[Delhi Rebels]

3. I have not considered whether the Congress would have the authority to expel a state from the "Union." I suspect not since such a power is not specifically granted to Congress and would therefore be prohibited by the Tenth Amendment.

What is Congress but the voice of all the states? So don't look at is as whether Congress has the power to expel another state. Ask yourself if the states themselves, expressing their desires through a vote of their members in Congress, have the right to expel a single state from the Union. And if your answer is 'no' then please point out the clause of the Constitution that forbids it.

And if it is your position that the government only has powers explicitly granted to it by the Constitution then how can organizations like NASA, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, the air traffic control system, USDA Food Safety and Inspection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Park System be Constitutional since none of those are explicitly authorized by the Constitution?

[BlackElk]

Your last paragraph first: None of those functions (or many, many more) are constitutional, given the Tenth Amendment. We have them because the ever internally imperialistic power-grubbing federales have been empire building for a very long time now in a period of general constitutional illiteracy. Since we are massacring the Tenth Amendment anyhow, the good news for us greybeards is that the massacre included the creating and maintenance of Social Security and Medicare and the Interstate Highway system (even if it would have pleased Whigs).

As to Congress expelling even a single state from the "Union," the Tenth Amendment stands for the proposition that no clause of the Constitution OTHER than the Tenth Amendment is necessary to forbid such action. The only relevant question is whether Congress has specifically received the power under the Constitution to exercise itself to expel a state. The answer, as you well know, is NO.