To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

When James Madison wrote about the clause in Federalist No. 44, it was clear that the Founders viewed the clause as merely granting Congress the authority it needed to carry out the powers set forth in remainder of Section 8:

The remaining particulars of this clause fall within reasonings which are either so obvious, or have been so fully developed, that they may be passed over without remark. The SIXTH and last class consists of the several powers and provisions by which efficacy is given to all the rest. 1. Of these the first is, the “power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. “Few parts of the Constitution have been assailed with more intemperance than this; yet on a fair investigation of it, no part can appear more completely invulnerable. Without the SUBSTANCE of this power, the whole Constitution would be a dead letter.\

(…)

If it be asked what is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part of the Constitution, and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer, the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them; as if the general power had been reduced to particulars, and any one of these were to be violated; the same, in short, as if the State legislatures should violate the irrespective constitutional authorities. In the first instance, the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in the last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people who can, by the election of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers.

The reality of just how flexible the clause was, though, became apparent only thirty-one years later when the Supreme Court handed down it’s decision in McCullouch v. Maryland:

McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The state of Maryland had attempted to impede operation of a branch of the Second Bank of the United States by imposing a tax on all notes of banks not chartered in Maryland. Though the law, by its language, was generally applicable, the U.S. Bank was the only out-of-state bank then existing in Maryland, and the law is generally recognized as having specifically targeted the U.S. Bank. The Court invoked the Necessary and Proper Clause in the Constitution, which allowed the Federal government to pass laws not expressly provided for in the Constitution’s list of express powers as long as those laws are in useful furtherance of the express powers.

This fundamental case established the following two principles:

1. The Constitution grants to Congress implied powers for implementing the Constitution’s express powers, in order to create a functional national government.
2. State action may not impede valid constitutional exercises of power by the Federal government.

The opinion was written by Chief Justice John Marshall.

It was the first example of a Constitutional clause being used to read into the Constitution increased powers for Congress beyond those set forth in the text of the document, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Now, it appears that the Supreme Court may have the opportunity to rein in the damage the McCulloch did:

In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. One provision of the law authorizes the federal government to civilly commit anyone in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons whom the attorney general certifies to be “sexually dangerous.” The effect of such an action is to continue the certified person’s confinement after the expiration of his prison term, without proof of a new criminal violation.

Six days before the scheduled release of Graydon Comstock — who had been sentenced to 37 months in jail for receiving child pornography — the attorney general certified Comstock as sexually dangerous. Three years later, Comstock thus remains confined in a medium security prison, as do more than 60 other similarly situated men in the Eastern District of North Carolina alone.

Comstock and several others challenged their confinements as going beyond Congress’s constitutional authority and won in both the district and appellate courts. The United States successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case.

Cato, joined by Georgetown law professor (and Cato senior fellow) Randy Barnett, filed a brief opposing the government. We argue that the use of federal power here is unconstitutional because it is not tied to any of Congress’s limited and enumerated powers. The government’s reliance on the Necessary and Proper Clause of Article I, Section 8, is misplaced because that clause grants no independent power but merely “carries into execution” the powers enumerated elsewhere in that section. The commitment of prisoners after their terms simply is not one of the enumerated powers.

While the government justifies its actions by invoking its implied power “to establish a federal penal system” — itself a necessary and proper auxiliary to certain enumerated powers — civil commitment is unrelated to creating or maintaining a penal system (let alone any enumerated power). Nor can the law at issue fall under the Commerce Clause, because civil commitment involves non-economic intrastate activity.

Here’ s hoping that the Court takes this one, admittedly small, step toward reining in an out-of-control Federal Government.

The whole interview is worth listening to.

Over the past 30 years, America has seen Presidential scandals ranging from Watergate to Iran-Contra to Travel-gate, Whitewater, the Lewinsky scandal, and the Valerie Plame affair. We’ve learned the truth about some of the truly nefarious actions undertaken by some of most beloved Presidents of the 20th Century, including the iconic FDR, JFK, and LBJ. And, yet, despite all of that, Americans still have a reverential view of the President of the United States that borders on the way Englishmen feel about the Queen or Catholic’s feel about the Pope.

