Posted on 05/06/2013 8:44:56 AM PDT by True Grit
Attorney General Eric Holder has written to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (shown), informing him that the Obama administration considers state attempts to protect the Second Amendment “unconstitutional” and that federal agents will “continue to execute their duties,” regardless of state statutes to the contrary.
The letter, dated April 26, specifically references a Kansas statute recently signed into law by Brownback that criminalizes any attempt by federal officers or agents to infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of citizens of the Sunflower State. Section 7 of the new law declares:
It is unlawful for any official, agent or employee of the government of the United States, or employee of a corporation providing services to the government of the United States to enforce or attempt to enforce any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States regarding a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately and owned in the state of Kansas and that remains within the borders of Kansas. Violation of this section is a severity level 10 nonperson felony.
The right of states to refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal acts is known as nullification.
Nullification is a concept of constitutional law recognizing the right of each state to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that exceeds the few and defined powers allowed the federal government as enumerated in the Constitution.
Nullification exists as a right of the states because the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of the power of the central government to enact laws that are applicable to the states and the citizens thereof.
As President Obama and the United Nations accelerate their plan to disarm Americans, the need for nullification is urgent, and liberty-minded citizens are encouraged at the sight of state legislators boldly asserting their right to restrain the federal government through application of that very powerful and very constitutional principle.
Both Attorney General Holder and President Obama are trained lawyers, so one would expect that they have read the Federalist Papers. In fairness, they probably have, but perhaps they overlooked Federalist, No. 33, where Alexander Hamilton explained the legal validity of federal acts that exceed the powers granted to it by the Constitution. Hamilton wrote:
If a number of political societies enter into a larger political society, the laws which the latter may enact, pursuant to the powers intrusted [sic] to it by its constitution, must necessarily be supreme over those societies and the individuals of whom they are composed…. But it will not follow from this doctrine that acts of the larger society which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. [Emphasis in original.]
Holder denies that states have the right to withstand federal tyranny and argues that the Constitution declares federal acts to be the “supreme law of the land.”
His comments echo a common misreading and misunderstanding of Article VI of the Constitution, the so-called Supremacy Clause.
The Supremacy Clause (as some wrongly call it) of Article VI does not declare that federal laws are the supreme law of the land without qualification. What it says is that the Constitution “and laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof” are the supreme law of the land.
Read that clause again: “In pursuance thereof,” not in violation thereof. If an act of Congress is not permissible under any enumerated power given to it in the Constitution, it was not made in pursuance of the Constitution and therefore not only is not the supreme law of the land, it is not the law at all.
Constitutionally speaking, then, whenever the federal government passes any measure not provided for in the limited roster of its enumerated powers, those acts are not awarded any sort of supremacy. Instead, they are “merely acts of usurpations” and do not qualify as the supreme law of the land. In fact, acts of Congress are the supreme law of the land only if they are made in pursuance of its constitutional powers, not in defiance thereof.
Alexander Hamilton put an even finer point on the issue when he wrote in Federalist, No. 78, “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the constitution, can be valid.”
Once more legislators, governors, citizens, and law professors realize this fact, they will more readily and fearlessly accept that the states are uniquely situated to perform the function described by Madison above and reiterated in a speech to Congress delivered by him in 1789. “The state legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operation of this government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a federal government admit the state legislatures to be sure guardians of the people’s liberty,” Madison declared.
State lawmakers in Kansas and several other states are catching on, and nullification bills stopping federal overstepping of constitutional boundaries are being considered. These measures nullify not only the impending federal gun grab, but the mandates of ObamaCare and the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as well.
In light of Holder’s letter, it appears that we have arrived at a time in the history of our Republic when the author of the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Jefferson) and the “Father of the Constitution” (James Madison) are considered enemies of liberty.
In the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, Jefferson and Madison declared their allegiance to the union, but insisted that states have the right — the duty — to interpose themselves between citizens and federal despotism.
What Holder fails to appreciate is that the consent of the states created the Constitution and thus created the federal government. This act of collective consenting is called a compact. In this compact (or contract), the states selected delegates who met in Philadelphia in 1787 and conferred some of the powers of the states to a federal government. These powers were enumerated in the Constitution drafted at that convention and the Constitution became the written record of the compact.
This element of the creation of the union is precisely where the states derive their power to nullify acts of the federal government that exceed its constitutional authority. It is a trait woven inextricably within every strand of sovereignty, and it was the sovereign states that ceded the territory of authority that the federal government occupies.
In his letter to Governor Brownback, Attorney General Holder demonstrates that he is as ignorant as his boss as to the proper, constitutional relationship between state governments and the federal government. Accordingly, when Holder threatens to use “all appropriate action” to “prevent the State of Kansas from interfering with the activities of federal officials enforcing federal law,” what he is saying is that he will use any means necessary to prevent the sovereign state of Kansas (and any other state brave enough to take a stand against the federal government) from exercising its right to protect its citizens from federal disarmament.
And, more importantly, by disregarding a legally enacted Kansas statute preserving the right of its citizens to keep and bear arms, the Obama administration is not only ignoring the Second Amendment, but it is also ignoring the 10th Amendment and its restrictions on federal power.
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The Civil War wasn’t a civil war.
It was the second war for independence.
Those seeking independence lost.
1 win, 1 loss... tie breaker coming up?
