[4CJ]

If New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia were so insistant that they could seceede, maybe they should have got it written in the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND.

'This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.'

Federal laws pursuant to the Constitution have legal status - please cite one prohibiting secession. Cite one requiring states to petition for permission to leave.

The 10th Amendment - a part of the Constitution,states, '[t]he 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.'

There is no delegtion from the states to the federal government to bar secession, nor are the states prohibited from leaving. It looks like it is written into the Supreme law of the land.

[hirn_man]

There you go again with you mystical power of secession.

It is a power that only exists in the fevered minds of secessionists.

Much like when Saddam Hussein declared the laws of gravity inoperable in Iraq.

[hirn_man]

My take on the 10th amendment was it is a safegaurd against intrusion by the Feds into state matters which the Fed had no business interfering in. It wasn't a license for the states to destroy the nation.