Virginia Sovereignty vs Washington DC, Judges and McAuliffe
On September 18th, 2014, the Virginia House of Delegates will begin a special session to debate the proposed expansion of Obamacare in Virginia and to consider House Resolution 541, which was formed to empower the Speaker of the House to employ special counsel to defend Virginia’s Marriage Amendment. This is needed because our Attorney General, Mark Herring, has defected and is siding with the plaintiff in this case against the people of Virginia. Resolution 541 may also be expanded to empower the House to defend the law of Virginia if Governor McAuliffe follows through on his stated intentions to violate the law by executing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion without the approval of the legislature.
State sovereignty is a common root with both the Marriage Amendment and the Obamacare Medicaid expansion. It is crucially important that Virginia not roll over on these two conflicts.
Hundreds of years ago, the wisdom and foresight of the framers of our US Constitution caused them to fear a federal government that would grow in power from its very lean and narrowly defined role into a bloated power-hungry monster that would feed off the freedoms of citizens and consume power that rightfully belongs to individual states and to the people. In a founding era U.S. Supreme Court decision, Justice Samuel Chase declared that “the several state legislatures retain all the powers of legislation ... which are not expressly taken away by the Constitution of the United States.” Although enshrined in the Constitution, state powers are being systematically usurped.
What does this have to do with what’s going on in Virginia? These conflicts arise as state sovereignty is subverted. It’s no secret that the mistake called Obamacare is designed to shift control of 18 percent of the U.S. economy from what is now largely state jurisdiction to federal administration, and, in doing so, deal a massive blow to state sovereignty. Likewise, activist judges, in ruling on challenges to Virginia’s Marriage amendment, are so focused on creating a special class of protection for people of the same gender who wish to be married in Virginia that they ignore the fact that it is a state’s right to make that decision, not the courts or the federal government.
How is that centralization of power working out for us? It is sucking the very life out of our great nation by shackling our economy with endless over-regulation and over-taxation. It is at the root of our multi-trillion dollar debt, the out-of-control welfare state, the EPA’s stranglehold on energy, federal meddling with voter identification laws, federal push to control education through programs like “Common Core”, and endless abuses of the Commerce Clause. All these can only come into play as our federal government and courts work side-by-side to disregard the simple meaning of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land,
“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.” Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
States urgently need to organize to reassert the constitutionally-intended allocation of powers among the respective levels of government in our country. It seems fitting that the Virginia House of Delegates (a body whose members once included many of the same great men who formed our U.S. Constitution) will be the place where a line is drawn and defended.
This fight in Virginia isn’t just about marriage and Medicaid. In reality, it’s a much bigger and broader battle to protect the future of our Commonwealth and the nation from a slow spiral into subjection to federal bureaucracies. The outcome of all this will not soon be known, but what we can be sure of right now is that House Resolution 541 is a spectacular opportunity to put in motion a defense of state sovereignty.
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WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Your help is urgently needed to protect the right of the people of Virginia to set the laws of the Commonwealth and block more federal power grabs before it’s too late!
Step 1: Call your delegate, and encourage them to support House Resolution 541. Your message can be as simple as “Please support HR 541 when the House reconvenes. Virginia’s right to enact our own laws regarding marriage and Medicaid must be defended!” To find contact information for your Virginia elected officials, visit: http://whosmy.virginiageneralassembly.gov/
Step 2: Forward this message to your friends all over Virginia!