Missouri State Senator Introduces Nullification Bill

In Federalist No. 46, James Madison predicted:
But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other.

Happily, there seems to a number of state governments committed to the cause of sounding the “general alarm” of the unrepentant and unrelenting assault by the forces of the federal government on the territory of state sovereignty.

The New American faithfully has chronicled this noble resistance to tyranny as it spreads from state to state.

For example, the states of Tennessee, Montana, Virginia, and Washington have all seen the introduction of legislation requiring the governments of those states to nullify the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

This act, signed by the President on New Year’s Eve 2011, grants to the President the nearly unchecked power to deploy the armed forces of the United States to arrest and indefinitely detain an American citizen, whether here or abroad, suspected by the President of posing a threat to the security of the homeland. This unconstitutional enlargement of the power of the executive has the potential to rob Americans of the right to a writ of habeas corpus, the due process of law, and the right to the assistance of counsel. Thankfully, the aforementioned states are prepared to withstand this federal larceny of civil liberties.

One of the latest examples of states standing firm in the face of the fierce federal attack on the Constitution is occurring in the Show Me State.

Earlier this month, Senator Brian Nieves (R-District 26, pictured above) introduced SJR 45, a bill which would place before the citizens of Missouri the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the state constitution forbidding the legislative, executive, and judicial branches from “recognizing, enforcing, or acting in furtherance of any federal action that exceeds the powers delegated to the federal government.”

This is a bold and laudable attempt by Senator Nieves to restore the right of the state of Missouri to govern in all matters not specifically enumerated to the federal authority in the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes such a segregation of sovereignty clear, as well as the proper boundaries between the two governments:

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.

More: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/10745-miss...