[WhiskeyPapa]

What separates you from Non-Sequitur is the fact that he displays the characteristic known as intellectual honesty. You stated quite plainly in the thread "Bob Graham: Fold up Rebel Flag" - Reply No. 164 that you know of no prohibition against secession.

No explicit prohibition.

Who's being dishonest now?

Walt

[HenryLeeII]

Who's being dishonest? You, by offering a Clintonesque "what is 'is'" defense. You know as well as anyone that law is written, not just made up as we go along. You said you know of no explicit prohibition against withdrawal in reference to my challenge to produce one from the Constitution or Federal law. You admitted you could not. Therefore, if the Constitution and Federal law cannot be cited by you in this debate, then you have no standing.

Ask Non-Sequitur how I like to use the word explicit. Its very important in this debate for the following reason: The citizens of the sovereign nation-states elected representatives to attend a convention to fix the Articles of Confederation. The state representatives took it upon themselves to draft a new constitution and then present it to the citizens of each state for debate and approval. The U.S. Constitution, Article VII, required nine states' approval for ratification. Upon ratification, the states transferred enumerated powers to the new Federal government with the understanding that all powers not enumerated were to be reserved to themselves. A few years later that concept was codified in the Tenth Amendment.

No delegate presented an argument that once a state approves of the Constitution and enters the Union there is no withdrawal possible. To the contrary, the two largest and most powerful states, Virginia and New York, explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the Union if they feel such an action to be in their better interest. No disapproval of this reservation was offered by any Federal official or delegate.

The delegation of certain enumerated powers to the Federal government does not mean all powers, or those explicitly delegated plus others it wants to assume, but specifically those that are written explicitly in the Constitution. Your national bank argument that you like to use is irrelevent to this point because it is not taking a power away from a state, but is rather the logical extension of two or more delegated powers. This is the meaning of the "necessary and proper clause" in Article I Section 8.