In case you hadn’t already heard, the Supreme Court by a vote of 7-2 struck down an Arizona voter proposition that had required that potential voters augment their federal motor voter forms with proof that they have the legal right to vote — be it by showing a copy of a license, a passport, a social security card, or any other similar kind of documentation. The people of Arizona, who are enjoined by SCOTUS from being able to police their own borders — that authority, the Court ruled, being vested solely at the federal level, with the federal government having at its discretion the right to ignore federal immigration laws entirely — were likewise (and as a consequence of the former) having their votes canceled out by fraudulent votes from ineligible voters, many of them illegals. So they determined by ballot initiative to protect the integrity of their voting system within the state, something Justices Scalia, Roberts, and Kennedy — along with the left liberals — now say they cannot do.
This despite what is a clear history of the separation of state and federal authority over election responsibilities, with the states, as a condition for ratifying the Constitution, retaining for themselves the right to determine who is eligible to vote (within the bounds of civil rights and citizenship concerns). This is precisely why we have Constitutional amendments post-slavery and with respect to women’s suffrage: the states had to ratify by 2/3 those changes.
The upshot is, the Court, incorporating a “conservative” textualist and a “conservative” federalist (along with whatever the hell it is Anthony Kennedy might be) among the majority opinion, has essentially removed the state buffer from federal election jurisdiction, a move that completely inverts the intent of the framers (and ratifiers), who viewed the states’ sovereignty as a necessary and profoundly important (and moral) check on the power of an always insatiable centralizing impulse.
And just like that, together with Wickard and Kelo and Raich and a ruling in favor of federal jurisdiction over immigration policy, it has enshrined precedent that corrupts the integrity of a constitutional republic. In fact, it neuters it entirely, changing it into something else entirely.
Or, to put it another way, the “conservative” SCOTUS has now concluded that of course the government can write health care plans for private companies, force those private companies to sell them, fix the prices of those plans, and force Americans to purchase them under penalty of a “tax” on not doing what they were told; it has ruled that states who joined the union only after insisting upon a Bill of Rights that included the 9th and 10th amendments as a protection against potential and inevitable attempts at federal overreach have no legal right nor recourse to protect their own borders and thereby protect the property and franchise of their legal citizens, that concern, per SCOTUS ruling, falling entirely to the Executive in the swamp city of Washington DC, leaving the fate of border state residents to a man who has already shown he will use his agencies to punish those who don’t toe the progressive / establishment line (be it through the EPA, HHS, Interior, or most obviously the IRS), and who understands that the way to turn reliably red states blue is to take away their ability to tamp down on the voter fraud that comes by way of illegal immigration, itself a crime that the President and his Justice Department, along with DHS, don’t feel compelled to pursue or prosecute; it has concluded that though states can’t really protect their own sovereignty, their enforcement officers can collect DNA as a condition of arrest — a procedure they determined wasn’t unduly intrusive — all this taking place in the context of a law enforcement milieu in which officers cannot ask about citizenship status.
All of which is proof that we no longer live in the country of our founding. And the people who have changed it are politicians and jurists at the federal level whose power and wealth grows as a direct result of their willingness to repudiate intent — and of a public’s willingness to abide a linguistic incoherence that I’ve demonstrated time and again moves us inexorably leftward. And is designed to do just that.
It’s all over but for the shouting. Lie back and think of England. And King George. Because that’s where we are now, anyway. Only the wigs have changed.
****
update: not everyone agrees with me. (h/t jls, who doesn’t agree with me, either).
J Christian Adams notes that the left got only one of 5 things it wanted. So it’s batting .200, while election integrity proponents are batting .800 (his scoring). To which I reply, how is it a win for election integrity opponents when they lost 20% of election integrity?
Adams has it backwards. This isn’t a win. It’s part of losing more slowly. Does Adams not think progressive activist groups will have access to federal forms? Does he not think they’ll be making sure certain voting blocs are provided those forms through their institutions and front groups? Does he not realize that states run by Democrats will scuttle any state forms — that Colorado, for instance, has undergone a logistical and political shift thanks to rulings like these? Adams is saying it’s a win so long as red states stay red and are at all interested in voter integrity. But once states go blue, they are gone. Forever.
