It was one of the key innovations of the Constitution as it was proposed to the Philadelphia Convention, that the federal government does not bind the States (which are sovereign), but rather the individual citizen under "dual sovereignty" -- the State binds him, and the Union binds him, and reconciling the two is the work of the judiciary.
The States' governments and the federal government are supposed to operate in separate, constitutionally-defined spheres. That they don't, is the work of assorted Yankeefying power-mad elites and interest groups trying to ram their arrangements down everyone's throat using perverted interpretations of the Commerce Clause, e.g., and micromanagerial Congressional acts and Executive Orders as more ee.g.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
In this relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a NATIONAL one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.
-- The Federalist No. 39 (Madison)
This deal has been broken, and the brokenness of the federal system is the legacy of Non-Sequitur's heroes' wet dream of federal omnipotence, omnicompetence, and autocracy.
Exactly! As I said earlier on in this thread.
The system the framers intended would have any of the three branches of government act as a check on the excesses of either or both of the others and the states would act as the final and ultimate check on the entire federal government.
See, that's what makes your posts so down right funny. In your world some states ARE more sovereign than others and CAN tell other states what they can or cannot do. The hypocrisy and contradictions that y'all spew out with ever post boggles the mind.