Last week, the Massachusetts Convention of States team delivered testimony in support of H 3660, the Convention of States resolution, before the Massachusetts General Court's Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs.
The team enjoyed the support of over a score of supporters who carved out four hours to listen and participate in a hearing that covered several other resolutions before H 3660 was taken up by the chairman.
The following text comprises the prepared testimony delivered by 20 COS team members, divided so due to a three-minute time limit for witnesses. Those COS volunteers who testified following delivered compelling and passionate remarks in support of the resolution.
Thank you to the Mass COS leadership team, directed by Michael Arnold, for orchestrating this effort. Up or down, committee members were favorably impressed by our effort.
Ladies and gentlemen of this committee:
By any objective measure, a significant and significantly growing majority of Americans believe that our republic has veered completely off course, far afield from the principles and limitations established by the United States Constitution.
The events of the past few months alone have reinforced that -- not only has the federal government long strayed from its enumerated powers -- it is totally incompetent. That incompetence can be measured in wasted lives, trillions of wasted dollars and debt, and the erosion of the liberty of every American citizen.
Far from a limited government dedicated to sustaining ordered liberty, the federal government has descended into a lawless oligarchy that regularly abuses its power and bifurcates the citizenry.
Too many in the federal government -- regardless of party -- act as rulers rather than representatives, and see constituents not as fellow citizens, but as subjects who are to be mastered. However, as the philosopher Russell Kirk wrote, “Our Constitution is republican – designed to secure the public good through the sharing of political power among many people.” In this republic, the people are sovereign.
Now, in great and growing numbers, the people are ready to reclaim that authority peacefully and lawfully. That reclamation begins with utilizing the constitutional mechanism put in place to address the expansion of federal power and the abuse thereof.
We are here to voice support for the resolution before you to advance the activation of Article V of the United States Constitution for the purposes of calling a convention of states to discuss and propose amendments limiting the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.
Today we will explain the origin and purpose of Article V, some of the reasons why we believe a convention of states is necessary, and what we are – and are not – asking of you, our representatives, in this hearing.
Article V of the Constitution provides the sovereign citizens, through our state legislatures, the method by which to return to first principles of limited government. Put crudely, Article V is the “break glass in case of emergency” option for the states. We believe that we are in such an emergency.
Article V outlines two methods for amending the Constitution. The second is our focus today. It states that Congress, “on the Application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.”
Years prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Virginia delegate Col. George Mason had written the initial draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the first document that recognized the rights of the individual citizen as the sovereign. During the Convention, Mason insisted upon preventing what could be termed a runaway Congress from interfering with the right of the people to amend the proposed Constitution.
The notion that the states – without interference from Congress – would have the ability to rebalance constitutional order was presented as part of the Virginia Plan, which was authored by James Madison and heavily influenced by Mason.
Some delegates to the convention believed that any such provision was unnecessary. However, as Madison noted,
“Col: Mason urged the necessity of such a provision. The plan now to be formed will certainly be defective, as the Confederation has been found on trial to be. Amendments will therefore be necessary, and it will be better to provide for them, in any easy, regular and Constitutional way than to trust to chance and violence. It would be improper to require the consent of the Natl Legislature, because they may abuse their power, and refuse their consent on that very account…”
Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman suggested a plan by which Congress would propose amendments for ratification by the states. But Mason, ever skeptical of overarching centralized power, would not be moved. Again, from Madison’s Notes:
“Col: Mason thought the plan of amending the Constitution exceptionable & dangerous. As the proposing of amendments is in both the modes to depend… on Congress, no amendments of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the Government should become oppressive, as he verily believed would be the case.”
In other words, why would a central government that becomes tyrannical ever propose legislation or amendments to restrain its own tyranny? As you know, the second clause of Article V was included.
Mason’s insistence was a noble and wise gift. We seek to put that inheritance to good use.
As Mason and many others feared, the federal government has become outsized, wasteful, and thoroughly corrupt – a soft tyranny rapidly transforming into something worse.
An Article V convention of states is necessary to propose limits upon that government to benefit all citizens.
