[El Gato]

Looks to me like you should have lined out the 9th and 10th amendments also. When was the last time the Supreme Court upheld an unenumerated right? The Court has paid some attention of late to the 10th amendment, but the rest of the federal government just pretends it doesn't exit. It must be lined out in their copy I guess.

[Bump in the night]

Tenth should definatley be lined out.

[Wolfstar]

The states are to blame as well. In fact, they are more to blame than the federal government, which is predictably doing what all central governments have done since the beginning of human civilization, increasing its power exponentially. Since the Civil War, the states have continually ceded their sovereignty to the federal government. Today, the states are little more than subdivisions of the federal government, much like counties are subdivisions of states.

The states increasingly suck on and are dependent on the federal tit for all sorts of things — things they should be deciding for and providing to their own people. They have forgotten their own history as one-time independent nations or territories, and have forgotten that the federal system is a compact — an agreement — between the states. In neglecting their own sovereign prerogatives and ceding so much of their power to the federal entity, they have destroyed the most significant check on federal power, states rights.

Theoretically, the Civil War settled the question of secession. But the states have acted more like the War not only made it impossible for them to secede, but also made them SUBSERVIENT to the federal government, rather than the other way around. There are numerous delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention who never would have signed the Constitution, and many of the 13 original states which never would have ratified it, had they been able to foresee such a turn of events.