Category Archives: States’ Rights

Apoplectic Over Legal Reversals On Race

Constitution, Law, Race, Racism, States' Rights, The State

Any weakening of laws that privilege protected groups will be decried by … the groups the law protects and others vested in “advancement through affirmative action, quotas, contract set-asides based on race” and race-based redistricting. The latter is “the intentional formation of majority–minority districts (districts in which voters of color constitute a majority of eligible voters).

Supreme Court setbacks to the racial spoils-system run by federal and state enforces is bound to annoy the system’s beneficiaries and supporters. In this, The National Law Journal stands firmly with “Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.” The former called a Tuesday decision over “a key provision of the Voting Rights Act by the U.S. Supreme Court” a “gutting” of the law. The latter decried this legal reprieve as “a serious and unnecessary setback,” promising that “the department will press on in the enforcement of voting rights laws.”

Basically the South was declared to no longer pose a danger to blacks. Read The National Law Journal’s laughable lamentations:

A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a crippling blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by striking down the formula devised by Congress to determine which states are covered by the act.
“In 1965, the States could be divided into two groups: those with a recent history of voting tests and low voter registration and turnout, and those without those characteristics,” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “Congress based its coverage formula on that distinction. Today the Nation is no longer divided along those lines, yet the Voting Rights Act continues to treat it as if it were.”
By invalidating the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the act, the court, in effect, rendered Section 5—the heart of the act—useless. Section 5 requires covered jurisdictions—those with a history of voting discrimination—to submit any changes in their voting practices for preclearance by the Department of Justice or the federal district court in Washington. …

MORE.

UPDATED: Where Are Tenth-Amendment Advocates On Senate Amnesty Bill?

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, States' Rights

In “Democracy And The Immigration Political Steamroller,” I inquired after the Tenth-Amendment Center. Why was it AWOL in the current amnesty fiasco?

To its credit, The Heritage Foundation has not gone along with the open-border crowd, and has made some sharp points about the top-down federal approach that characterizes the Senate’s “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act”:

8. Disregard for Federalism

The Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution clearly articulates that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government are thereby reserved to the states.[46] The Founders understood that in order to know what is truly necessary and prudent for the protection of citizens’ rights and liberties, one must be in constant interaction with the people. For this reason, the Founders felt that states fostered the best-equipped individuals to represent the interests of public safety on behalf of their own citizens.

States also have a unique familiarity with their communities that enables them to better navigate the difficult issues of detection, detention, and deportation of illegal aliens. Following this same rationale, many legal experts believe that state and local governments retain inherent authority to enforce federal civil law. Opponents to this practice, however, feel the federal government should be the controlling voice when determining immigration policies and border security, with little to no guidance from the states themselves. As was the case with Arizona’s S. B. 1070 immigration law, when the state attempted to implement requirements it felt necessary to determine the immigration status of an individual, the federal government saw the state as an obstacle rather than an ally.[47]

Yet, with fewer than 6,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, failing to use the one million state and local law enforcement personnel to supplement federal personnel makes little sense. State and local law enforcement would, in fact, be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, S. 744 continues to promote a top-down federal approach to addressing immigration while leaving minimum room for real collaboration.[48]

The bill does include a select few instances where some form of collaboration presents itself between the state, local, and federal governments. For example, four of 10 appointed members to the Southern Border Security Commission are to be representatives of the four states along the southern border. One representative is to come from each of the states and be either the governor or someone appointed by the governor.[49] Also, with approval from the Secretary of Defense, a governor may order personnel of the National Guard of his or her own state to perform operations and missions in the southwest border region for the purposes of assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection.[50] These instances, however, are very limited.
State and local law enforcement would be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, the Senate bill promotes a federal top-down approach to addressing immigration, leaving minimum room for real collaboration.

Otherwise, the bill provides no clear proposal for partnerships between the federal and state or local governments. Indeed, the legislation makes no mention of effective collaborative immigration enforcement programs, such as Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement to “act in the stead of ICE agents by processing illegal aliens for removal.”[51]Instead, it pushes a federal-government-knows-best-and-will-fix-all mentality.

Read Heritage’s 9 other points.

Advocates of the Tenth and states’ rights are clearly AWOL.