The United States was never meant to be a centralized democracy. Government is to be from the bottom upward. We are a union of states – united only for the purposes and conditions enumerated in the Constitution. But this arrangement has become inverted.
An Article V convention would certainly discuss and propose an amendment or amendments that place restraints upon the power of the federal government to tax and spend.
The United States is broke. We are worse than broke. We need to pay somewhere between $30 trillion and $150 trillion of our obligations to get to broke.
Citizens helplessly watch Continuing Resolutions being enacted by Congress and signed by presidents of both parties that violate the Budget Act. Debt ceilings are raised; the term captures the stupidity. How many times have you raised the ceiling of your house?
Money is printed uncontrollably to fund ever-increasing benefits that disincentivize work and increase the tax burden on a populace that increasingly works in low-paying service jobs.
While previous generations of Americans seemed to sacrifice for others not yet born, our federal government seems to strive to see what can be inflicted upon others not yet born.
Congress has consistently adopted gigantic omnibus spending bills. While relatively novel in the context of the entire history of the republic, such bills have been passed for decades.
In 1989, Congress pushed through a budget reconciliation act that a then-member described as
“So voluminous…that it was hauled into the chamber in an oversized box. Its thousands of pages, which the clerk hadn’t even time to number, had to be tied together with rope, like newspapers bundled for recycling. While reading it was obviously out of the question, it’s true that I was permitted to walk around the box and gaze upon it from several angles, and even to touch it.”
Describing a piece of spending legislation not as something that can be read in 15 minutes, but as an animal at a petting zoo, is the opposite of limited government in a representative republic.
An Article V convention of states would most certainly consider an amendment or amendments that would require that General Accepted Accounting Principles to be forced upon the government, and a requirement that annual federal budgets be balanced.
During nearly a decade as an employee at the Department of Defense, one of our Massachusetts COS volunteers has regularly witnessed the abhorrent waste of taxpayer funds first-hand.
To cite just one example, a piece of research equipment purchased at a cost of $500,000 went unused for years. It was finally returned as quote “excess equipment”. Half-a-million dollars in exchange for nothing.
The expenditure did not protect our border. It did not deter a terrorist attack. It did not bring any military personnel home. It was simply wasted.
The only thing that the equipment defended was justification for the prevention of cuts to the Defense Department budget. It is standard practice within the federal government to spend allocated funds on unnecessary items and services to extinguish those funds to ensure that the next year’s budget is not cut – and perhaps increased.
Our volunteer has read numerous email blasts sent by the heads of finance divisions that urge Department of Defense employees to purchase equipment and supplies to exhaust all available funds. In the example cited, $500,000 can be a decade or more of salary for many, yet the federal government nonchalantly considers such a sum to be of relative insignificance. That is just one line item within one division within one federal agency.
It is self-evident that this is a broken system. We are robbing untold numbers of generations to fund waste and sloth. Prior to our volunteer’s time in government, he wondered where trillions of dollars could have gone. He doesn’t wonder any longer.
That is why we support an Article V convention of states. We must at least consider and propose restraints such as balanced budget requirements and the application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles to prevent such waste and abuse in the federal government.
Read the op-ed section of most any local newspaper on any given day, and you likely will find calls for term limits for members of Congress. An Article V convention of states will certainly address such calls and the reasons for congressional term limits, which are legion.
Thomas Jefferson claimed in personal correspondence that “I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty.”
So wrote the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Yet read those words aloud to a group of contemporary members of Congress and they would likely burst out laughing. Jefferson: What a fool!
Countless members of Congress have dirtied their hands while adding plenty to their private fortunes during their time in office, time that expands due to the advantages of incumbency.
Members of Congress also treat federal funds as a personal bank under the cover of bringing goodies to their constituencies. Consider the case of a Senate Budget Committee chairman who earmarked around $66 million in treasury funds to convert an air force base into a business park. That business park happened to be developed by the senator’s brother. The senator also just happened to have invested somewhere between half-a-million- and $1 million in the project, and eventually raked in hundreds of thousands on those investments.
