Go UTAH! :-)
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Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments established by compact should not be changed for light or transient causes; but should a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evince a design in any one of the confederates to usurp a dominion over the rest; or, if those who are entrusted to administer the government, which the confederates have for their mutual convenience established, should manifest a design to invade their sovereignty, and extend their own power beyond the terms of compact, to the detriment of the states respectively, and to reduce them to a state of obedience, and finally to establish themselves in a state of permanent superiority, it then becomes not only the right, but the duty of the states respectively, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.[60]
View of the Constitution of the United States / Preliminary Remarks / Section XIII
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From St. George Tucker, Northwestern University Law Review
Largely forgotten today, Tucker returned to some legal prominence last Term, when the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller cited his annotated Blackstone’s Commentaries as proof that the Second Amendment had originally been understood as an individual right to arms.
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Tucker's View of the Constitution is part of his annotated Blackstone's Commentaries written in 1803.
I encourage anyone who is interested in original intent to read it. It was a booklet distributed at the request of and with the approval of Congress specifically to explain the newly created Constitution to the People.
“And 20 years later we always look back and agree that conservation was a wise idea.”
What you mean “We”, CommieBoy?
I could swear the federal government was prohibited from owning lands outside of DC. How the Hell does it own significant portions of the West?
Good move.
how can a state be sovereign if it is 60 percent ‘owned’ by the fed ???
I think that it is too early to discuss who our candidate will be in 2012. I think that it is potentially divisive and definitely unproductive to do so at this time. It makes Sarah Palin or other candidates more of a lightening rod than they are already. We don’t need any infighting in during the run-up to the 2010 elections. Let’s concentrate on getting that job done before we start thinking about 2012.
Applauding Gov. Gary R. Herbert for taking a stand.
As stated by Justice Field in Escanaba & Lake Michigan Transp. Co. v. City of Chicago, 107 U.S. 678 (1883):
“...although the act of April 18, 1818, enabling the people of Illinois territory to form a constitution and state government, and the act of August 26th, following, admitting the state into the Union, refer to the principles of the [Northwest] ordinance according to which the constitution was to be formed,-its provisions could not control the authority and powers of the state after her admission. Whatever the limitation upon her powers as a government while in a territorial condition, whether from the ordinance of 1787 or the legislation of congress, it ceased to have any operative force, except as voluntarily adopted by her after she became a state of the Union. On her admission she at once became entitled to and possessed of all the rights of dominion and sovereignty which belonged to the original states. She was admitted, and could be admitted, only on the same footing with them. The language of the act of admission is, ‘on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever.’ 3 St. 536. Equality of constitutional right and power is the condition of all the states of the Union, old and new....”
Coyle v. Smith, 221 U.S. 559 (1911):
“...terms and conditions... in enabling acts, by which the new state disclaimed title to the public lands, and stipulated that such lands should remain subject to the sole disposition of the United States, and for their exemption from taxation, and that its navigable waters should forever remain open and free, etc. Such stipulations, as we shall see, being within the sphere of congressional power, can derive no force from the consent of the state. Like stipulations, as well as others in respect to the control of the United States of the large Indian reservations and Indian population of the new state, are found in the Oklahoma enabling acts. Whatever force such provisions have after the admission of the state may be attributed to the power of Congress over the subjects, derived from other provisions of the Constitution, rather than from any consent by or compact with the state.
“So far as this court has found occasion to advert to the effect of enabling acts as affirmative legislation affecting the power of new states after admission, there is to be found no sanction for the contention that any state may be deprived of any of the power constitutionally possessed by other states, as states, by reason of the terms in which the acts admitting them to the Union have been framed.”
...”It may well happen that Congress should embrace in an enactment introducing a new state into the Union legislation intended as a regulation of commerce among the states, or with Indian tribes situated within the limits of such new state, or regulations touching the sole care and disposition of the public lands or reservations therein, which might be upheld as legislation within the sphere of the plain power of Congress. But in every such case such legislation would derive its force not from any agreement or compact with the proposed new state, nor by reason of its acceptance of such enactment as a term of admission, but solely because the power of Congress extended to the subject, and therefore would not operate to restrict the state’s legislative power in respect of any matter which was not plainly within the regulating power of Congress. Willamette Iron Bridge Co. v. Hatch, 125 U.S. 1, 9, 31 S. L. ed. 629, 632, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 811; Pollard v. Hagan, supra.”
it is worthwhile to remind Americans of just how massive the Federal government already was before our current woes began. There are few more striking measures of the government’s size than the land mass of the Federal estate. The vast majority of federal lands fall within one of four agencies: the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture’s US Forest Service. At over 258 million acres, the Bureau of Land Management alone is bigger than France and Germany combined. When combined with the other aforementioned agencies, the land area is equal that of ten European nations as shown in the accompanying graph (click it to see a larger version).
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/11/19/a-leviathan-of-land-perspective-on-the-size-of-the-us-govt-in-pictures/
If this goes to the Supreme Court -- and I sense that it will -- we will enjoy the legal drama of whether Anthony Kennedy will vote against himself.
Suck it, fedgov.