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The Confederate Flag Two Minutes Hate has reached a new level of stupidity - Apple is removing all games that depict a Confederate flag. I haven't weighed in on the subject of the Confederate Flag issue since almost every conceivable angle on it has pretty much been written. I'm pretty much in the "It belongs in a museum" camp that a lot of conservatives have expressed. I do think that moves to ban its private ownership and scrub this flag from society are wrong, though. I understand all of the con arguments and think they have merit. Here is my take...

Southern Baptists pass resolution opposing gay marriage Arkansas Pastor Ronnie Floyd, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, gives the presidential address to the Southern Baptist Convention at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, in Columbus, Ohio, June 16, 2015. Floyd exhorted members to stand united against same-sex marriage and vows that he will never officiate a same-sex union. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution Tuesday, June 16, opposing gay marriage, reaffirming a long-standing position of the denomination. "The Southern Baptist Convention calls on Southern Baptists and all Christians of like-mindedness to stand firm on the Bible's witness on the private...

State nullification is the idea that the states can and must refuse to enforce unconstitutional federal laws. Says Who? Says Thomas Jefferson, among other distinguished Americans. His draft of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 first introduced the word “nullification” into American political life, and follow-up resolutions in 1799 employed Jefferson’s formulation that “nullification…is the rightful remedy” when the federal government reaches beyond its constitutional powers. In the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, James Madison said the states were “duty bound to resist” when the federal government violated the Constitution. But Jefferson didn’t invent the idea. Federalist supporters of the Constitution...

House Bill 2368, introduced by Republican Representative Bob Thorpe of Flagstaff, Arizona, was passed this Wednesday by the Arizona House. House Bill 2368 seeks to bar the state of Arizona from funding any executive orders issued by President Obama, or policy directives issued by the Department of Justice. According to the Arizona State Legislature website, the bill includes the following provisions: "1. Prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by...

Mr Douglas and Whitlow discuss how nullification might work to overcome usurpations by federal officials and agents after first examining the difficulties of reform through election or litigation.

In the previous installment of this series, I discussed the constitutional principle of the separation of powers as a check on the accumulation of government force into the hands of any one man or group of men. Now, I would like to discuss the other intended division of power – the principle of federalism that was engineered into our constitutional system. This principle should be – and would be, if we would use it effectively – an even more powerful deterrent to federal government overreach than even the separation of powers between the three branches of government at the federal...

Former Republican presidential candidate and congressman Ron Paul says secession is happening and it’s “good news.” Paul later predicted the states would stop listening to federal laws. “I would like to start off by talking about the subject and the subject is secession and, uh, nullification, the breaking up of government, and the good news is it’s gonna happen. It’s happening,” Paul, the father of potential Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul, told a gathering at the libertarian Mises Institute in late January. The event Paul was speaking at was titled “Breaking Away: The Case for Secession.” Paul said secession would...

Our Constitution has become a suicide pact.That’s the view of Thomas Jefferson, expressed in an 1819 letter to jurist Spencer Roane, when he said “If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se” (suicide pact). The opinion Jefferson referred to is the legitimacy of judicial review, the idea, as he put it, that “gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres.” He warned that accepting such a doctrine makes “the Judiciary...

A state-level bureaucrat is standing up to the the central government planners is a most unusual way. Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, Diane Douglas, has informed all school districts in the Grand Canyon State that they have blanket authority to ignore all federal nutrition mandates regulating school fundraisers. "Forcing parents and other supporters of schools to only offer federally approved food and snacks at fundraisers is a perfect example of the overreach of government and intrusion into local control," Douglas said in a statement. "I have ordered effective immediately, that the ADE Health and Nutrition Services division grant exemptions for...

State legislators around the country have introduced more than 200 bills aiming to nullify regulations and laws coming out of Washington, D.C., as they look to rein in the federal government. The legislative onslaught, which includes bills targeting federal restrictions on firearms, experimental treatments and hemp, reflects growing discord between the states and Washington, state officials say. “You have a choice,” said Kentucky state Rep. Diane St. Onge (R). “To sit back and not do anything or say anything and let overregulation continue — or you have the alternative choice to speak up about it and say, ‘We know what...