The senator answered questions about such earmarks by saying that he had not broken any of the Senate’s ethical rules. That answer is true and the absolute problem. Congress makes the rules and comically polices itself.
Legislating in such fashion is not in line with the principle of equality before the law. It establishes a hierarchy of privilege and influence. Insiders, wealthy corporations and their lobbying divisions, and political donors are granted exemptions and/or benefits that most individual citizens do not enjoy. Any mandate or law regarding their requirement that is not equally applied is invalid and unacceptable.
And in legislating in such fashion, Members of Congress need only worry about preferred clients, i.e., donors who can assist in their primary objective: Re-election.
The advantages of incumbency are endless. Name-recognition and fund-raising build upon themselves over the years, making it more difficult for even the most able of citizens to make elections competitive.
Entrenched members of Congress in both major political parties often award monies and rights to family members and preferred constituencies that can assist them in holding and increasing power.
The seniority system in Congress rewards longevity – not necessarily competence or fidelity to the Constitution – with committee chairmanships or ranking minority status. Time is money and power in Washington, D.C.
The Framers of the Constitution did not envision such concentration and continuation of power. If they had, they never would have bothered George III in the first place. Political careerism and the advantages of incumbency necessitate the need for an Article V convention of states to consider a constitutional amendment that places term limits upon members of Congress.
Jefferson expressed disapproval to James Madison in December 1787 concerning a lack of term limits in the then-proposed Constitution.
Yet rotation in office was well-observed by members of Congress until 1901 and the dawn of what is called the Progressive movement. To that point, most members of Congress did not seek re-election after one term. By custom, one such congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln served only one term. As he demonstrated, rotation in office did not ban individuals from public affairs. Term limits would merely place a necessary restraint upon federal office.
Self term-limiting was also exhibited in the office of the presidency. Presidents faithfully adhered to the standard set by George Washington until Franklin D. Roosevelt obliterated it in 1940. This necessitated the ratification of the Twenty-second Amendment in 1951, which set the two-term limit for presidents.
Yet the advantages of incumbency, the ability to direct gifts from the Treasury, and the amassing of power has fostered hundreds of careerists in Congress.
They claim unlimited power, vote themselves pay raises, and exempt themselves from legislation that they pass, proving George Mason’s point over and over; Congress as presently constructed would never consent to limiting its power and privilege.
Term limits would force careerists to emulate Lincoln and find other outlets for their ambition. Establishing such limits will more perfectly align the Constitution with the philosophy and approach of the Founders. It would blunt careerism in Congress and require rotation in office. It would also result in the election of citizen-legislators who work not to secure their next victory, but the hard-won liberty of the people.
The unreadable bills mentioned earlier, cobbled together by unelected staffers and money-no-object lobbying operations, are not reflective of representative government but are in fact its demise. As a late congressman of 47 years said of one 3,000 page monstrosity “I love these members, they get up and say ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”
It’s true. No legislator can read or comprehend the bills on which he or she is voting. That is why most of those responsibilities should be left to the state and local governments to consider.
An Article V convention of states considering amendments to restrain the federal government might also consider repealing the 17th Amendment to restore balance to Congress and give back to states their proper seat in federal affairs.
Senators were to be the voice of the state legislatures in Washington. They were to provide necessary checks on the executive and quell the potential tyranny of the majority in the House. The 17th Amendment, written and ratified in the populist and misnamed progressive movement of the early 20th century, destroyed that arrangement.
Upon its April 8, 1913, ratification, senators were transformed from ambassadors to free agents, and have largely acted as such ever since.
This stands against the founders’ vision and has come at great cost to the two houses of Congress, state sovereignty, and republican government. Direct election of senators was said to be more democratic than the language of Article I of the Constitution. But the founders did not establish a pure democracy. They established a federal republic and wrote the Constitution accordingly.
It is difficult to argue against the assertion that the United States Supreme Court has become totally unmoored from its original purpose.
