I find this very interesting. What I always admired about the United States is that the States had more control locally than the Fed's but that seems to be fading away. The Fed's seem to get involved more and more in local politics every year. For example education, what is the Fed doing getting involved with lunch programs in grade school children in Alabama. Can't Alabama look after that themselves? Besides isn't it the parents job to do that. Some how this went from the parents job, to the Cities job, to the States job and now the Feds job. I get it though there has never been a Socialist region it has to be the whole country or nothing. Proof of that is the mass exit from the socialist States like New York and California. The top 10% earners are leaving those States at a record pace and those States are scrambling to find away to make the payments. At the same time States like Texas who are fiscally responsible are growing. You can't have Socialism when people can move away from it to a Capitalist region because all the money will move as mentioned above. I admire the founding fathers for knowing enough to protect both sides enough for keeping it all togehter for all this time. Where are leaders like that now.

More convoluted thinking from thr far, far LEFT!

The states are saying if the Fed. Govt. tries to make a portion of the Constitution void the states will not go along.

The last blog was way too stupid for me to comment on.

Quote Hartmann:
These Red states can't pick and choose the parts of the Constitution they want to follow. They can't decide they like the Second and Tenth Amendments and act as if the rest doesn't apply to them.

Apparently, these states think they can violate one part of the Constitution to uphold another.

And apparently, some people (Democrats) think that parts of our Constitution aren't worth spit, like the 2nd Amendment, and should be abolished. Do I hear hypocrisy here?

It is not just the Republicans who tout the Constitution when it serves them; and, wants to abolish other parts of it when it doesn't. Democrats are doing this as well when they want to strike out the 2nd Amendment dealing with our right to own guns.

And neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are really representing the best interests of the majority of people in this country anyway. They are both owned by those wealthy ruling elite that wants to deflate any power the people might have in defending themselves. Take away the guns and you take away our freedoms.

A woman takes her ailing husband to the doctors for treatment and the doctor later has a private talk with her on what is needed to keep him from dying.

The doctor tells the woman that she needs to show him lots of love and affection and make him feel like life is worth living. That she should fix him a very healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day and have sex with him at least twice a week or more if he wants it.

As the wife drives her husband home, the husband says "Well, what did the doctor say?"

The wife hesitated a moment, then said..."Well, honey, you are going to die!"

Republicans never met a fact they liked. These guys are living in a dream world that does not resemble the truth. They are not students of the Constitution they say they love. They pretend that the founding fathers got everything right in the Constitution. When the founders made compromise choices to make a strong union, they made several errors. One error is the designation of folks brought over from Africa (and their descendents) as counting as only 3/5 of a person and they were not considered Americans. It took the Civil War to correct that error. More Americans died in that war than any war in our history. I wonder if Republicans want to return to the original language and make residents of African descent slaves. These guys are not thinking at all. They are merely repeating the stories they hear on the radio. They say they want freedom and liberty . . . real freedom is based on truth. They would have to educate themselves first. When you listen to them speak they call those with an education elitist. Where would we be as a species if people did not educate themselves. History will record the ideas and words of these Republicans as functional idiots. They do not make any sense. Perhaps they spout this crap because they do not want to say what they really believe. I think the problem the Republicans are really stuck on is having a black man in the White House. They want to "take their country back." He is not a citizen. He is a Muslim. All that crap is a smokescreen for their deepseated racism.

Thom, your blog states "And the Supremacy Clause is one of the Constitution's most important tenants."

However, I think that you meant to refer to "tenets".

I wouldnt count on that pussy holder doing anything. Afterall, obama and his rat pack are all about "Look forward, not backward".

Thats code for letting the bush crime family get away with murder which means obama is just another bush of a different color.

As they say, it takes two to tango. When you consider that the U.S. has been at war for all but 8 years since 1776, I dont think this could have occured without democrats support. As a matter of fact numerous democrat scum bags supported bush's illegal wars and policies and obama is still working harder to keep the endless war record intact than he is creating jobs for the saps that elected him.

Obama is just another bush of a different color.

I guess the Chinese are pretty accurate when they call the U.S. war mongers.

The implicitly secessionist stunts being pulled by the states of the Old Confederacy and the theocratic Middle West underscore what I have believed for many years, which is that as the formerly unifying infrastructure deteriorates, so will the federal union itself fall apart. Indeed the war against government implicit in Ayn Rand capitalism may have as its clandestine purpose the deliberate acceleration of the impending collapse. The ultimate goal, of course, is to create a society in which all power belongs to the corporations, much as -- in Medieval Europe and particularly the Holy Roman Empire, all power lay with the baronies.

Hence I foresee North America ruled by corporate money but divided into at least five nations: the Pacific Northwest Confederation (Alaska, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Northern California); Verro Mexico (Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California, parts of Texas); the North American Confederation (the remainder of Canada plus New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and maybe Maryland); the New Christian Confederacy (same as the old Confederacy plus West Virginia and Kentucky), and the United Christian States of God's America (all the remainder, most like Nebraska and North Dakota by plebiscite, other more civilized places like Michigan and Minnesota by theocratic conquest and genocidal elimination of all non-believers). Which defines the state of permanent warfare between God's Own Alliance (the two theocracies) and the avowedly secular North American Alliance (the two confederations).

Verro Mexico meanwhile will be sensibly neutral, content to see its former oppressors tear themselves apart until such time as the Union of Latin American Socialist Republics -- Verro Mexico and everything to the south -- invades to pick up the pieces and in most places is welcomed as a liberator.

(Clip this and save it so your grandchildren can test the accuracy of my predictions.)

Right on, ptg0! Couldn't agree more!