How did that happen and what does it mean for America ?

Gene Healy does an excellent job of answering those question in The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, making it a book that anyone concerned with the direction of the American Republic should read.

As Healy points out, the Presidency that we know today bears almost no resemblance to the institution that the Founding Fathers created when they drafted Article II of the Constitution. In fact, to them, the President’s main job could be summed up in ten words set forth in Section 3 of Article II:

he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,

The President’s other powers consisted of reporting the state of the union to Congress (a far less formal occasion than what we’re used to every January), receiving Ambassadors, and acting as Commander in Chief should Congress declare war. That’s it.

For roughly the first 100 years of the Republic, Healy notes, President’s kept to the limited role that the Constitution gave them. There were exceptions, of course; most notably Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War but also such Presidents as James Polk who clearly manipulated the United States into an unnecessary war with Mexico simply to satisfy his ambitions for territorial expansion. For the most part, though, America’s 19th Century Presidents held to the limited role that is set forth in Article II, which is probably why they aren’t remembered very well by history.

As Healy notes, it wasn’t until the early 20th Century and the dawn of the Progressive Era that the idea of the President as something beyond what the Constitution said he was took forth. Healy documents quite nicely the ways in which Presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to FDR went far beyond anything resembling Constitutional boundaries to achieve their goals, and how they were aided and abetted in that effort by a compliant Supreme Court and a Congress that lacked the courage to stand up for it’s own Constitutional prerogatives. Then with the Cold War and the rise of National Security State, the powers of the Presidency became even more enhanced.

One of the best parts of the book, though, is when Healy attacks head-on the “unitary Executive” theory of Presidential power that was advanced by former DOJ official John Yoo in the wake of the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror. As Healy shows, there is no support for Yoo’s argument that the Founders intended for the President to have powers akin to, or even greater than, those of the British Monarch that they had just spent seven years fighting a war to liberate themselves from. The dangers of Yoo’s theories to American liberty and the separation of powers cannot be understated.

If the book has one weakness, it’s in the final chapter where Healy addresses only in passing reforms that could be implemented to restrain the Cult Of the Presidency. I don’t blame Healy for only giving this part of the book passing attention, though, because what this book really shows us is that no matter of written law can stop power from being aggregated in a single person if that’s what the people want and, to a large extent, we’ve gotten the Presidency we deserve.

Healy’s closing paragraph bears reproducing:

“Perhaps, with wisdom born of experience, we can come once again to value a government that promises less, but delivers far more of what it promises. Perhaps we can learn to look elsewhere for heroes. But if we must look to the Presidency for heroism, we ought to learn once again to appreciate a quieter sort of valor. True political heroism rarely pounds its chest or pounds the pulpit, preaching rainbows and uplift, and promising to redeem the world through military force. A truly heroic president is one who appreciates the virtues of restraint — who is bold enough to act when action is necessary yet wise enough, humble enough to refuse powers he ought not have. That is the sort of presidency we need, now more than ever.

And we won’t get that kind of presidency until we demand it.”

And, if we don’t demand it we will find ourselves living in a country where the only difference between President and King is merely the title.

More important, there is something fundamentally authoritarian about the tenther constitution. Social Security, Medicare, and health-care reform are all wildly popular, yet the tenther constitution would shackle our democracy and forbid Congress from enacting the same policies that the American people elected them to advance. After years of raging against mythical judges who “legislate from the bench,” tenther conservatives now demand a constitution that will not let anyone legislate at all.

Huh… So by not wanting a hugely powerful federal government regulating and monitoring every aspect of my life, I’m an authoritarian?

I guess if Ian Millhiser would call himself anti-authoritarian — which I would guess he does — he’ll support letting us “tenthers” opt out of these government programs for which we disagree? After all, we don’t want to impede his ability to have the government he wants, as long as we don’t have to have the government he wants too.