Decisions from the Court are treated with a breathless anticipation equaled perhaps only by the faithful awaiting the white smoke at the Vatican. Those decisions are regarded as the final say in constitutional law. A current member of the House once said of a pronouncement from the tribunal: “It is a decision of the Supreme Court. So this is almost as if God has spoken.”
Justices are accorded undue reverence and significance and increasingly encroach upon the lives of the sovereign citizens. Yet matters of commerce, liberty, and life and death were not to be in the hands of five robed attorneys. How did this come to pass and what can be done about it?
Judicial independence is vital in a constitutional republic. This was recognized by those who foresaw the incremental expansion of judicial power.
One of those was Brutus, writing in Anti-Federalist 13. Brutus, who was thought to be New York judge Robert Yates, was particularly concerned with how the expansion of judicial power would impact the states. He wrote:
“Perhaps nothing could have been better conceived to facilitate the abolition of the state governments than the constitution of the judicial. They will be able to extend the limits of the general government gradually, and by insensible degrees, and to accommodate themselves to the temper of the people. Their decisions on the meaning of the constitution will commonly take place in cases which arise between individuals, with which the public will not be generally acquainted; one adjudication will form a precedent to the next, and this to a following one.”
Yates was proven correct, as Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in the infamous case Marbury v. Madison demonstrated. Marbury confirmed this notion and indeed expanded the authority of the Court. As Marshall wrote in his opinion: “The judicial power of the United States is extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”
That expansion of power – unauthorized in the Constitution or by any subsequent amendment – resulted in disastrous interpretations and rulings.
Consider then-Chief Justice Roger Taney’s terrible decision and reasoning in the Dred Scott case of 1856. Taney and a few other justices ruled that Scott, a slave, had no standing to sue for his freedom. This did much to bring about the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln’s response to this decision was delivered during his first inaugural:
“At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
Ruling after ruling and edict after edict has followed.
One of the worst decisions the Court has made was the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn. The Court ruled that the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution enveloped intra-state commerce. Nowhere in the Constitution is this power granted.
This increased the power and scope of federal agencies to regulate commerce in an extraconstitutional fashion. Wickard established the dangerous and evil precedent that the federal government can deny access to something or prevent the individual from saying no.
Wickard involved a farmer who grew excess wheat that he was not planning to sell, and for which he was going to use on his own farm – not trading across state or county lines. The Court deemed his choice to have impacted demand, and that the government could compel economic consumption. This is a gross violation of not only the language of the Constitution, but of individual liberty and decision-making – the creation of serfs.
Because of the undue and unconstitutional influence given to the Supreme Court, nominations, and confirmations regarding the lifetime appointment of potential Supreme Court justices have taken on a dramatic importance that is out of proportion for a representative republic by an order of magnitude.
These usually devolve into circuses and further divide the republic. Federal judicial nominees are portrayed as divinely inspired or evil incarnate. Neither is true. Judges are fallible human beings to whom excess power should never be given – particularly if it is unchecked.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that, between 2010 and 2018, 131 federal judges not only failed to recuse themselves while overseeing cases involving firms in which they or family members held shares but also ruled in favor of their own financial self-interest in two-thirds of those cases.
Participation in those cases violated the code of conduct for federal judges. Judges are required to recuse themselves if a case in which they have any "ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small" comes before them.
Whether such oversights were, as some judges claim, "honest mistakes" is immaterial. The judges violated the code of conduct. Such behavior does nothing to alter the appearance that the federal government is an oligarchy, in which its privileged members are not merely immune from the rules and the consequences of breaking those rules, but profit financially.
One of the judges involved was quoted as saying of her $218,000 annual federal income:
"I have my judicial salary, but the law really restricts what else judges can do for additional income”
If an annual salary of nearly a quarter of a million dollars is insufficient, perhaps the federal judiciary is not for you. Senator Warren has proposed banning members of Congress from owning and trading stocks while in office. That should go for federal judges as well.
Fixed terms for federal judges would go far in cycling out judges who are themselves incapable of or unwilling to recuse themselves from cases in which they have a financial stake. Judicial term limits would also apply the concept of rotation and true public service to the federal bench.
