The Tenth Amendment

This blog, or at least this particular post in this blog, should be required reading in schools, in state governments, and in both houses of Congress:
Tenth Amendment Rebellion
If you're socially conservative, ignore the fact that the author is a dope-smoking lesbian libertarian hippie-hating Catholic "recovering attorney" who understands economics. This is a good post.
Here is the text of the 10th amendment:

"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."

That really isn't so hard to understand.

Let's break it down, just because the Supreme Court and the United States Congress seems to have been so confused by it for the last sixty or seventy years or so.

If a certain power (or authority to legislate) is not specifically assigned to the federal government, that power belongs to the states or to the people. If the Constitution prohibits a power to the states, it is reserved for the people.

Put another way, The feds can't do stuff unless the Constitution says so. What they've been doing is turn it backwards and say that they can do stuff unless the Constitution directly says it can't. Of course, lately they've been doing stuff that the Constitution directly says they can't, but that's what happens once you assume the power to interpret the law as you see fit from one day to the next - "Living Document" and all that nonsense.