Written By : William Teach

Perhaps it’s all the years reading and listening to Liberals/progressives/surrender monkeys, as the headline almost seems like the Politico means that as a bad or stupid thing. I get the same feeling from the article

The federal lawsuits against last year’s health care overhaul were greeted with eye-rolling and snickers from many conventional legal scholars.

Nobody’s laughing now.

A federal judge in Virginia ruled late last year that a key underpinning of the health care law stretches the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution past the breaking point, while another judge in Florida has allowed the case to proceed toward the Supreme Court.

And the challenges to the health care reform law are just the most visible sign of a broad, national flowering of state efforts to find shelter from the federal government in sometimes-neglected corners of the Constitution that touch conventional political hot buttons such as immigration and gun control, and exotic ones, such as citizenship and currency.

The currency one is new to me, and seems almost designed to cast a shadow on the very real need to, oh, um, follow the bedrock of our Constitutional Republic.

The model for this revival is the transformation of the Second Amendment from a hazily interpreted legal backwater to the core of a new gun-rights movement. And while the Constitution is often invoked, and even misquoted, for all manner of conservative causes, perhaps the truest meaning of the new phrase constitutional conservatism is found in the broad, imaginative and sometimes quirky new efforts to hem in the power of the federal government.

Again, perhaps I missed that there is some new gun-rights movement. We’ve certainly seen the rolling back of laws that are in violation of the 2nd Amendment (apparently, the second thing those old dudes thought to included a couple hundred years ago as protection against enemies, including the government, is just a backwater), but, that doesn’t mean there is some new movement. Just an on-going one against the constantly expanding role and might of government.

“The overwhelming, unifying theme of the tea parties was the restoration of the constitutional order and the balance of state and federal power,” Kobach told POLITICO. “I’ve heard more discussion of the 10th Amendment in the last two years than I had in my proceeding 14 years as a law professor.”

There was a purpose to the 10th (and 9th) amendments: those old dudes didn’t want to give to much power to a government sitting far away from The People, putting out edicts. They new the country would grow, and that government was best when it was closer to the people it represented, where they would (hopefully) be able to respond to the needs of the people. The Federal government was meant to be a unifying entity, bringing the states together, and protecting the whole.

Skipping to the end

“Our Constitution is a remarkably progressive document that establishes a strong national government while still preserving a role for the states” said Elizabeth Wydra of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, a legal organization created in 2008 to promote defend liberal policies from constitutional assault. “I think that the tea party likes to pick and choose the parts of the constitution that they like — notably the 10th Amendment and the Second Amendment. … It’s important to remember that those enumerated powers are significant and quite broad.”

She almost had the beginning correct, but, while swinging for the bleachers, hit a dribbler to the pitcher. The federal government was never intended to be strong while preserving a role for the States: they were meant to be, at the least, equally powerful, with the federal branch being given specific powers, and specific limitations. Really, the Bill of Rights was misnamed, and should have been called The Bill Of Protections From The Government, but, that’s a bit wordy. Anyhow, what else would you expect from a liberal/progressive/surrender monkey, who thinks the 10th and 2nd are silly, are not precise, but, there is some constitutional right in there to have an abortion, have money taken from one person who works hard and be given to another who is a lazy bum, and a “separation of church and state.”

Anyhow, can any of you liberals out there point towards which parts of the constitution we pick and choose from?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach

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