Nullification Taken to the Next Level

Minnesota's likely Republican candidate for governor Tom Emmer has proclaimed that not only do states have the right to nullify federal law but that "A federal law does not apply in Minnesota unless that law is approved by a two-thirds vote of the members of each house of the legislature and is signed by the governor. Before voting to approve a federal law, each legislator must individually affirm that the legislator has read the federal law and understands it."

Current governor and 2012 Republican presidential wannabee Tim Pawlenty has endorsed Emmer, as of course has Sarah Palin.

Now, I think all of this reeks of hypocrisy. I'd put the chances of most of these people endorsing nullification once a Republican retakes the White House at about 0%. These people don't believe in nullification, they only believe in nullification for laws they don't like.

Plus, there's the question of just what role the federal government should play in American life. Whereas much of the Tea Party has embraced Arizona's racist immigration law, Florida senatorial candidate Marco Rubio has rejected it, saying that immigration policy is one area where the federal government should trump the states. Well, why Marco? Is it because you need Cuban support to get elected?

And what if a state was to nullify a declaration of war, nullify the Selective Service Act, or refuse to allow military recruiters into their state? How would these nullification activists respond?

Of course, we all know their response. They would proclaim that these are liberal traitors.

So they are just total hypocrites.

Except that some of them actually believe this shit. And mainstream Republicans are empowering these true believers. These extremists have credence they never dreamed of before November 2008. They are converting others to their crazy beliefs.

If one political party is dominated by people who want to destroy the federal government, can governance happen? We are seeing that the answer might be no.

There really isn't any historical precedence for this in the U.S. The only time a political party has completely opted out of the government was in 1860, but I hate to make cheap and meaningless comparisons to that year. Still, it's hard not to be fearful based upon that time that if half the nation simply rejects government, severe and possibly unsolvable problems result.

I Think You All Know Where I'll Be Today

Secessionist Saturday in Texas! Via Ian

Texans will converge on Austin to deliver a petition to Restore America by Demanding our Sovereignty or we will be forced to call a vote for Secession.

This is straight out of the Declaration of Independence and our right to “alter or abolish” our government if it has, “after a long train of abuses” refused to protect the rights of the people.

At present, the Texas Nationalist Movement has a petition with 1 Million signatures directly calling for a vote of secession.

We are calling for an orderly process that will allow our federal government to fall back in line with the Constitution. We are reclaiming our states rights and our individual rights. [...]

We must stand up and be counted or we will find ourselves in another government. Either we restore America, we will live in a Marxist dictatorship, or we will secede and start over again.

I'm actually tempted to go down there and see what these lunatics are up to. However, driving up in my Honda would probably tag me as a Marxist.

Perry Doubles Down

My question from earlier this week is proven to be true; yes, Rick Perry is currently America's stupidest governor.

Perry wants to nullify Obama's health care plan:

Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be “disastrous” for Texas. [...]

“I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying ‘no’ to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare,” Perry said. “So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.”

As commenters have claimed in previous discussions of Perry's nullifying and secessionist rhetoric, he is pandering to the extreme right to stave off Kay Bailey Hutchinson's primary challenge for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010. He's getting increasingly desperate--Perry was booed at the last Texas teabagger event because he's not crazy enough, showing that there is no limit to what Texas extremists are hoping for. This is probably all bluster. But it's still incredibly irresponsible.

21st Century vs. 19th Century

Ed Kilgore has an excellent piece on the rise of states rights rhetoric in the South. Kilgore notes how progressives laughed at Texas Governor Rick Perry when he suggested that Texas could secede from the union, but like myself, Kilgore takes this seriously. He also notes that a resurgence in nullification is rising across the South. Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry recently vetoed a states rights statement that passed his state's legislature. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is said to be moving toward this position. Naturally, Sarah Palin is as well. At least one serious candidate for the governor of Georgia has already endorsed nullification.

Rick Perry:

"I believe that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of our citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state. That is why I am here today to express my unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm states' rights affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I believe that returning to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution and its essential 10th Amendment will free our state from undue regulations, and ultimately strengthen our Union."

