Dear Editor:

When Frank (Palmieri) wrote a treatise (Our Nation's Constitution Distorted) and made assertions he needed to cite authorities for those assertions, its just that simple. It may be true, as he said, that he used the ‘Federalist Papers’ as a source but what we do not know from what he has written, how, in the original linguistic context of the source document, that phase was used. That is needed to determine the validity of the application of that phrasal idiom to the context of his treatise.

What anyone writes when he takes bit and parts from a source has no value unless the full context of that source is know in order to determine if what has been said have been taken out of context, or that its meaning was changed.

Frank's reply still does not provide the information to determine if what he says is a fair representation of the source document as he has failed to provide the source document’s name or wherein the document the ‘cite’ is found.

Its not my job nor anyone else's to read the world’s libraries to find the basis of his unintelligible and meaningless writing a/k/a nonsense. It is his job to provide your cites and your failing that what Frank has written is to viewed as nothing less than gibberish.

On to the Tenth Amendment. It has not only been misquoted, its meaning has been strangely perverted. Says Dr. Cooper, " Congress under the Constitution of 1787, and its Amendments, can exercise no rights or powers but such are expressly enumerated and delegated, or that necessarily and unavoidably flow from those that are.

Every other right or power is reserved by and remains vested in the States; to be delegated or not [Statues of South Carolina, I, p. 217]." There is no such doctrine as this in the Constitution; if found anywhere, it is in the old Articles of Confederation.

It is not strange that those who could see this in the Constitution could also find secession, nullification, lack of right to coerce the individual States by the general government, and want of jurisdiction in the Supreme Court in questions between a State and the United States.

The meaning of the Amendment is plain. The people of the United States are the Source of power. They have established a kind of double government, that of the United States and the several States. The people of the United States have authorized the general government, know as the United States, to exercise large powers, and in the same Constitution have made various prohibitions upon the State governments.

Whatever there may be of the nature of governmental power, which has not been authorized to the general government, nor prohibited to the States, the people of the States may delegate to the States or they may retain it undelegated. The States, as governmental corporations, have delegated nothing; they have retained nothing.

The people of a State may insert in their own Constitution any power not already inserted by the whole people in the Constitution of the United States, and not forbidden by the whole people to be inserted in a State Constitution.

The distinction between the people and the government must never be lost sight of. The people make the constitutions; governments carry on the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of civil society in conformity with the Constitution thus made by the people.

This is true of the whole people and of the people of the several States. The people of the United States are under no restrictions, as to the powers they clothe their government, except those that are imposed by the great rules of justice and right. But the people of a State are restricted.

They may not confer on their state government any power with the whole people have conferred on the United States government, nor any which the whole people have said shall not be exercised by the State governments. "What is not conferred by the Constitution is withheld, and retained by State government, if vested by them by their Constitutions; ad if not so vested; it remains with the people, as a part of their residuary [ADJ. 6 Law of or relating to the residue of an estate: a residuary legatee. ORIGIN: early 18th cent.: from residuum] sovereignty [supreme power or authority].

It is a general principle that all bodies politic posses all the powers incident to a corporate capacity, without any express declaration to that effect; and one of those defects of the Confederation which led to its abolition, was its prohibiting Congress from the exercise of any power "not expressly delegated" Duer, p. 345.]

D. Martin - Virginia Beach

 

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