With General government at the state level and limited federal government at the national level, we had the right mix to keep government responsible.
We see in Arizona an attempt to force the Federal Government to focus on the sphere it was intended to properly deal with in its laws and functions.
Almost from the first, at least by Madison's term as President, the expansion of the reach of the Federal Government was being dealt with by the members of the government. It soon became so complicated and factious that the Supreme Court staked out the issues of Constitutionality as their own — much to our regret today.
Why do I say “regret”? With the SC in total control of the issue, Congress and the Executive have given up on it as an area of their control and have for a hundred years considered themselves a General government instead of a limited government. They say, the Court will tell us where we go too far.
Mixed sovereignty was right — emasculated states are now the norm.
If you click on the link to the John DeWitt #2 thread at #1, you’ll find an essay discussing the Living Constitution. The essay goes back to Washingotn’s first term and the issue that started the whole thing — the National Bank.
Isn’t this also the fault of the states, in part for allowing their own soveriegnity at the federal level to be removed, and for choosing poorly on the occasions when some states did stand up to the feds and say no?
We are now seeing some of the states alter their laws in manners designed to tell the federal government that it is beyond its boundaries. We see it with abortion laws, which hasn’t worked very well. We see it with state firearm acts, which also threatens very little. Arizone lit the most powerful fuse with its immigration law, and 0bama even admits that they did it because the feds have abrogated their responsibility.
Probably this will go nowhere, although the Arizona immigration law has some potential to survive challenges and affect at least the people who (legally) live in that state. In many cases, telling the feds to go to hell results in the loss of massive amounts of funding, and the state can’t refuse to pay the feds on some other grounds in order to cover the loss. That noose is very tight.
One potential way to affect the feds is to affect their ability to enforce the laws they’ve enacted. Did you know that your state has an exemption in its gun laws for federal cops? What if a state took that away? Suddenly, a machine gun toting team of feds is breaking the laws of state X, and very serious laws at that. Felony charges, even, regardless of their mission.
It might be possible to mount a constitutional challenge to extradition. Does a federal arrest violate extradition from a state? Can the state refuse to extradite to the federal court? Although this seems to be an opportunity for criminals to run free, remember that Arizona can also take its federal fugitives and send them to southern California, where the feds can go find them in the future. I hope some lawyer can answer this question.