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.
Senator Nieves is to be commended for his Sisyphean tenacity in the cause of liberty. During the 2011 session of the Missouri State Legislature, the representative of Franklin, Warren, and west St. Louis Counties proposed a similar measure, SJR 15. That bill passed the General Laws Committee of the State Senate, but it was never voted on by the whole chamber.
To his credit, Senator Nieves has left little wiggle room for the federal government to stick its nose in the business of the people of Missouri. In the areas of abortion, hate crime legislation, establishment of school curriculum, mandated purchase of health care insurance, submission to death panels, and formalized recognition of homosexual marriage, among others, the voters of the state of Missouri may soon be permitted to participate in Madison’s “plan of resistance” against the federal yoke.
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