Hat Tip: Popehat

The Supreme Court construes the commerce power broadly. In the most recent Commerce Clause case, Gonzales v. Raich (2005) , the court ruled that Congress can even regulate the cultivation of marijuana for personal use so long as there is a rational basis to believe that such “activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce.”

But there are important limits. In United States v. Lopez (1995), for example, the Court invalidated the Gun Free School Zones Act because that law made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school. It did not “regulate any economic activity and did not contain any requirement that the possession of a gun have any connection to past interstate activity or a predictable impact on future commercial activity.” Of course, a health-care mandate would not regulate any “activity,” such as employment or growing pot in the bathroom, at all. Simply being an American would trigger it.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution sets forth Congresses commerce power:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Strictly construed the Commerce Clause would not seem to be that broad of a grant of power. After all, the chief ill that it was aimed at was to allow goods and business to flow easily between the respective states, something that was not possible under the Articles of Confederation. However, the Supreme Court has interpreted the clause so loosely that it has gone far beyond the point where it actually imposed any limits on Congressional authority. For example, in 1942, in Wickard v. Filburn, the Supreme Court ruled that a farmer who grew wheat on his own land for his own consumption affected interstate commerce and was therefore subject to the regulations of Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Once that happened, the door was open to allow Congress to use the Commerce Clause to justify extensions of Federal power into areas that the Founding Fathers would never have conceived it would be exercised.

The post-Wickard history of the Commerce Clause has been one of expanding federal power and increasing regulation of activities that have only a tangential relationship to interstate commerce. But there have been some bright spots recently.

As the article notes, in 1995, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Lopez that the commerce clause could not be used to justify a Federal Law that made it a crime to carry a gun with a certain distance from a school. In 1996, it ruled in Seminole Tribe v. Florida, that the Commerce Clause did not give the Federal Government the right to abrogate the soverign immunity of the state. And, most notably, in a dissent in Gonzalez v. Raich, the 2005 case that upheld the supremacy of Federal drug laws over state medical marijuana laws, Justice Thomas said the following:

Respondent’s local cultivation and consumption of marijuana is not “Commerce … among the several States.”

Certainly no evidence from the founding suggests that “commerce” included the mere possession of a good or some personal activity that did not involve trade or exchange for value. In the early days of the Republic, it would have been unthinkable that Congress could prohibit the local cultivation, possession, and consumption of marijuana.

Given this trend, the a Constitutional challenge to an individual mandate would seem to be a potentially successful argument. However, as Eugene Volokh pointed out in a post responding to the original WaPo article, that isn’t necessarily the case:

As much as I oppose the various health care reforms promoted by the Obama Administration and current Congressional leadership (and as much as I would like to see a more restrictive commerce clause jurisprudence), I do not find this argument particularly convincing. While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of “commerce” as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

At best then, this would seem to be a very close call and, given almost 200 years of Supreme Court precedent it seems unlikely that a Court would overturn something as far reaching as a health care reform plan — although as the National Recovery Administration learned in 1935, it’s not impossible.

Two Hundred Twenty Two years ago in Philadelphia, the Constitution Convention in Philadelphia completed it’s work.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powel anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, asked him directly: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic if you can keep it” responded Franklin.

222 years later, Mrs. Powell’s question, and Franklin’s response, remain undecided.

Do yourself a favor — read The Constitution, and then ask whether we’re still following it the way the Founders intended, and whether we’re going to be able to keep the Republic that Franklin was talking about.

A president has no power to raise or lower taxes. He can propose tax measures or veto them, but since Congress can ignore presidential proposals and override a presidential veto, it has the ultimate taxing power.

The same principle applies to spending. A president cannot spend a dime that Congress does not first appropriate. As such, presidents cannot be held responsible for budget deficits or surpluses. That means that credit for a budget surplus or blame for budget deficits rests on the congressional majority at the time.

Thinking about today’s massive deficits, we might ask: Where in the U.S. Constitution is Congress given the authority to do anything about the economy?

