Posted on 03/10/2010 12:51:23 PM PST by rxsid
"Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 Still Apply
Thomas Jefferson is well known for his letters and being the principal author of The Declaration of Independence. He also was the 3rd President of the United States; but before he was elected for that office, he held the office of Vice President during the administration of the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams. Previous to that, Thomas Jefferson served as an elected member of the Virginia legislature, Mister of France and Secretary of State for President George Washington. After losing to John Adams, Federalist, in the 1796 presidential election by only three electoral votes, he became the Vice President. In 1800 he became the President of the United States after a tie-breaking election with his opponent Aaron Burr, who became Jefferson’s Vice President.
While the Declaration of Independence is a well known American government document, few know that Thomas Jefferson was the author of another important document – The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Mr. Jefferson drafted the document in secret while he was serving as vice president. It was written in response to the unpopular Alien and Seditions Acts that passed Congress and President John Adams signed during an undeclared war with France. The acts demonstrated how quickly men of government had forgotten the principles that caused the American Revolutionary War and the foundation of the law of the United States – the US Constitution and its amendments. It authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries were at war with the United States, and criminalized any speech which might defame Congress, the President, or bring either of them into contempt or disrepute.
10th Amendment
In protested and argued citing the Tenth Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
States Rights
Thomas Jefferson stated that the federal government had over stepped its bounds and was exercising powers which belonged to the states. Thomas Jefferson corresponded with James Madison in private letters, and the two gentlemen suspected that their letters were secretly being opened and ready by the government. However, the letters developed a series of resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts and was passed by the Virginia legislature in 1798 and 1799. In the Kentucky Resolutions, Thomas Jefferson explained the nature of the relationship between the federal government and the state governments:
Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.
More here: http://fadedglorypatriotmilitia.blogspot.com/2010/03/kentucky-resolutions-of-1798-still.html
"Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 Still Apply (States Rights)"
Ping
Amendment IX.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained
by the people.
Amendment X.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to
the States respectively, or to the people.
ML/NJ
Bump.
On Sedition, kind of ironic that Sean Penn calls for an equivalent law to jail those who trash talk even foreign dictators like Chavez. He would love the Alien and Sedition Act.
Just sayin'.
for later reading
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