My wife and I have reminisced and chuckled over a frequently repeated phrase we each heard from our respective mothers in our childhood: "Don't be too big for your britches." For the sake of full disclosure, my wife and I first met in our 20's, and our families, each from a different state, never met each other until well after we did. I guess that phrase was popular in our generation before parents didn't obsess over the over-rated sensitivity of their child's self esteem and kids excessively acting out back then were actually considered "brats," and not just expressing themselves, and the end result would be some form of appropriate punishment, and not a prescribed pill to chemically shut them up and baby-sit them. It's a shame parents, and society in general don't use such clichés any more. While considered corny, they were all nevertheless adept at accurately conveying the intended message. We need that particular cliché back again, and not just for our errant kids, but for those errant kids who later grew up to become errant politicians and bureaucrats at various levels of government.

As I was channel surfing earlier today, I came upon a California "businessman," who, according to the feds, was simply a "drug dealer." The man ran a medicinal marijuana shop, which itself, would be an oxymoron in most other places, but like I said, we're talking California here. To his limited credit, the man was not trying to pull a fast one, or perhaps so he thought. Everything appeared to be above board. His shop was in plain sight in the community as a commercial business, he was "properly" licensed to distribute marijuana for "patients" with a doctor's prescription for it, and he even had photos, showing the grand opening and ribbon cutting of his "legal" marijuana market. In fact, everything the man did in conducting his business was perfectly legal and condoned by California state law. His problem, however, was that while the liberal, cool, surfer dudes and babes of Sacramento made his "Pot-Mart" mainstream, the federal laws regarding the sale and distribution of marijuana never changed. If convicted, this entrepreneur of California nirvana could be sentenced to a maximum of 100 years imprisonment. Commenting to the reporters on camera as his business was being raided, his "stock" being confiscated and the man himself being arrested, he simply said that the feds "robbed" he and his employees. Californians just don't get it. This isn't Europe, nor even Vermont. They still think they're "innovative," while most of the rest of us just think their nuts. Obviously the feds, barring the federal 9th "Circus" Circuit Court of Appeals in that jurisdiction, seem to take their innovation with a dim view as well. That said, this so-called "robbery" victim might still have a glimmer of hope, given an appeal to the notorious 9th Circus.

While California tends to be the Mecca where lost, loony liberals "find" themselves, others throughout the country are sadly already found and have planted roots. These types tend to be the ones who seek to expand the harvest of humanity, not with other productive plants, but with weeds, by which they hope to boost their poisonous political careers. New Haven, Connecticut is one such place, "led," for lack of a better word, by it's chief comrade, Mayor John "DeSocialist" DeStefano. Johnny D. wasn't satisfied being the former head of a national organization of municipal mayors, or even being an abysmal gubernatorial candidate who was so bad that he was thoroughly unable to dethrone the already utterly incompetent incumbent who is almost as loony and liberal as he is. So, last year, Socialist-Be-Johnny began issuing photo ID cards to any New Haven resident. The cards could be used, not only as identification and proof of residency, but as an avenue by which to receive municipal perks and services for those who dare to step out into the streets and duck gunfire from various cross-eyed gang-bangers, drug dealers, and various other forms of low-life, urban underbelly street vermin "spraying & praying" between the dead or dying elms of the so-called "Elm City." That thus far sounds fairly reasonable, except for the hitch that the ID cards were not only passively, but even intentionally given to many of the city's estimated 11,000-15,000 illegal immigrants. New Haven cops aren't even supposed to ask the legal status of such immigrants when they interact with them in a bizarre form of a politically correct game called, "Peek-a-boo, I don't see you." For all intents and purposes, while not officially declaring itself one, New Haven is in fact, a "sanctuary city." Be it by design or coincidence, shortly after the city implemented this program, Immigration & Customs Enforcement ("ICE") agents conducted a massive raid on the city, arresting many illegal immigrants. The politically correct and utterly impotent NHPD, at that time, under the helm of DeStefano's personal puppet, Chief Francisco "Yes-Sir, Boss" Ortiz, got a public black eye because the feds wisely never advised them of the raid, which added more fuel to the public whining and outcry in this liberal bastion. Many of the illegals were defended pro-bono by the Yale Law School, and given far more hero worship than the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), when it caused a ruckus by wanting to recruit on campus. Sadly, the ICE agents neglected to slap the cuffs on one chief offender, and as a result, Mayor DeSocialist still runs the city with impunity, unscathed and unphased by his flagrant part in aiding and abetting a federal crime. Ironically, DeStefano, who began this insidious program, under the convenient camouflage that it is available to all city residents, tried to justify it by blaming the federal government for not doing anything about illegal immigration, and when the feds swooped down on New Haven to actually do something about it, he was one of the most strident public critics of the raid. Since then, a reporter from one of the state's newspapers has filed an FOI, or Freedom of Information complaint to procure the names and addresses of these illegal immigrants. The complaint was denied on the grounds that some of the illegals have supposedly received death threats from the public, and dispersing the information could endanger their lives. Actually, I have a remedy for that problem: arrest them all, secure all of them in protective custody, and then deport them back to their native countries after serving their time in federal prison, but there I go, using that pesky rule of law again.