Or, more specifically, where is the Federal Government given the authority to bailout private lending institutions, bailout failing auto companies, and take over the health care industries ?

I’ve searched high and low in Article I, Section 8 and I sure as heck can’t find it.

Of course, I’m probably not using the modern translation.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson testified on Thursday that he pressured Bank of America Corp. last year to go through with its plans to buy Merrill Lynch but didn’t tell the bank’s chief to hide potential losses from shareholders.

Paulson acknowledged that he warned the bank’s CEO, Kenneth Lewis, that Lewis could lose his job if he dropped the deal. Paulson also said he pledged government aid to the bank but declined to put that promise in writing because the details would have been vague and would have to be disclosed publicly by the Treasury Department.

…

In testimony to the committee, Paulson said he told Lewis last year that reneging on his promise to purchase Merrill Lynch would show a “colossal lack of judgment.”

Paulson said that “under such circumstances,” the Federal Reserve would be justified in removing management at the bank.

“By referring to the Federal Reserve’s supervisory powers, I intended to deliver a strong message reinforcing the view that had been consistently expressed by the Federal Reserve, as Bank of America’s regulator, and shared by the Treasury, that it would be unthinkable for Bank of America to take this destructive action for which there was no reasonable legal basis and which would show a lack of judgment,” Paulson said.

Paulson said he believed his remarks to Lewis were “appropriate.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has denied threatening to oust Lewis and said he never told anyone else to, either. But another Fed official suggested otherwise in an e-mail obtained by House investigators.

Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Richmond Federal Reserve Bank, said in a December 2008 e-mail that Bernanke had planned to make “even more clear” that if Bank of America backed out on the deal, “management is gone.”

Paulson said Bernanke never asked him to relay the message. But, he added, he believed he was expressing the Fed’s opinion that dropping the deal “would raise serious questions about the competence and judgment of Bank of America’s management and board.”

I’ve previously covered this type of activity by Paulson & Bernanke here and here.

While I’m not happy that Mr. Lynch is doing time for legally dispensing marijuana under California’s compassionate use law, he certainly could have received a much harsher sentence (up to 100 years). U.S. District Judge George Wu should be commended for finding an exception to the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence and reducing it to a relatively reasonable sentence of 1 year. That’s probably the best he could do under the circumstances.

There is however, one person who can correct this injustice perpetrated by the Bush Justice Department: President Obama. I urge all those who support the Tenth Amendment to join me in calling on President Obama to pardon Charles Lynch. Federalism is a much larger principle in this case than medical marijuana or even the war on (some) drugs. The State of California (whether one agrees or not with using marijuana for medicinal purposes), passed a law the federal government did not like. This law does not violate the U.S. Constitution and is, therefore, beyond the reach of the federal government according to the Tenth Amendment.*

Furthermore, President Obama and his Attorney General Holder have both said on several occasions that the federal raids on these dispensaries would end provided the operators are not violating both state and federal law. A full pardon of Charles Lynch would go a long way toward reversing a bad policy from the previous administration.

*At least that’s my lay reading of it.

In response to an unprecedented expansion of federal power, citizens have held hundreds of “tea party” rallies around the country, and various states are considering “sovereignty resolutions” invoking the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For example, Michigan’s proposal urges “the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States.”

While well-intentioned, such symbolic resolutions are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts, which long ago adopted a virtually unlimited construction of Congressional power. But state legislatures have a real power under the Constitution by which to resist the growth of federal power: They can petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.

Article V provides that, “on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states,” Congress “shall call a convention for proposing amendments.” Before becoming law, any amendments produced by such a convention would then need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

An amendments convention is feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance. The convention convened by Congress to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation produced instead the entirely different Constitution under which we now live. Yet it is precisely the fear of a runaway convention that states can exploit to bring Congress to heel.