Nullification based upon a perverse reading of the 10th amendment reached its apogee under John C. Calhoun and South Carolina in the 1820s. But it began with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. While Thomas Jefferson and James Madison claimed that nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts was constitutional, they were wrong. As horrid as those laws were, the federal government clearly had the constitutional right to preempt the states. And if that wasn't clear in 1798, the many decisions of the Marshall court should have made it that way.

Modern-day nullifiers and secessionists are able to gain significant traction from their connections to Jefferson and Madison. To me, this shows that we need to reexamine how appropriate it is to base modern-day decisions on what people were thinking over 200 years ago. Moreover, if Jefferson and Madison thought one thing on this issue, Washington, Hamilton, and Adams thought quite differently. Nonetheless, when political movements can make connections to the Founding Fathers, it gains them real political capital.

Andrew Jackson put the smackdown on Calhoun during nullification. First, he threatened to hang him. But from a legalistic perspective, Jackson said that nullification was "incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed."

In Kilgore's comments, a reader also offered John Harlan Stone's opinion on the 10th amendment, given in United States v. Darby, 1941. This puts the lie to the idea to nullifiers ideas about the amendment and provides clear precedent for the federal government's right to see its laws enforced.

"Our conclusion is unaffected by the Tenth Amendment which provides: '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 amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.

From the beginning and for many years the amendment has been construed as not depriving the national government of authority to resort to all means for the exercise of a granted power which are appropriate and plainly adapted to the permitted end."

Shorter Rick Perry: Reconstruction Never Happened

Rick Perry continues to stand behind his secessionist comments, saying that Texas is the only state with the right to secede because of some obscure bit in the 1845 agreement to annex the place to the United States. Perry claims that Texas can split into 5 states. While it's slightly unclear from that treaty that such a move would require congressional approval, of course Congress would never actually allow it. He also forgets about something called Reconstruction. Given that Texas already committed treason to defend slavery, they lost those rights in 1861. They didn't just rejoin the union in 1865. They had to come to new terms to reenter the union, and in fact were one of the last 3 states to do so. I would think that from any legal standpoint, the agreement to reenter the union in the 1869 would supercede that previous treaty. No one seems to be talking about this. I know Texas and the rest of the South would prefer to forget Reconstruction, but it's kind of important and it those reannexation agreements should provide strong legal standing to repressing secessionist Texans.

It's not only Perry of course who is tossing around the idea of leaving the union. Here's Hot Tub Tom DeLay saying the same thing:



Perhaps the reason no one is mentioning the Reconstruction agreements is that everyone really wants Texas to leave the nation. Perhaps the U.S. and Mexico could become closer as nations by acting together in a two front invasion of Texas, burning everything to the ground. Would anyone actually oppose this?

On the other hand, I'm not super thrilled with becoming a refugee, straggling to the Oklahoma line, and avoiding the guns of crazy Texans determined to massacre those who defend the union and don't subscribe to their treasonous cause. It's not as if they haven't done this before.

Treason In Defense of a Low Capital Gains Tax Rate

I apologize for not covering Rick Perry's secessionist threats; I've been hording supplies and buying guns for the future war on pinko college professors that is sure to come in the days after the second Texas Revolution; like the first, brown people are screwed.

Rick Perry has Sarah Palin to thank for allowing him to not win the stupidest governor award. I know it's tight competition among the Republicans, but Perry is doing his best to retake the title.

If Texas were to secede, would anyone care? Nate Silver points out that Democrats should be rooting for this. I agree, or I would if I wouldn't be part of the persecuted opposition. I look imagine we'll see the return of the Texas Rangers as a law enforcement agency, if by "law enforcement," you mean "lynch dark people and attack radicals."

I'm also really impressed Perry is standing up for such high principles. From the state that holds the unique honor of committing treason in defense of slavery twice, we now have treason in defense of a low capital gains tax rate and lawlessness in defense of limited unemployment insurance. What higher principles could there be?