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Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
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Nov. 18, 2009
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JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Nov. 3, 2009 / 16 Mar-Cheshvan 5770

Can the Tenth Amendment Save Us?

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Does the U.S. Constitution stand for anything in an era of government excess? Can that founding document, which is supposed to restrain the power and reach of a centralized federal government, slow down the juggernaut of czars, health insurance overhaul and anything else this administration and Congress wish to do that is not in the Constitution?


The Framers created a limited government, thus ensuring individuals would have the opportunity to become all that their talents and persistence would allow. The Left has put aside the original Constitution in favor of a "living document" that they believe allows them to do whatever they want and demand more tax dollars with which to do it.


Can they be stopped? Some constitutional scholars think the Tenth Amendment offers the best opportunity. The Tenth Amendment states: "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."


In 1939, the Supreme Court began to dilute constitutional language so that it became open to broader interpretation. Rob Natelson, professor of Constitutional Law and Legal History at the University of Montana, has written that even before Franklin Roosevelt's court-packing scheme, it was changing the way the Constitution was interpreted, especially, "how the commerce and taxing powers were turned upside-down, the necessary and proper clauses and incidental powers, the false claim that the Supreme Court is conservative, how bad precedent leads to more bad court rulings, state elections as critical for constitutional activists, and more."


While during the last seven decades the court has tolerated the federal welfare state, Natelson says it has never, except in wartime, "authorized an expansion of the federal scope quite as large as what is being proposed now. And in recent years, both the Court and individual justices — even 'liberal' justices — have said repeatedly that there are boundaries beyond which Congress may not go." … "Chief Justice John Marshall once wrote that if Congress were to use its legitimate powers as a 'pretext' for assuming an unauthorized power, 'it would become the painful duty' of the Court 'to say that such an act was not the law of the land.'"



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It would be nice to know now what those boundaries are and whether Congress is exceeding its powers as it prepares to alter one-sixth of our economy and change how we access health insurance and health care.


Natelson makes a fascinating argument in his essay, "Is ObamaCare Constitutional?" (www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2009/08/18/is-obamacare-constitutional), using the Court's Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973. In Roe, he writes, the court struck down state abortion laws that "intruded into the doctor-patient relationship. But the intrusion invalidated in Roe was insignificant compared to the massive intervention contemplated by schemes such as HB3200. 'Global budgeting' and 'single-payer' plans go even further, and seem clearly to violate the Supreme Court's Substantive Due Process rules."


Constitutional Attorney John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, tells me, "Although the states surrendered many of their powers to the new federal government, they retained a residuary and inviolable sovereignty that is reflected throughout the Constitution's text. The Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a system in which the State and federal governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people. The Court's jurisprudence makes clear that the federal government may not compel the states to enact or administer a federal regulatory program."


Lawyers are busy writing language only they can understand which seeks to circumvent the intentions of the Founders. But it will be difficult to circumvent the last four words of the Tenth Amendment, which state unambiguously where ultimate power lies: "…or to the people."


Americans who believe their government should not be a giant ATM, dispensing money and benefits to people who have not earned them, and who want their country returned to its founding principles, must now exercise that power before it is taken from them. The Tenth Amendment is one place to begin. The streets are another. It worked for the Left.


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JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.

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