When the Tea Party wave arrived in 2010, it swept away much of the Republican Party's existing structure, and instituted a more populist approach. But as waves tend to do, it left some even older debris in its wake. "Nullification," the theory that states can invalidate federal laws that they deem unconstitutional, had its heyday in the slavery debate that preceded the Civil War, but it has found new currency since 2010. The theory has never been validated by a federal court, yet some Republican officeholders have suggested states can nullify laws, including Senator Joni Ernst, who gave the GOP...

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach. Proposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In 1798, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were signed into law by President John Adams. The A&S Acts comprised four bills that increased the federal government’s power to shut up dissenters; most noxious was a provision that permitted the prosecution of anyone who said anything about the government that the government considered “seditious.” Fourteen...

House Republicans will have their largest majority since the 1930s next year, but that doesn't mean Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) job will be easy.The House GOP leadership's struggles in keeping members in line over the past four years have been well documented. Some of the incoming freshmen will likely join the ranks of conservatives who frequently oppose leadership initiatives.Among the new freshmen, for instance, is one congressman-elect who has called Hillary Clinton the "anti-Christ," another who has suggested Muslims don't deserve First Amendment rights, and yet another who has declared himself open to the idea of the United States invading...

t’s a movement that’s been building in recent years: efforts by states to reclaim their constitutional authority by declaring Washington’s health care laws, gun control or other restrictions simply don’t apply within their boundaries. After all, the Constitution stipulates that, except for a couple of dozen specific issues such as national defense, the powers in the U.S. rest with the states. Now a new lawsuit contends states can regain their authority by returning to the practice of having state legislatures elect U.S. senators, as the Constitution originally required. The case is being brought by author, columnist, commentator and activist Devvy...

<p>WASHINGTON—Senate Democrats' effort to push back against the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision stalled Wednesday when their bill to restore employers' responsibility to provide contraception coverage under the health law was defeated on a procedural vote.</p> <p>In a 56-43 vote, which was largely along party lines, Democrats came up short of the 60 votes needed to advance their legislation. It sought to prevent companies from relying on a religious-freedom law to avoid complying with the Affordable Care Act's requirement to cover all forms of contraception approved by the government without charging workers a copayment.</p>

Madison: "Should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in...

Advocates of jury nullification did their best to improve a bill expanding a jury’s ability to nullify laws, but the bill won’t be making it to a vote this session. House Bill 316, a bill by North Pole Republican Rep. Tammie Wilson, would expand and protect a jury’s right to judge the merits of a law, not just the facts before them, in a criminal case. The bill would allow defendants to argue their case based merits of the law, encouraging jurors to find them not guilty even in cases where evidence shows otherwise. It also would bar judges from...

Tuesday, 25 March 2014 16:35 Declaring an Emergency, Idaho Governor Signs Gun Grab Nullification Written by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. On Wednesday, March 19, Idaho Governor Butch Otter signed a powerful protection against the federal gun grab into law in the Gem State.The bill, SB 1332, came to Otter’s desk after being passed unanimously (with three abstentions) by the state House and Senate.The published purpose of SB 1332, the Idaho Federal Firearm, Magazine and Register Ban Enforcement Act, makes clear the intent of state lawmakers:This legislation is to protect Idaho law enforcement officers from being directed, through federal orders, laws,...

Surprise! The individual mandate has been watered down by the White House to the point that it barely exists at all. That's the conclusion of a piece at Politico which confirms what many conservatives were saying about the mandate two weeks ago. Titled "Honey, I shrunk the mandate," the piece highlights exemption 14, which was added to the list of possible hardship exemptions in December. It notes that under exemption 14 practically anyone can claim a hardship exemption and documentation is requested "if possible." In other words, documentation is optional. While the Politico piece accurately frames these exemptions to the...

With the campus carry bill that Governor Otter just signed into law taking up all the oxygen in Idaho, few were paying attention to the effective nullification bill that is now going to the Governor's desk. SB1332  is effective nullification of federal gun confiscation.  It unanimously passed the senate and the house!  The bill is likely to be signed by Governor Otter.  It effects legislation, executive orders, or other federal actions that take place after it goes into effect, and unlike other attempts at nullification law, it does not prescribe penalties for federal officers, only for state and local...