All of which is irrelevant. I’m not interested in who won the politics of the battle. I’m interested in what this opens up constitutionally for new attacks on state sovereignty.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m “confused and bewildered” having never litigated a case involving voter fraud (although Landmark Legal participated in this case, and it’s my understanding that Levin came down on the side of the minority, as well).
Or maybe I just don’t see “only lost a little this time” as a big win to celebrate. Other than through the lens of some sort of republican fatalism.
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2013/06/17/left-loses-big-in-arizona-supreme-court-case/
Earlier today, I called the decision a nothingburger. After re-reading the case and reflecting a bit more, it’s clear that the decision was a disaster for the Left and their victory cackles are hollow — and they know it.
“Another such victory and I am undone”
-King Pyrrhus
Alito and Thomas disagree. And it’s not the politics of who won or lost that concerns me. It’s that the ruling takes away more state sovereignty.
– If they disagree with you it’s most likely because they fear state autonomy ;leading to chaos in the system, which, by any metric with true independence and self determintion as the goal, sans the fear aspect (nee cowardace), is a feature not a bug.
– Yes I just called them all cowards.
If you have to explain how you totally won because it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone that you won if you didn’t explain it — you’re just begging for a participation trophy.
I just learned a useful new term: duranadam.
Only the wigs have changed.
Rats. I just got mine powdered.
So, according to the Establicans, as represented by Mr Adams, Federalism “won”, but to anyone with a lick of common sense, it is clearly mortally wounded. Some “victory”. More like “death by a thousand cuts.”
Exactly.
Is there reason to suspect that Adams intends that without Scalia and Roberts (who assigns the opinion writer in the majority to the case he joins?), the majority would have otherwise been made up of Kennedy joined to the four Democrat appointees? And that Adams thinks the decision would therefore have still been against Arizona, but worse in its extent had it come down 5-4, with who knows which of the Democrat appointees writing the decision? I’m just guessing here (at the margins of the thing, for my part), for my attention hasn’t been directed here (to this case as yet — haven’t read it or even thought about it as such — only skimming both Jeff’s post and the Adams piece), for being taken up by the ongoing Intel committee hearing, so apologies if this is misdirected.
Add the NSA, or others, as the intelligence wings which will point out those who must be punished. Very basic stimulus-response theory, reward your friends (as long as they continuously give you what you demand of them) and punish your enemies.
Do it harshly, publicly, and all out of any proportion to some. Then others who might have opposed you will on their own give up their opposition and may even become supporters in order to curry favor and not incur punishment. This is how you fight and win in war. Those who use this against you are at war with you whether you allow yourself to realize it or not.
There are two main sides at war with what we call Western Civilization and freedom. They both use the same basic method above. Scorched earth for those who oppose them, acceptance for those who submit to their will, their power. The only things uncertain is if they will, if they are already, allies and if that alliance will survive the death of the West.
So the Republic is batting .800 on voting rights, which is a little better than the Republic’s average with the first ten amendments when you think about it.
None of this gets fixed until Arizona (and hopefully a number of other states) flatly refuse to abide by such decisions. Our governors and legislatures need to demand that our Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights be recognized and respected by the feds, and start clawing back the sovereignty that has been lost over the past century or so.
If the bastards in Washington really want to force a Constitutional crisis on the Republic, then by God let’s get it started.
Squid says June 18, 2013 at 11:15 am
Every time I see another case of “Judicial Review” lawlessness, I start calling for refusal to comply. There won’t be a Constitutional crisis; Obama has refused to comply with court orders on the drilling moratorium, and nothing has happened. The most likely outcome would be some kind of federal funding cessation, so the state in question would need to be prepared for that.
That would be because there already is a Constitutional crisis.
But if we pretend we can’t see it, maybe it won’t see us!