There are actually a number of sanctuary cities and states throughout the country, all of which are flagrant violators of federal law, yet get a pass by the spineless and lethargic amoeba-like bureaucracy we call our federal government. But El Cenizo, Texas takes the cake. Not only did that Texas border town, during the term of then Governor George W. Bush, declare itself a haven for illegal immigrants and officially start conducting all municipal business in Spanish, but no one has dared do anything about it. Of course, President George W. Bush has been working with his North American Union cronies in the CFR and in Canada and Mexico since 2005 to make sure that El Cenizo's only impediment, that being, our borders, will be officially erased by 2010. Way to go, Jorge! I guess you showed them, amigo! Viva la NAU! (In your wildest dreams, and over my dead body, and those of many of my fellow patriotic Americans, first, pal!)

The general premise to liberalism is to change whatever can be changed, and the end result or even the unintended consequences be damned. If liberalism were to have a motto, it would likely be the challenge, "Let's see what we can screw up now!" Two thousand + years of natural science and history is no exception. In states like California (Here we go, again!), Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut, liberal bastions, all, the libs have disregarded the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") that even many Democrats embraced, and in fact was signed into law by then President Clinton, a Democrat and hardly husband of the year material. As a result, the new trendy, absurd and socially destructive gay marriage cause is either being manipulated after going through the court systems, or is being pushed through court systems deemed favorable to this lunacy when the votes fall short in the respective legislatures, and in some cases, even over the expressed wishes of the voters.

Wikepedia attributes the phrase "the war on drugs" as being first coined by then President Nixon in 1971, and possibly suggested by the phrase "the war on poverty" coined by then President Johnson in 1964. While Nixon was a Republican, and Johnson a Democrat, neither man was hardly the personified pinnacle of conservatism or constitutional constructivism. Both chief executives, presumably with benevolent intentions, although a skewed interpretation of their authority, acted to address the country's then, and for that matter, still current ills and woes. Nevertheless, domestic drug enforcement is not a federal function. The state of California, or any other state for that matter, has the right, and even the duty, to challenge any and all over-reaching abuse of the federal government via the Congress, and if need be, through the courts, but until such time as current laws are overturned or repealed, they are still the law of the land. The pushing or expansion of DOMA is admittedly a bit sketchier. I can only surmise that marriage between one man and one woman made such common sense to our forefathers, who then were not as consumed with trying to reinvent the wheel like our modern day depraved and subversive nitwits, that they never even considered the seemingly inane necessity of making it a legislative matter, as they also declined comment or consideration of other equally conspicuous societal atrocities like the legalization of bestiality, polygamy, polyamory, pedophilia and incest. But barring that stretch, a legitimate argument could be fought that marriage is a state, and not a federal matter, baring of course, a passed Constitutional amendment. Abortion, much to the despair of those on the left and those comprising the culture of death, is a federal matter, as it pertains to the civil liberty of protecting human life. And in typical fashion, the liberals pushed abortion to the federal level, as they did with the matter of contraception when they couldn't get their way on the state level. The right to life, like it or not, is a federal matter, as much as slavery, civil rights for women and minorities are also legitimate federal matters, based in our human dignity from God, and as correctly articulated in our Constitution, be it in the Bill of Rights, or later amendments. Matters pertaining to immigration and naturalization are clearly articulated federal matters, and violations of legitimate federal law, whether violated by an immigrant, a so-called American aiding and abetting an illegal immigrant, or a screwball socialist bureaucrat or politician with lofty but crooked ambitions, protecting them both. And while certain laws may be right or wrong, while they are still the law of the land, the federal government has both the right and the duty to enforce them until such time as the erroneous laws are corrected. What we are now seeing, for reasons of either design or coincidence, is our slumbering federal government finally emerging from its self-imposed hibernation, if not utter sloth, and actually acting aggressively on matters documented to be within its purview.

James Madison wrote of the intended balance between the states and the federal government in Federalist # 45: "The State Governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former."

Elaborating further in two more paragraphs of that same document, Madison also wrote: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and far defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs; concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small portion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States."

The common thread I see in the rope being utilized in this ongoing tug of war between states (and even some cities) vs. the federal government can be well illustrated by an old TV commercial, in which a car mechanic advises his customer regarding preventive maintenance for his car, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later." Similarly, when subject to abuse from the federal level, states, which are respectively collective sets of the people, have more than just a right, but a duty to act, as so prescribed in our Declaration of Independence: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards to their future security." I would add to that when certain puny, corrupt, arrogant fiefs in their respective fiefdoms also flagrantly violate federal law and in so doing, compromise or endanger national security and sovereignty, they should also be subject to the same harsh redress from the federal government as well. So the long and the short of it is, states can flex their muscles now, or the feds will stretch them later, and when the feds do, it will be legal to do so if law of the land even if it was bad law of the land passed while the states and the people in them were asleep at the switch or too involved with the sports page, or gazing in awe at "American Idol" on their boob-tubes from their self-imposed isolation on their couches within their own little fiefdoms they call "home."

All Americans of all states must carefully walk and abide by the precarious tightrope of the rule of law and civic duty. While the 10th is indeed "the last" of the Bill of Rights, it certainly is not "the least."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

(John Philpot Curran)

Doug Wrenn