s Republican governor,...
View ArticleIs Allen West why the Constitution is in Tatters?
Tweens and Justin Bieber’s music.Anyone and the Kardashians’ TV shows.There are some people who are extremely popular with the masses, but whose appeal I just can’t see.Here’s another one. The tea...
View ArticleEsquire Whiffs Again
You have to give Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce credit. He’s consistent.He’s also wrong. Conspicuously, unrepentantly wrong. But at least he’s consistent.We first encountered (and refuted) Pierce a...
View ArticleRethinking Big Government
The word “big” gets thrown around a lot in American politics. People endlessly rail against “big government” programs while advocating in favor of smaller government which would purportedly give us...
View ArticleA Question for Limited Government Centralizers
Being a political decentralist has its share of oddities. The phenomenon that continues to amaze me is how we who believe in decentralization often find ourselves in political agreement with people...
View ArticleNon-Compliance is Nullification
For being such a simple concept, nullification sure does cause a lot of confusion. For some, nullification only counts if certain criteria are met. These criteria typically follow the John Calhoun...
View ArticleReagan’s Executive Order on Federalism: A Post-Mortem
A few weeks ago weeks ago we received a question on our Tenth Amendment Center Feedback Forum about TAC’s perspective of Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12612. The order, a direction to the members of...
View ArticleMissouri Bill Would Nullify NDAA Indefinite Detention
Missouri state Senator Brian Nieves introduced legislation this month to ban his state from enforcing sections 1021 and 1022 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. These sections purport to...
View ArticleKentucky Bill Seeks to Nullify Warrantless Drone Spying
The Kentucky legislature will consider a bill in the 2014 legislative session that would take significant steps towards protecting people there from prying eyes in the sky.Representatives Diane St....
View ArticleNew Hampshire Bill Would Drastically Limit Drone Use
The New Hampshire legislature will consider a bill in the 2014 session that would take big steps towards fully protecting residents and visitors from prying eyes in the sky.Rep. Joe Duarte (R-Candia)...
View ArticleNullifying the federal ban on hemp farming: Colorado leads the way
In the battle over the federal government’s unconstitutional drug laws, marijuana always gets the publicity. But there is an overlooked aspect to Washington’s unconstitutional ban on cannabis:...
View ArticlePolitician Claims Pledge of Allegiance Trumps the Constitution
Over the years I’ve found that most Americans are not receptive to criticisms of the Pledge of Allegiance. Such criticisms typically elicit funny looks if not outright scorn and ridicule.On the few...
View ArticleOaths of Office and the Tenth Amendment
On March 31st, I was a guest on The Dignitary podcast. The show’s topic was the oath of office that politicians take, particularly that of upholding the Constitution. The Dignitary’s host, Jacob, and I...
View ArticleSupreme Partisanship
In a recent New York Times story, justices on the allegedly non-partisan Supreme Court were reported to be much more likely to rule in favor of free speech if they agreed with the ideology of the...
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