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The Tenth Amendment--delegating all authority to the States not specifically Constitutinally authorized to the Federal government--has been ignored for years.

This is not insignificant. Schools, welfare, unemployment compensation, highway funding, and billions of other Federal program dollars would be found to be unConstitutional if the Tenth were used as a measure.

The Tenth Amendment--delegating all authority to the States not specifically Constitutinally authorized to the Federal government--has been ignored for years.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Hey Jim Rob, you are probably the best person I can think of to ask about this subject. You are an advocate of strictly following the Constitution. ;-)

If you look at Art. II of the Articles of Confederation, you see the following: Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Now look at Amendment X to the COTUS:The 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.

The word "expressly" (or as you put it, specifically) does not appear in the tenth. If "expressly" had been placed in the Constitution, the Necessary and Proper of Art. I, Sec. 8 would have been repealed, making the Constitution no better than the Articles (or so Federalists argued). Madison, who drafted the first 12 proposed Amendments (10 of which are the Bill of rights, 1 was never ratified, and the last is the 27th Amendment) was heavily critized for this, since the opposition to the Constitution and the supporters of a bill of rights knew that the Amendment was mostly fluff and did little to restrict the power of Congress. That didn't stop ratification, since they felt a little was better than nothing.

The great irony is that the new government under the Federalists was not what Madison envisioned, with the Washington/Adams/Hamilton government having far more power than he envisioned, exploiting the Necessary and Proper clause for anything they wanted. It wasn't until the Republicans (Jeffersonians) spilt off and gained power that Madison's vision was realized.