In essence, Barnett argues that states can use the threat of a Constitutional Convention to force Congress to propose an Amendment to the states for ratification. This method worked to some effect in the early part of the 20th Century when Congress finally acted on what became the 17th Amendment after thirty-one states had passed resolutions calling for a Constitutional Convention to consider such an Amendment. Barnett contends that it could work again.

While the specific text of Barnett’s proposed Amendments, which you can find in the article linked above, is interesting and worthy of further discussion, I think there are several problems with his proposal.

First, his suggestion that the states play a game of Constitutional “chicken” with Congress by issuing a call for a Constitutional Convention raises all of the objections to that route that Brad and I noted nearly three years ago. Namely, this:

America was fortunate in 1787 in that we had men like Madison, and Hamilton, and Washington, and Franklin who produced a document that, to this day stands as the blueprint for the best system of government yet devised. I shudder to think what would happen if a Convention were called and populated by the likes of Schumer, Pelosi, Frist, Reid, Specter, and Kennedy.

And that’s precisely what could happen under Barnett’s proposal. What if, instead of caving in to the states on a Federalism Amendment, Congress decides to call their bluff and let a Convention go forward ? Does anyone really think that the end result of such a convention would come even close to what Barnett is suggesting ? I don’t, and I don’t want to take that risk.

The other problem with Barnett’s proposal is pointed out by his Volokh Conspiracy co-blogger Ilya Somin:

I am far less optimistic than he is about the likelihood that state governments will support such a massive reduction in federal power. Randy writes that “States have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making this Federalism Amendment the focus of their resistance to the shrinking of their reserved powers and infringements upon the rights retained by the people.” In reality, however, many state governments have a great deal to lose because they receive massive quantities of federal subsidies (equivalent to some 20-30% of their total budgets; see Table B-86 here) that would mostly be cut off by Section 3 of Randy’s proposed amendment. The states got some $450 billion in federal funding in 2008, and are likely to get even more this year. Right now, most states are very happy to take federal stimulus money, and many would like to get even more. State governments also often support federal regulation of private activity. John McGinnis and I discuss the reasons why state governments often favor broad federal authority in greater detail in this article. If the states really did have “nothing to lose” from imposing tight constraints on federal power, they probably would not have allowed the latter to grow to its current bloated size in the first place.

You need to look no further for evidence in support of Somin’s argument than the news coverage of Governors, Mayors, and other local officials who paraded to Washington in the weeks after Obama’s Inauguration to ensure that they got their piece of the stimulus pie. For the most part, these local and state leaders want federal money because, without it, their citizens would have to bear to full cost of all those state programs they’ve implemented — and that would lead to fiscal, and political, disaster for the powers that be.

As Somin notes, Barnett may have a point that a Federalism Amendment may have the salutary effect of giving the tea party movement something to rally around that is more productive than just “hate Obama” and “vote for Republicans,” but as a practical suggestion it seems to be sorely lacking.

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. – Amendment X – Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) in his support of HCR 50, a resolution reaffirming Texas’ Tenth Amendment rights has reinvigorated not only the debate over state’s rights but also the ultimate “nuclear” option of a state’s right to secede from the U.S.

On April 9th, Gov. Perry explained his reasoning behind supporting the resolution.

Gov. Rick Perry’s Tenth Amendment Stance: Principle?

Gov. Perry, speaking at a Tea Party event on April 15th went a step further telling the crowd that the day could come where Texas could decide to secede.

“We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.”

Christy Hoppe, writing for The Dallas Morning News, calls the notion that Texas has a right to secede a “mythology.”

“The fact is, the treaty under which Texas joined the U.S. provides that it could be divided into five separate states. But it is not empowered to leave the union, a question that the Civil War seems to have settled once and for all.”

Left leaning blogs such as Texas Liberal also agree that the question of secession was “settled” with the Civil War and goes even further stating that Gov. Perry’s statements are “treasonous.”

On further inspection, the idea that individuals on the Left would call the question of secession settled should not be surprising at all. When taken to its ultimate conclusion, the philosophy of the Left is “might makes right.” If a majority of people can be convinced they have the right to pick the pockets of a minority of taxpayers, for example, then by all means. In their collectivist world view, “the majority rules;” individual rights must always take a back seat to the will of the majority.