Well worth the read.
Guess we’re gonna have us a Mexican standoff or the Feds will be arrested at the border by Sheriffs .
Which aspect of the KS law will Holder attempt to breech? It might be good to try to anticipate under what circumstances Holder sends in the SWAT team. If a patriot intends to test Holder, I would make sure that that patriot has lots of cameras and some back-up. I don’t know if a sheriff would intervene if a SWAT team swooped down on a ‘violator’.
From what I know, these SWAT teams come in at 3am and there are no witnesses or documentation. For this law to stand, we must have public support and demonstration of Federal abuses.
“Both Attorney General Holder and President Obama are trained lawyers”
As I have posted on FR previously, Obama does not have a license to practice law...therefore, he is NOT a lawyer.
The Constitution gives you the right to use deadly force to resist an unlawful arrest, search, or seizure. If the gun grab passes, law enforcement officers will become moving targets. Moving out of the state that decides to enforce it. The government thinks that you don’t need to have guns because law enforcement will protect you. The court says that law enforcement is under no legal obligation to protect citizens. It is only obligated to seek out and find those who rob, rape, or murder you or your family members.
Your #32, dead on. Zero will do far worse than Lincoln ever did.
The real argument behind this is a fight between the US constitution and the judicial principle of “stare decisis”.
The phrase originates from the phrasing of the principle in the Latin maxim ‘Stare decisis et non quieta movere’: “to stand by decisions and not disturb the undisturbed.” In a legal context, this is understood to mean that courts should generally abide by judicial precedent and not disturb settled matters.
However, over time, the judicial principle of stare decisis has resulted in both the direct and blatant, and gradual subversion of the US constitution.
Direct subversion of the US constitution happened, for example, in the perverted use of the Interstate Commerce Clause by FDR to give the federal government the authority to control all aspects of the interstate business, *as well* as “intra-state” business; and the equally perverted use of the General Welfare clause by LBJ to create a national welfare state.
While the Supreme Court was forced to do the former by FDR, who threatened to destroy them otherwise; they willingly used stare decisis to expand, and permit the continuing expansion, of what had been done previously, multiplying the villainy of the constitutional perversion.
On the subject of “gradual perversion”, the courts have gradually amassed a vast library of precedent, the precedent even dominating acts of congress in the law.
For example, the granting of “civil rights” to corporations, from the time of Lincoln, does not even devolve from a Supreme Court decision, but from an opinion, not part of a particular case, from the chief justice to the official Supreme Court reporter. But running with this, Lincoln ordered the idea completely fleshed out by a subordinate. And since that time, the idea of corporate civil rights utterly dominates all US business law, but has no constitutional basis whatsoever.
Other massive national power grabs accomplished through gradualism were achieved through alcohol prohibition, which ended several civil rights; and much more because of the “War on Drugs”. Likewise, the excuses of wars were a grand opportunity to steal liberties which were never returned with the peace. The courts were always willing to accept the new status quo.
And because all of this was affirmed through judicial precedent, volumes of reprehensible and unconstitutional and unconscionable laws cripple our nation.
Eventually, perhaps already, only a very conservative Supreme Court could waft away vast amounts of constitutional subversion, and prevent our destruction as a nation, but the question remains, “Would they?”
Judges and justices live and breathe stare decisis, and many times in their careers when logic or reason reject it, they will still bow down to it. Their rationalizations for doing so are just that, rationalizations, because they are no more willful in righting the ship of state than is congress.
Likewise, what justices have the intestinal fortitude to state that the vast majority of justices that came before them were wrong to worship at the altar of stare decisis, and should have acted to restore our nation’s constitutional principles?
Freudian slip, yet absolutely true.
As I have posted on FR previously, Obama does not have a license to practice law...therefore, he is NOT a lawyer.
I sure as hell would not want this lazy POS to be the only thing between me and the gallows.
It wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. It’s how I always spell it because it’s the truth.
It wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate. It’s how I always spell it because it’s the truth.
Citing the obvious one more time: the Constitution doesn’t mean squat to this administration or to this current government. They are under orders by the world’s elite power brokers to disarm America and they will proceed at all cost. In preparation of a hot conflict the government is already hording ammo to keep it from and to deplete the citizens stock. Once government confiscation of firearms begins and if history repeats and the 20 - 80 rule stands, where only 20% of the people will resist, the end results will be very ugly. Considering the mass propaganda tailored against the people’s Constitutional firearms rights, the False Flags (Newtown etc....) and the MSM demagoguery of citizen ownership of firearms, they are counting on a low resistance turn out and a rapid sweeping of the country.
Can we ignore Holder?
Tyrannis delenda est
YUCK !!!
§ 1890. The importance of this article will scarcely be doubted by any persons, who have duly reflected upon the subject. The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers (emphases added); and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights. --Joseph Story, Amendment II, Commentaries on the Constitution 3 Amendment II: Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution 3:§§ 1890--91"The second and tenth counts are equally defective. The right there specified is that of "bearing arms for a lawful purpose." This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow citizens of the rights it recognizes (emphasis added), to what is called, in The City of New York v. Miln, 11 Pet. 139, the "powers which relate to merely municipal legislation, or what was, perhaps, more properly called internal police," "not surrendered or restrained" by the Constitution of the United States." --United States v. Cruikshank, 1875.
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