[Bigun]

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.

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.

[lentulusgracchus]

Where they failed is, Lincoln and Seward put together a regional political machine that captured the executive and legislative branches, and Lincoln was able to use the appointment power to impose his views on the Supreme Court (as witness Salmon Chase's bogus opinion in Texas vs. White, which was political boilerplate -- had Chase been a real judge, he'd have recused himself in the first place).