The question of secession was by no means “settled” by the Civil War (or the War Between the States if you prefer), at least not in a sense which recognized the rule of law. Abraham Lincoln made a choice between upholding the U.S. Constitution and preserving the Union. With his suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and other civil liberties we normally take for granted, Lincoln chose the latter*. The state’s rights issue was “settled” from the barrel of a gun in a period of U.S. history we now call “Reconstruction.”

Beyond this “settled history” argument, it seems to me that if the federal government violates the Tenth Amendment and ignores the sovereignty of the states, it stands to reason that the states can ignore the dictates of the federal government (which is really all Gov. Perry is trying to do). The Tenth Amendment was a guarantee to those who were concerned about states losing sovereignty to a stronger federal government. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that they had secured their independence form Great Britain, why would they want to surrender sovereignty to a new authority?

Over time, the Tenth Amendment was ignored by the courts and the congress. The aftermath of the Civil War practically changed the term “The United States” from an “are” to an “is.” And with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, the states lost the ability to be represented at the federal level. For all practical purposes, the “United States of America” could be more accurately referred to as “The United State of America.”

These facts of history do not make the notion of either state’s rights or secession “mythology” by any means. The Declaration of Independence makes the case for “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…” Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” makes a similar case as does John Locke in his “Two Treatises of Government.” There is no shortage of political theory which supports Gov. Perry’s claim that states (and people for that matter) have the right to seek self determination and dissolve or separate themselves from oppressive government.

Gov. Rick Perry’s Tenth Amendment Stance: Political Pandering?

Gov. Perry’s sudden concern for state’s rights does have me wondering about his motives. As I’ve pointed out above, this erosion of Tenth Amendment rights has been happening since before the text of the amendment’s ink dried. The federal government did not just start undermining state sovereignty when Barack Obama was sworn into office on January 20, 2009.

I can’t help but wonder how concerned Gov. Perry was when his predecessor, George W. Bush, moved from the Texas Governor’s Mansion and into the White House imposing unfunded federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind? On what side of the state’s rights debate did Gov. Perry fall when the Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department argued successfully before the Supreme Court that Angel Raich could not use marijuana for her medical conditions pursuant to California law on the theory of interstate commerce**?

Some of Perry’s critics believe that his sudden Tenth Amendment convictions have more to do with political pandering than principle (and they may have a point). Gov. Perry is looking to face Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican Primary Governor’s race. What better way to win support than to promote state’s rights at a Tea Party event? Who knows, perhaps with all of the state’s rights and small government rhetoric he’s espousing, small government minded Texans will forget about his executive orders forcing 11 year-old girls to receive HPV vaccinations?

While it is great to hear someone of Gov. Perry’s stature stating that there are limits to federal power, it would be a lot easier for me to accept as genuine if it wasn’t his party that was out of power in Washington.

*This is not to say that slavery should have remained legal by any stretch. It should be noted that Lincoln’s main objective was preserving the Union, not ending slavery.

** Marijuana that she cultivated and used herself and provided to no one else. I still fail to see how this constitutes “interstate commerce.”

A federal appeals court rejected the Obama administration’s attempt Friday to stop a judge in San Francisco from reviewing a challenge to the wiretapping program ordered by former President George W. Bush.

Hours later, President Obama’s Justice Department filed papers that appeared to defy the judge’s order to allow lawyers for an Islamic organization to see a classified surveillance document at the heart of the case. The department said the judge had no power to enforce such an order.

As Glenn Greenwald notes, in doing so the Obama Administration is adopting the same legal arguments that the Bush Administration was criticized for:

[The Obama Administration is arguing that] there is only one branch with the power to decide if these documents can be used in this Article III court proceeding: The Executive. What the President decides is final. His decision is unreviewable. It’s beyond the reach of the law. No court has the authority to second-guess it or to direct the President to comply with a disclosure order. That’s the mentality — and even the language — drawn directly from the earliest Yoo Memorandum that created the theoretical foundation for what would be the omnipotent presidency:

Neither statute, however, can place any limits on the President’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make.