An Article V convention of states would likely discuss and propose amendments to limit the terms of service for the federal judiciary. A convention might also consider ideas such as giving Congress or state legislatures the ability to override decisions by the Supreme Court via super majority so that the court’s power can be properly checked.
In the 1970s, political scientist Theodore Lowi pointed out that when Congress established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it did not explicitly state any policy goals for those agencies, nor provide any standards for their operation or conduct. The agencies were given a free pass to make it up as they went.
This fourth branch of government – the administrative state -- was never intended to exist. The rule of the administrative state is anti-constitutional and allows for a vast array of policymaking. It is an oligarchy, meaning a rule by the few for their own purposes that are supported by interest groups. This leads to the disenfranchisement of the sovereign citizen.
Congress further ignores its role by permitting the president to issue executive orders that are often extraconstitutional in nature and practice. Such orders and regulations, no matter who is issuing them can undo positive accomplishments in weeks or months. They are not subject to review or rebuke by the sovereign people.
This abandonment of its role violates one of the most fundamental principles of limited government and ordered liberty. The Founders of this republic were significantly influenced by the political philosopher John Locke. He wrote that the lawmaking power was the legislature’s alone:
“The power of the legislative, being derived from the people by a positive and voluntary grant and institutions, can be no other than what the positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in other hands.”
Even if, amid the monstrous bills passed by Congress, there are provisions that are outlawed, federal agencies can put them back in because of the authority given to secretaries of those agencies. There are hundreds of references to the Secretary “shall” or the Secretary “may” or the Secretary “determines.” Who elected the Secretary to shall, may, or determine anything?
In such a hyper-regulated nation as ours has become, who among us is not in violation of a law or regulation several times a day? We must comply with regulations. The federal government dictates, among other things, details such as how much water an individual may have in his dishwasher, the composition of gas can spouts, and the angle of step ladder placement. Did Washington’s men endure Valley Forge to regulate step ladder placement?
The weaponization of agencies such as the IRS, FBI, and CIA – none of which were established in the Constitution -- against American citizens for their political beliefs is an insult to a free republic. Any citizen, regardless of political affiliation – or no political affiliation at all – is subject to the ever-encompassing power of the unelected administrative state for violating any number of regulations, edicts, and decisions that are made in a distant capital.
An Article V convention of states would consider an amendment limiting the power and scope of the federal bureaucracy, likely via a requirement that Congress be made to reauthorize each individual department by stand-alone reauthorization bills every two or three years.
Instead of a people governed by a document that can be easily held between thumb and forefinger, we are ruled by an ever-expanding annotated Constitution. It weighs ten pounds and comprises thousands of pages of Supreme Court interpretations of the original Constitution. It is the product of the expansion of judicial power that began with Marbury v. Madison, tangible proof of the outsized expansion of the federal government.
It amounts to a government that has fostered a loss of confidence in the sovereignty of this republic, pushing ever-increasing burdens upon the individual and small businessperson. It has produced bulky legislation spilling over hundreds or thousands of pages and contrived thousands of upon thousands of regulations in The Federal Registry. It employs battalions of lawyers to interpret these regulations and has permitted swarms of compliance officers to brandish them like a sword. It has yawned at the piling up of debt and the erosion of the credit of the United States, accepting and encouraging judicial fiat and a creeping encroachment into the private affairs of citizens and private institutions.
Taken as a whole, the federal government now (and I quote)
“…cover[s] the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules... The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power…compresses enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
That was the French writer and philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville in the early 19th century unknowingly describing today’s United States. This environment drains the spirit of independence nobly won by our forefathers and successfully defended by their descendants. It drains the spirit of self-respect, sensitivity to one’s neighbors, and the proper relationship between citizen and government that is vital to liberty.
Now it is time to restrain the federal government from acting beyond its bounds. The states can and must do so. Article V grants that power.
Amending the Constitution is rightly an involved and difficult process that must clear significant hurdles.
