HCR 28, introduced by Representatives Dodge and Saunders, purports to have Indiana claim its rights under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and puts the federal government on notice of this claim.
Just as a reminder, the Tenth Amendment says:
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.
The Tenther Movement is just another installment in the long and checkered history of “states’ rights” in American history. Historically, states’ rights movements haven’t been terribly principled. What they have boiled down to, in effect, is a resentment by those who control state government over a federal government controlled by different factions. For example, conservatives who advanced states rights arguments with respect to abortion and civil rights issues tended not to get real excited when the federal government imposed its views of the drug war on the states. Instead, in that situation, more liberal groups tended to advance the argument that the states should be left alone in that policy area.
This time around, it’s the prospect of liberal domestic spending that seems to be getting the most attention.
At the end of the day, I think the practical answer is that, for better or worse, Hamilton won. Hamilton wanted a strong federal government; Jefferson did not. The Southern States, after some modification I suppose, took up the Jeffersonian view of states rights to protect their peculiar institutions; and the U.S. settled the question, not through speeches and majority decisions, but with blood and iron (as Mr. Bismarck would say).
“America’s Third-Worst State Legislature™: Turning the Place into California Doesn’t Mean We’ve Lost Sight of Texas!”
People who claim that our legislature is the worst, 3d worst, or even in the bottom half of legislatures really don’t understand just how much better Indiana’s legislature is than those of most other states. A low standard, admittedly…but when TN, for example, failed to pass a budget a couple of years ago because they were afraid of bad publicity from a local radio announcer…well, that’s an example of “bad.” The fact that some legislator introduced a Tenther resolution in Indiana, as has happened in, at last count, 45 other states, doesn’t mean much.
Memo to self: 1) apparently not everyone agrees that “™” is a signpost for Comedy Gold, nor 2) realizes that it absolves the comedian, just as it does the commercial user, from any and all considerations of, or responsibility to, Accuracy, as in, “demanding proof that when one says ‘Bud’ one has, indeed, Said It All, or insisting on examining the grading scale which rates Frosted Flakes ‘Gr-rrrrrrr-eat!’ is beside the point”.
And Peter, did I say Tennessee wasn’t one of the two worse?
Tennessee’s not so bad if you’re traveling north-south. East-west, it’s one long bastard.