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A quite interesting proposal, IMO. It is, at minimum, food for thought.
Let the discussion commence...
Section 4 should be broadened to include more than Interstate
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The said part is that this needs to be put forth as a proposal at all. This is essentially the way the Constitution is supposed to function.
Section 1: Secession. Any State or Indian tribe may, by an act of its legislature, secede from the United States.
1. Except for the original thirteen, Texas and Hawaii, I am not aware of any state that was not a creation of the United States using land provided for that purpose, which land was taken from its previous possessors with United States blood and/or money. If the current residents want to leave fine, but the land remains a United States possession. Whatever it is can revert back to being a territory of the United States and eventually new states can be formed.
2. Indian tribes have legislatures?
When a national majority the States of the United States (whatever that is) declares a decision by any federal court to be inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution, the said decision shall thereby be negated and precedent restored
That implies pure democracy, not at the citizen level but at the State level. Why not just have a pure democracy of the citizens at all levels?
That implies that if the Supreme Court did something outrageous, like declaring the Second Amendment protects an individual right, a simple majority of the States could over rule them and say that it’s a collective right.
How would that work? By vote of the citizens within a State (back to pure democracy) or by vote of the legislature or executive decision of the governor? If the latter two, why think the State governments have any more sense or good intentions than the Federal government?
Interstate Highway Funds. The United States is prohibited from placing any conditions on any grants of interstate highway funds not directly and reasonably related to the purpose of establishing interstate transportation.
Aside from Post Roads and Military highways, why should the United States (I assume he means government) be involved at all?
State Pardon Power. The governor of each State shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons to any individual convicted of any crime by any federal court who (a) is currently imprisoned within the territory of said State; (b) is a current or previous resident of said State; or (c) committed the acts serving as the basis for said conviction while present in said State.
So I can steal government “property” and payoff a state governor to get out of a federal conviction.
It's a set of paper limits enforced and interpreted by the very state that it seeks to limit
Things won’t work out any better under the proposal and I think they’d be worse. The proposal assumes the States and the people would do a better job under a new arrangement than they are doing under the present arrangement. That assumption doesn’t seem to be well founded.
On the other hand:
Nature of the Union. From the perspective of the United States, the States are sovereign and are the parties to the Constitution, which is a compact among the States.
Agreed and I’m surprised to see that much understanding. The real quarrel is not with the Federal Government which is only an agent of the States; it’s with the other States who have allowed the Federal Government to become what it has become.
Repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, doing something about the tax situation and some other things aren’t bad, but the need for immediate gratification is---shortsighted.
There are PL 280 states where the tribes are under the general law of the states. They are only excluded currently from local county/city law and certain laws pertaining to family and child welfare.