Upon 34 state legislatures agreeing to the adoption of a convention of states resolution:
1. Congress is required by Article V to call a convention of states.
2. All 50 state legislatures name commissioners to the convention as they see fit.
3. The convention of states is limited in purpose; that is, to discuss and propose amendments to the United States Constitution that narrow the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government – these are the possible amendments that we have discussed that could include congressional and/or judicial term limits, fiscal restraints, and restraints upon the administrative (or fourth) branch of the federal government.
4. Should a majority of the states agree to one or any of the proposed amendments, Congress can either direct the state legislatures to vote upon those amendments, or establish ratification conventions in each state to debate and vote upon the proposed amendments.
5. Three-fourths of the states – 38 states – must ratify an amendment or amendments to be added to the Constitution.
Suggestions that a convention of states would nullify or disfigure the Constitution are unfounded.
A convention of states is not a Constitutional Convention such as that of 1787. As outlined, 38 states must ratify a proposed amendment. It is difficult to imagine a dozen state legislatures – let alone 38 of them -- that would ratify an amendment or series of amendments that would so alter the Constitution as to destroy its basic protections and freedoms.
Furthermore, if an Article V convention of states could so easily alter or erase the Constitution, why would the mechanism have been included in the original document? As Madison argued in Federalist 43:
“It was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing [amendments] should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable…It, moreover, equally enables the general and the State governments to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by experience on one side, or the other…”
A “Yes” vote from you merely advances the resolution before you to the larger legislative body for further discussion and reasonable debate.
It DOES NOT establish or even advance a call for a Constitutional Convention. A convention of states is not a Constitutional Convention. It is a limited-purpose convention for discussing and proposing amendments limiting the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.
It DOES do the bidding of the people to advance a conversation among and between the sovereign constituents and their state representatives about how best to reign in the federal government and assert for the Commonwealth the responsibilities and power designated to it by the Founders. This is the definition of republican government – federalism in action.
Utilizing the Constitution to save the Constitution is under no circumstances reckless or risky. It is our duty.
The strength of the Republic depends upon adherence to first principles. We are demanding that our federal government adhere to those principles, and asking you to exercise the power given to you through us in Article V.
We do not seek to overthrow the government, disfigure the Constitution, or withdraw our consent to be governed. Ours is a nonpartisan and nonviolent effort dedicated to strengthening the Constitution by returning power not granted to the federal government back to the several states where it belongs.
But do not mistake our civility for casual purpose or lack of deep anger. We are joined by millions of citizens whose patience is not wearing thin, but at an end. No federal representative, senator, president, judge, or bureaucrat has the authority to stray from fidelity to the Constitution.
Citizens who consent to be governed delegate our authority by communicating how we wish to be represented. Today we are communicating our support for this resolution. We urge that it be voted upon favorably by this committee so that the whole of the General Court and the whole of the Commonwealth can engage and be heard.
Patriotism takes many forms, including the necessity of having an honest conversation about what is wrong with our country and how it can be peacefully remedied in a way that benefits all citizens.
We believe in the design, necessity, and process of Article V. Voting in favor of the resolution is an important first step in reclaiming limited government by, of, and for the people.
Our spirit is that of Massachusetts farmer Levi Preston. His stated motivation for having fought in the American Revolution echoes across the centuries. It animates our effort, and we hope it animates your vote for this resolution. Why did Mr. Preston fight Britain, then the most powerful military in the world?
As he put it, “We had always governed ourselves, and them redcoats meant that we shouldn’t.”
Our simple request to you is to add another honorable chapter to this Commonwealth’s heritage of independence and self-government. You, our representatives in Boston, can reignite the spark that secures individual liberty for the sovereign, and to advance that conversation. It is a conversation worth having.
A “Yes” vote means that, on this day, you do not have to ask what you can do or what you did for your country.
You can perform the role that the Founders, many of whom were also members of their state legislatures, envisioned for you – to stand in the breach when the federal government exceeds its limits and becomes tyrannical, and to declare that the Constitution is not a dead letter.
