House Joint Resolution 1003, Oklahoma State Rep. Charles Key’s resolution affirming Oklahoma’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment, passed unanimously in committee yesterday!  It should be scheduled for a floor hearing soon.

A number of state legislators have introduced similiar resolutions in their states, and it is good to see some progress being made.

Oklahoma members – contact your local representatives today and urge them to vote for final passage!  The toughest battle is sure to be in the state Senate.

As usual, Walter Williams hits the nail on the head. This article references a referendum introduced in the state legislature of Oklahoma to put the Federal government on notice that it has over stepped its bounds based on the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The founders would have never been able to get the constitution passed by the states if they could foresee the current actions of the federal government.

They would be completely surprised at the degree to which the states have given over responsibility and authority for issues regarding individual citizens in individual states. The state representatives at the constitutional convention were passionate about state’s rights, and suspicious of any power transfer to the federal government. It was a miracle that the constitution was ratified.

The Oklahoma legislature that passed the resolution restating their states rights as defined in the constitution would be applauded by our founders. It is interesting how ignorant most of us are on the details and history of our constitution. Ignorance is the only reason we continue to accept unfunded mandates, and an over active federal government supported by an over active federal court system.

If our founders were here today, we would have had a revolution already. All of their fears have been realized. They feared too much power in a central authority. They feared that fractions would develop and control the process of government while ignoring the will of the people. They feared tyranny over the states. They feared a central government would become too powerful and impose on individual freedoms. To name a few…

The Oklahoma state legislature is just trying to re-establish the balance that the founders worked so hard to solidify in our constitution. We should join them…

Rich Hand is a candidate for congressional district 5 in colorado. Formerly a Republican, he has left the party after 16 years because of his disappointment with its direction. He is a dedicated family man, the author of My Life; Ignored! and a musician with 3 CD’s. Visit his blog at http://whoisrichhand.blogspot.com/

One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees.

A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence.

Oklahomans are trying to recover some of their lost state sovereignty by House Joint Resolution 1089, introduced by State Rep. Charles Key.

The resolution’s language, in part, reads:

“Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: ‘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.’; and Whereas, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and whereas, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and Whereas, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government. … Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the 2nd session of the 51st Oklahoma Legislature: that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. That this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.”

Key’s resolution passed in the Oklahoma House of Representatives with a 92 to 3 vote, but it reached a bottleneck in the Senate where it languished until adjournment.

However, Key plans to reintroduce the measure when the legislature reconvenes.

Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution’s framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, “The powers delegated … 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, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … 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.”

Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not “subordinate” to the national government, but rather the two are “coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. … The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.”

Both parties and all branches of the federal government have made a mockery of the checks and balances, separation of powers and the republican form of government envisioned by the founders. One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles.

State efforts, such as Oklahoma’s, create a glimmer of hope that one day Americans and their elected representatives will realize that the federal government is the creation of the states. A bit of rebellion by officials in other states will speed that process along.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC

That’s why the Tenth Amendment Center applauds the Oklahoma State House of Representatives, who recently declared “sovereignty” under the principles of the 10th.

In their resolution, which easily passed by a 92-3 margin, they recognized not only that the Tenth Amendment exists, but that it grants only specific powers to the federal government – the rest being left to the “States or to the People.”

According to the language of the resolution, Oklahoma is “serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates.”

Although this is the most strongly-worded commitment from a legislature to the principles of states rights in a long time, it will remain to be seen if Oklahoma will actually begin resisting some of the many, many encroachments that the federal government engages in on a daily basis.

Robert Bright has an interesting perspective on his blog:

The list of things that the Fed Gov is doing but does not have authority to do because of the 10th Amendment is staggering.  The reason federal politicians ignore the 10th is that they would have little to do if the 10th were applied as intended by the Founding Fathers …

… it’s a very nice gesture.  If several states would do the same thing, we could actually see some real change – as opposed to the “change” to an even larger Federal Government as proposed by Obama, Clinton and McCain.

A resolution is clearly not the same thing as outright resistance, but this seems to have awoken a number of people to the realization that a potentially good way to reduce the power of the federal government is through their local communities.

This will happen much quicker once we realize that federal funding that’s dished out for all kinds of unconstitutional mandates are little more than a way to keep us dependent – bribes.

A commenter at PoliticalInquirer.net sums it up pretty well:

Here, here; the most-ignored amendment of all needs a major revival. However, to do that, the states would have to wean themselves off of federal dollars for state-specific purposes and I don’t expect any state has the political intestinal fortitude to do that.

More importantly, the US Supreme Court needs to start recognizing the existence of that Amendment and start ruling based on it. They’ve been operating like there were only nine original Amendments since Roe v Wade (a clear 10th Amendment issue).

Here, Here.