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The Tenth Amendment Resolution Campaign
The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:
“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 powers delegated to the Federal Government by the states and the people under the U.S. Constitution, for the most part, are as follows: 1. To collect taxes on imports and excise taxes on commodities of home production (Not on wages, salaries, or capital gains.) 2. To regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states and with the Indian tribes. 3. To establish a uniform rule of naturalization. 4. To coin money. 5. To establish Post Offices. 6. To grant copyrights and patents. 7. To constitute Federal Courts as needed (inferior to the Supreme Court.) 8. To declare war.
On November 22, 1994, thirty Republican Governors adopted the Williamsburg Resolve, which, in essence, said, “Federal action (the Federal Government) has exceeded the clear bounds of its jurisdiction (authority) under the Constitution and thus violated the Rights guaranteed to the People.” The United States Supreme Court has abandoned its constitutional role by allowing the Federal Government to unconstitutionally extend its rules and regulations into virtually every area of public and private life, clearly in violation of the Tenth Amendment.
If there are laws, (Tenth Amendment), to protect the rights of the states and the people, why hasn’t our judicial system punished those guilty of this unlawful action? Why didn’t the news media inform Americans of this criminal activity? (See “To Tame A Tyrant” by Walter L. Myers, 1997.)
In 1994, Sate Senator Charles Duke (CO) initiated the Tenth Amendment Resolution Campaign, which was to get as many state legislatures as possible to adopt a resolution informing the President, the Vice President, and the key leaders in Congress that their state is claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment and demanding that the Federal Government immediately end any mandates that are beyond the powers given to it by the Federal Constitution, with a copy to each state’s two U.S. Senators and all of their state’s congress members, plus a copy to the legislative leaders of the forty nine other states.
Beginning in 1994, the following states joined Colorado in passing a Tenth Amendment Resolution: California, Missouri, Hawaii and Illinois. Oklahoma passed the resolution in one house, and Resolutions were introduced in Ohio, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Seven other states; Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, New Mexico, Nevada, and Wyoming planned to introduce the Resolution when their Legislature next convened.
Unfortunately, the Tenth Amendment Resolution campaign has been in limbo until recently when Representative Charles Key (OK) reintroduced the Resolution in the lower house in Oklahoma and successfully got it passed again in that house by a lopsided vote of 92-3.
Now the Roundtable has undertaken a project to revitalize the Tenth Amendment Resolution campaign and get more states to pass the Resolution, with the understanding that the powers referred to in the Tenth Amendment are clearly based on powers set forth and defined in our Declaration of Independence and Preamble to the Constitution. We introduce the “Constitutional Ensign to the Nation” as a working instrument that graphically illustrates the principles that guided our Founding Fathers when they wrote our Constitution.
To provide some strength of enforcement to the Tenth Amendment Resolution, hopefully, some of the states that pass the Resolution will have an Attorney General who still remembers their oath of office and will have the courage to file a legal action against the Federal Government for their unlawful and unconstitutional violation of states’ rights. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 19 November 2008 ) |