Idaho Set to Nullify Obama's Health Care Law
BOISE, Idaho -- After leading the nation last year in passing a law to sue the federal government over the health care overhaul, Idaho's Republican-dominated Legislature now plans to use an obscure 18th century doctrine to declare President Barack Obama's signature bill null and void.
Lawmakers in six other states -- Maine, Montana, Oregon, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming -- are also mulling "nullification" bills, which contend states, not the U.S. Supreme Court, are the ultimate arbiter of when Congress and the president run amok. read the rest
2 comments:
Bravo! I hope more follow suit.
Well, I'm going to disagree with you on this one. Interposition and nullification are not legitimate constitutional remedies for congressional over-reach. A state has no ability to, in a question of federal law, defy the federal government. While Jefferson & Madison proposed nullification as a remedy for the Alien & Sedition Acts, no court has ever agreed with the idea. John C. Calhoun supported nullification as a way of fighting federal tariffs, which adversely impacted the slave-states of the South prior to the Civil War. The last time nullification was seriously proposed was during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's and 60's, when the Southern power-structure sought to defy congressional and judicial defense of the equal rights of all American citizens.
It is a discredited idea, and one that has never been embraced as part of our constitutional structure. I cannot imagine that a federal court, as a consequence, would uphold a state's defiance of a validly enacted congressional statute.
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