UPDATE: Jack Kerwick isn’t. He’s out there wrestling with the illogic of the concepts immigration fetishists deploy to beat you about the head. “Toward an Honest Discussion of Immigration”: Read it!

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Democracy And The Immigration Political Steamroller

Constitution, Democracy, Elections, Federalism, Government, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, States' Rights

The essence of democracy is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “general will,” a “national purpose” that must be implemented by an all-powerful state. “Democratic voting is done, not only to select officials but also to determine the functions and goals and powers of the government,” writes legal scholar (and friend) James Ostrowski. “The guiding principle of republics is that they exercise narrow powers delegated to them by the people, who themselves, as individuals, possess such powers.”

James Madison was not a democrat. He denounced popular rule as “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property.” Democracy, he observed, must be confined to a “small spot” (like Athens). Madison and the other founders attempted to forestall democracy by devising a republic, the hallmark of which was the preservation of individual liberty. To that end, they restricted the federal government to a handful of enumerated powers.

Decentralization, devolution of authority, and the restrictions on government imposed by a Bill of Rights were to ensure that few issues were left to the adjudication of a national majority.

When you consider every bit of legislation written by our democratically elected despotic lawmakers—the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744),” for example—contemplate the words of Benjamin Barber:

It is hard to find in all the daily activities of bureaucratic administration, judicial legislation, executive leadership, and paltry policy-making anything that resembles citizen engagement in the creation of civic communities and in the forging of public ends. Politics has become what politicians do; what citizens do (when they do anything) is to vote for politicians.

And where, pray tell, in the immigration tyranny is the Tenth-Amendment Center? Its scholars used to advocate for the right of the residents of the states to determine how they lived their lives. Unless I am doing him a disservice—in which case I apologize profusely—the last time Michael Boldin applied the Tenth Amendment creatively to the political steamroller that is immigration was when he distinguished between immigration and naturalization in 18th century nomenclature, back in … April 28, 2010.

Has the Tenth Amendment Center fallen to the Beltway bigwigs of the Cato Institute?

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Privacy For Some Gun Owners (State Workers), But Not For Others (The People)

Constitution, Federalism, Free Speech, GUNS, Individual Rights, Journalism, Media, States' Rights

It’s old news that will not be getting old anytime soon. A shitty rag, The Journal News, published “an interactive map containing the names and addresses of pistol-permit holders in New York’s Westchester and Putnam counties.”

In response, there has been a great deal of special pleading from conservative quarters. A lot of the gun owners whose names and addresses were mapped are “first responders,” conservatives have been lamenting. “We can’t expose our [sainted] first responders to any dangers.”

The Bill or Rights was meant to protect individuals against the state. It defends the people from the government; not the obverse. But trust conservatives to elevate the “oink sector,” in the debate over the right of gun owners to privacy.

If anything, “first responders,” and other members of the oink sector—having sold their souls to the state—need to accept the risks that go with exercising ultimate decision-making powers in society, to use Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s term.

Government workers–the special interests—are expected to live with the risk of the job. They accept the perks and the pensions, don’t they?

I’m reminded here of the special pleading the same Fox News folks made in the case of the Transportation Security Administration’s illicit searches at the airports.

On Mr. Hannity’s Great American Panel, Noel Nikpour, a tedious Republican strategists who talks up a storm on that forum, extended her exquisite understanding of individual rights to … people like herself and her co-panelists. You know, important sorts who fly a lot; they ought to be able to acquire a permit that’ll exempt them from being screened afresh [by TSA goons] as they scurry to their important appointments.

This evening, Sean Hannity provided a forum for some very impressive gun owners, all of whom had been “outed” by the The Journal News. These were highly intelligent people, more than capable of articulating the essence of the freedoms they were exercising.

Still, sympathy is all “conservatives” like Mr. Hannity are able to offer to these exposed individuals. Sympathy and an appeal to the decency of the media (laughable, I know).

Republicans have no leg to stand on in objecting to the publication of gun-owner addresses, as they argue from the positive law. And the positive law, defended by all so-called “reasonable” conservatives, compels all law-abiding individuals to register with the state when purchasing a fire arm. (To this registration, libertarians like myself would object.)

Information thus collated and centralized is accessible to all.

An appeal to the sympathy and decency of the liberal establishment: That’s all statist “conservatives” have to offer in the case of The Journal News Vs. the gun owners of Westchester and Putnam counties.