In the context in which Obama is now invoking this theory, think about what it means: if, as happened here, the President breaks the law, then he can just label the relevant evidence “classified” and refuse to turn it over to a court which is attempting to rule on the legality of the President’s actions. Once the President decrees that a court is barred from reviewing the relevant evidence because the President claims it is “classified,” that’s the end of that. It’s irrelevant that courts rule that the documents should be usable or even that Congress has created all sorts of mechanisms to enable federal courts to use classified information in judicial proceedings

Apparently, it’s okay now that a Democrat is doing it.

Change we can believe in !

H/T: The Crossed Pond

Rather, I’d argue that the central question is “legitimacy.” We have a party-based electoral system that, particularly in the Senate, pushes towards a relatively even division of power. The question then becomes whether we’re more comfortable with the consequences of a system where the minority can block good policy or the majority can pass bad policy. I’d prefer the latter: The policies of politicians we voted for have more democratic legitimacy than the system’s structural preference for inaction. Elections should be about the bills passed by the majority rather than the obstructions erected by the minority.

Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Democracy, as a fellow collectivist rather than individualist ideology, is similar. Democracy is the refuge of prom queens and the “in” crowd.

I’ve contrasted the difference between libertarianism and democracy before:

Libertarianism isn’t anti-Democracy. In fact, the statement itself is nonsensical. Libertarianism is a moral system, valuing individual liberty as it’s highest ideal. Democracy is a form of government, consisting of majority rule. Or, to make it more plain, liberty is an end, democracy is a means to an end.

But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. You hear many quotes from Libertarians deriding democracy. Doug said it yesterday. Thomas Jefferson was the one who said “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Libertarians are fearful of democracy. If a statement that libertarianism is anti-democratic is nonsense, why do so many libertarians make these types of statements about democracy?

But the points still stand. Having liberty as a goal is not inconsistent with using democratic processes in your government. In fact, you can clearly see that our system of government has some democratic processes, created by the Founding Fathers who feared democracy just as much as modern libertarians. As I said earlier, though, democracy is a means, not an end. Democracy can— and has— been used to improve liberty. But it has also been used to take liberty away. Nothing exhibits this more clearly than the 18th and 21st Amendments. Democracy infringed people’s liberty, but it was democracy that restored that liberty.

So Ezra Klein wonders whether it’s better that a minority can block good policy or a majority can enact bad policy? Given the “stickiness” of bad policy (Ezra, in another post, suggests that corn and beef subsidies aren’t so wonderful but that there are structural incentives to retain them) one would think that inhibiting bad policy would be a good goal for either side of the aisle.

So let’s stipulate a few general principles:

1. Government, by definition, is coercive.
2. Most government “programs” (here defined as positive government acts rather than simple regulatory prohibitions or laws) expand the state and curtail personal liberty — at least to the extent that they must be paid for by non-voluntary means.
3. Therefore, government action is more likely to reduce individual liberty than increase it.
4. Finally, to a libertarian (one whose first principles are towards individual liberty), it is best to inhibit government action.

Ezra Klein believes government is a critical enabler of individuals, and thus he believes that government should be encouraged to act. Libertarians believe government is an inhibitor of individual liberty, and thus government should be proscribed from acting except where absolutely necessary.

The American Constitution is largely designed to proscribe government action except where it is provably justified. Libertarians, at least in the spirit of this sense (though often for our own reasons) suggest that inhibition of new government action unless it can be justified beyond purely majoritarian means is beneficial to our end (liberty). These are different first principles, of course, from someone who believes in majority rule. However, I highly doubt he’s highly enthused by California’s Prop 8 result from last November. As any libertarian will tell you, that’s what you get when you value majority rule over freedom.