Put like that, yes we’ve already got one.
http://legalinsurrection.com/
It is true that the Court held that Arizona’s Proposition 200 (passed in 2004) requiring documentary proof of citizenship was invalid as contrary to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requirement that states “accept and use” the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) voter registration form which merely requires that a registrant affirm citizenship.
But, this ruling essentially was procedural.
The Court held if Arizona wanted to require additional documentary proof of citizenship it needed to follow the administrative procedures under the NVRA to obtain approval to alter the instructions to the federal form. In fact, in 2005 Arizona had requested such approval, the EAC split 2-2, but Arizona failed to appeal. The Court held that nothing prevented Arizona from requesting approval again, and appealing if denied. The Court practically invited Arizona to try again.
May I take us only a little bit out of the way? I recall hearing professor Obazm, in his earlier capacity as a community organizer instructing his minion-audience in this wise: “Lawschool 101 is this: Process is Substance.”
Now what does this mean? Well, many things. We might remember a phrase “substantive due process”, for instance.
Or again, we might think this, as I believe Obazm thinks: that the substance of equality under the law is only obtained when the process of the law brings that equality about.
But wait! Left unstated is this: that Equality as such among human beings is understood by the political left as being conditional on the even distribution of the material of the living. So we might suspect that the process needful to bring about an equality of material condition is that process which spreads the wealth evenly, taking from here and placing over there. This is called by the left justice. Any condition found to be not even is by definition a condition of injustice.
So what process will the right-thinking left seek as they look to do justice by voter registration? Surely not a process which stands in the way of obtaining an even distribution of wealth, for any such process would by definition be unjust.
What stands in the way of an even distribution of wealth? Any control wealth possessors maintain over their own voluntary possession.
Ted Cruz amendment would allow voter ID laws
[…] Jeff disagrees with J. Christian Adams's analysis of the Arizona voter registration decision by the Supreme Court, which I blogged about earlier today, but even if I'm going with Adams on that score, because I figure he's in a much better place to gauge what it means, there's a lot of great stuff at PW today, including Gerald Walpin's observations on the IRS IG's audit and how the Sequester is the proximate cause for rape and murder. In IG George's case, it has seemed to me that he's been trying to walk a tightrope. That shouldn't be his job. In the case of Dumbass Dan Maffei's comments, as Jeff intimates, it's exactly his POV that not handing government any amount of money they desire is tantamount to rape and murder. These guys don't want to get to the bottom of it, very much. That's why, as far as we know, FBI investigators still haven't contacted any of the targeted TEA Party groups. And that's impartial justice under the Holder DoJ. Andrew Napolitano's a little concerned by the way the FBI has become politicized. It was clear from the beginning of the administration that the FBI was being made the senior organization over the CIA, because the ideological bias worked in the direction of regarding US security as dependent on police action. The FBI fiasco following the Benghazi atrocity demonstrated just how screwed up things are. […]
I don’t really see this as the end, but rather the continuing roll down the hill.
Once the court has established authority over the States for things that should obviously be State rights, then they have to keep continuing down the path.
The mere fact that there are Federal Voting Forms is the end of the State sovereignty: the Supreme Court confirming that the States must follow Federal Rules for their voting forms is just another layer of icing.
“As Mark Levin said on his radio show last night, this decision makes the states bystanders in elections over their modest attempt at making certain people registered to vote are eligible.
“SCOTUS said that Arizona should have gone to the Elections Assistance Commission, a commission that has no members and doesn’t exist.”
What happens when the Supreme Court announces that Art. IV Sec. 4 is a proceedural guarantee, not a substantive one?
We’d better not bring a test case. That crisis monster I was talking about might see us.
That would be because there already is a Constitutional crisis.
And the Constitution was lost.
The momentum is too powerful for this to be turned around. Brace for impact and plan for the rebuild.
Spit balling here:
What would stop Arizona from requiring the Federal Forms be hand delivered to a State Court House that required State approved photo ID’s to enter?
If its ok for SCOTUS it should be ok for Scottsdale.
That’s the spirit we need, Danger, and I’ve been writing about.
Mark Levin [emphasis mine]:
OUTLAWS!