The 10th Amendment Revolution is alive and well in Virginia

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Much like last year, Virginia’s 2011 General Assembly session is chock full of bills and resolutions that seek to strengthen federalism and the state sovereignty protections of the Tenth Amendment. One of those, HB1438, would prevent the federal government from regulating anything produced and sold exclusively within the state of Virginia.

Its summary reads:

Goods produced or manufactured in the Commonwealth; not subject to federal regulation. Provides that all goods produced or manufactured within the Commonwealth, when such goods are held, retained, or maintained in the Commonwealth, shall not be subject to federal law, federal regulation, or the constitutional power of the United States Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The bill does not apply to goods ordered, procured, or purchased by the federal government or by a federal contractor. The bill only applies to goods produced or manufactured on or after July 1, 2011.

Such a bill would have far-reaching implications from food to firearms. It would effectively block implementation of the abominable “Food Patriot Act” in the same way that last year’s HB10, the Health Care Freedom Act, helps protect Virginians from the individual mandate in ObamaCare.

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Really Sheila Jackson Lee? You Can’t Be Serious!

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This is a quote from Sheila Jackson Lee on The House floor this week.

“The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process. That is what H.R. 2 does and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.”

She continued, “Can you tell me what’s more unconstitutional than taking away from the people of America their Fifth Amendment rights, their Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the right to equal protection under the law?”

Here is the funny thing about a right, it is God-given, not government created.

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Reading the Constitution: What it told us about Congress

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Unlike some both on the right and the left, I don’t think the reading of the Constitution in Congress was a purely symbolic or useless endeavor. It was quite evident that some of the readers were seeing the sections they read for the first time in a very long time, if ever. So it served an educational function for members of Congress.

The reading was educational for observant members of the public, too. The way some Members stumbled over the words—during an event they knew was going to be telecast, and for which they presumably had prepared—tended to show (1) how unfamiliar they were with the text and (2) how inarticulate and mentally-clumsy some of them appear when not regurgitating the “talking points” they have repeated a thousand times before.

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