How can you make such a statement about States Rights... with the sting of hurt still fresh from THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE IN CALIFORNIA being crushed by a SCOTUS that told Citizens of California... Citizens that fought for and paid for a ballot initiative to outlaw gay marriage via the State Constitution... that they... the people that are governed by the State of California via their Consent... that they DO NOT HAVE STANDING to bring a lawsuit to defend that which they had voted into law under that State's Constitution? We shall see if the iron boot of the Federal government stomps on our necks when we institute State Wide voter ID. My bet is that holder will decree his will in violation of our Constitution and he will get away with it. Your philosophy of “limited violation of the Constitution” being ok because all Presidents have done it... is the very same thought process that has allowed the left to destroy much of American Society through decades of Incremental-ism. Your thinking is stuck in the last Century.
LLS
States don’t have rights - they have powers.
I’ve always been ambivalent about initiatives. They tend to veer uncomfortably close to pure the democracy favored by the left than to representative republicanism. That said I fell on the side of the proponents of Prop 8 and was sorry to see it gutted by the 9th circus court.
But remember, all SCOTUS said was that the plaintiffs did not have standing to argue the case before the bench - they did not rule on the merits of Prop 8 or homo marriage itself. The only ones who had standing to pursue the case was governor moonbeam or the state AG.
Would you have preferred that they came to the “right” result but at the expense of the rule of law?