What does it mean for the filibuster? The filibuster is a way to temper the actions of a legislature — to ensure they don’t simply run roughshod over their opponents every time they get an inkling of power. In essence, it’s a way to help minimize the ability of a small majority to enact bad legislation. And good legislation, of course, should be good enough to overcome a filibuster — after all, the stimulus he wanted still got passed, did it not?

WASHINGTON — A conservative watchdog group filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing that Hillary Rodham Clinton cannot legally serve as secretary of state, even though she was sworn in last week.

The suit is based on an obscure section of the Constitution on compensation for public officials, the emoluments clause. The clause says no member of Congress can be appointed to a government post if that job’s pay was increased during the lawmaker’s current term.

Clinton was serving in Congress when the secretary of state’s salary was raised to its current level of $191,300. So that Clinton could take the post, Congress last month lowered the salary to $186,600, the level when she began her second Senate term. A similar tactic has been used so that several other members of Congress from both parties could serve in the Cabinet.

Judicial Watch, which has pursued several suits against Clinton and other officials over the years, argues there can be no exceptions to the clause.

The group says that Hillary Clinton is “constitutionally ineligible” to be secretary of state until 2013, when her second Senate term would expire. She resigned from the Senate to take the Cabinet post.

A copy of the lawsuit can be found here, and it’s fairly straightforward.

Judicial Watch is representing a long-time State Department employee who alleges that it he would be damaged by being required to take orders, and act under the direction of, a Secretary of State who is ineligible to serve. Assuming that this is sufficient to get around the inevitable standing issues, the Constitutional argument is fairly straightforward:

1. Article I Sec. 6, Clause 2 of the Constitution states that a sitting Senator or Representative cannot be appointed to a civil office for which the compensation was increased during the time that they served in the legislature
2. On three separate occasions since Hillary Clinton began serving her second term in the Senate, the salary for the Secretary of State was increased by Executive Order.
3. Therefore, by a strict reading of the emoluments clause, Hillary Clinton cannot be Secretary of State until at least 2013.

On the other side of the argument, there is the fact that, prior to the time that she took office at Foggy Bottom, Congress instituted a so-called Saxbe Fix — lowering the salary of the Secretary of State to where it was at the beginning of Clinton’s then-current Senate term. This is the same “solution” that was used when this issue came up in the past, although the last time it was tried Senator Robert Byrd pointed out that the so-called fix didn’t fix anything. (Of course, Saxbe was a Republican, and when Hillary’s nomination came before the Senate, Byrd voted yes)

As I noted when this controversy first arose, the Constitutional argument against Clinton’s eligibility is rather clear:

If the words of the Constitution mean what they say, then it seems fairly clear that Hillary Clinton is Constitutionally ineligible from serving as Secretary of State. Is it a dumb rule ? Probably, just like it’s a dumb rule that someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger couldn’t serve as President of the United States merely because he was born in a foreign country. The way to deal with dumb rules, though, isn’t to ignore them, but to change them via the method that the Constitution provides.

>However, I don’t see this lawsuit going anywhere for a very simple reason:

[N]o Federal Court Judge is going to say that Barack Obama cannot have the Secretary of State of his choice.

And that goes double for any Judge on the Court of Appeals, or any Supreme Court Justice.

Perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I doubt it.

Cross-posted from Below The Beltway

Illinois senators stripped Gov. Rod Blagojevich of power Thursday in the final act of a political drama that handed the reins of state government to his estranged lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, and likely will end Blagojevich’s career in politics.

Senators voted unanimously to convict Blagojevich and bar him from holding political office in the state again. Shortly after the vote, Quinn was sworn in as Illinois’ new governor.

The outcome was never in doubt. In fact, Quinn went to the state Capitol earlier in the day to prepare to be sworn in.

I haven’t been following this story as closely as others but the fact that only one person in either house of the Illinois Legislature voted in support of the Governor tells me that they really had the goods on the guy. It’s not often that legislators agree on anything particularly in matters of impeachment which are usually decided along party lines.