Gun registration shell game. Question. I am no expert but when I hear the gun advocates changing the subject of gun registration to blaming the mentally ill memories of the 80s bounce back. Was it not Reagen that took away funding for and closed the mental institutions, putting these people on the street. This also eliminated a path for the care of generations after the 80s?

Thom and Louise: How do you attract these people? What is it, they come aboard to bash your views, believing somehow their facts are truer than yours and their opinions and history are more accurate or something.

Federal law has since 1789 trumped state law. ALWAYS. It's been repeatedly upheld. The states cannot do something that is unconstitutional and get away with it. If Mississippi decided to make their people of color three/fifths of a person again, they can't. The Constitution overrides them. The gentleman who claims that the feds are usurping states' rights--they are fading away--is simply wrong. There has been no "fading away"; this is the way the Constitution has set it up and it has been upheld many times.

Here's one remark by somebody: "Obama and company are using every trick in the book to come down on law abiding gun owners and dealers, knowing full well that this won't make one bit of a difference in the illegal procurement and use of fire arms."

What are those tricks? Oh, and you forgot to mention that he's trying to take your guns away. Although he hasn't shown one iota of interest in doing so and has repeatedly affirmed that the 2nd Amendment gives the populace the right to bear arms. The right of anyone to bear any kind of arms and guns and assault weapons for whatever reason without anyone checking to see if they are criminals, terrorists (I believe the NRA forbid the government from taking guns away from terrorists), mentally ill, wildly insane, mentally retarded, felons -- I don't know that any category of person is restrained. The 2nd amendment is ambiguous at best; it refers to a well regulated militia. That sure doesn't sound like any of you guys, out freelancing with guns and ammunition. I get the feeling you are not well regulated about anything. And you should go back and read Thom's column on what the "well-regulated militia" REALLY meant in those times--a euphemistic way for states to allow local governments to keep blacks and slaves powerless and terrified.

There's so much more. As a historian, I recommend you go back and read REAL history--not the stuff the NRA feeds you (by the way, Hitler DID NOT take away Germans' guns when he was elected)>

Here are a couple of thoughts on the "gun control" issue. I hope those of you out there that frame the whole question as one of "gun nuts" versus responsible citizens favoring sensible limits on the instruments of death - period, will try to get your heads around.

First, the issue of familiarity. Let me begin by explaining that I currently live in a rural state (Idaho) but that I was born and raised in a different environment (Seattle). So I made a conscious transition thirty five years ago from a person that was totally unfamiliar and unexperienced with fire arms to somebody quite comfortable around them. This second phase represents almost half of my lifetime. I evolved from a "city guy", a little nervous around guns, to a person quite at home with the concept. Why? I moved to the woods, well away from the presumed protection of law enforcement because, as a practical matter, it doesn't exist in rural communities, at least as a deterrent to crime.

I have to tell you that I was even more freaked out by my first chain saw, but when I realized that it couldn't hurt me unless I did something really stupid, I got used to that too. One of the things that seemed obvious to me was that if I had guns in the house, my kids should be educated as to their destructive potential. For that reason I conducted my own firearms safety course with my four kids. We would go out behind the house, one on one, and blow up 2 liter coke bottles filled with water with my 30-06 hunting rifle. They'd do the shooting. I'd point out the shock waves in the plastic shards to them. Then we'd shoot a fresh head of cabbage and watch it explode into confetti. I'd explain that this is basically what would happen to a human skull if hit with that kind of energy. This exercise was critical, I feel, to the respect they developed for the awesome destructive potential of fire arms. Not a one of them was ever at risk, I feel, of picking up one of dad's guns and playing with it. None of my kids turned into a hunter (and neither did I). My two youngest boys today own fire arms and the older of the two Is a target shooting enthusiast and an expert at reloading ammunition, something I got him into. I don't see anything "nutty" about any of this. And I want to assure you that I was always far more paranoid about that chain saw, when it came to letting the kids use it, than I was about guns.

OK, so are you thinking "yeah, this guy handed a deadly weapon to his kids and has inured them to the implications of guns as killing machines"? Well let me ask you if you're a little more comfy handing the keys to your family sedan to your sixteen year old? If you are, I suspect the whole thing boils down to your comfort level with automobiles. The idea of a two ton vehicle hurtling through space at a hundred feet per second isn't somehow intrinsically frightening because, after all, cars weren't invented to kill people. Nonetheless, something on the order of 35,000 deaths occur each year from automobile accidents, many of which can be ascribed to things like alcohol, road rage, texting ....

Think about it. Is your visceral response to guns and gun violence logical, or maybe just a tad emotional? And can you possibly see the position of people who view guns as just another tool without demonizing them as fanatics?

If states dont want want fedral law, maybe they shouldnt get federal funds either.Just sayin

Anyone who buys Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) doesn't assume that Colonel Sanders actually prepared and cooked it for them do they? The same could be said of blogs like this one. I suspect that whoever actually posts the blog is not actually the one whose name is on it. I think both of the Hartmanns would be very much more careful about the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes that we often see. But, of course, I could be wrong. I imagine that Thom and Louise are both pretty busy with their main television shows and would farm out their blog to some lowly employees... whose name we may never know.

Palindromedary ~ When I buy Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) I don't even assume it's chicken.

Outback ~ Agreed. But I'll go one further. I think the reason a black man was allowed to enter the white house was to give the Republicans a leader that they would appear to be justified in intimidating and bullying to the point of getting away with treason. I don't think the Republicans hate him because he's black, I think the love him because he's black.

Unfortunately, I foresaw this possibility when he first announced his candidacy. I said, I'd love to see a black man in office; but, now is not the right time. We need someone who has the full support of everyone; and is not easily intimidated. A black man in the white house is something I always wanted to see. I guess I made a bad compromise. At least I'm glad to hear I wasn't alone.

I see seven primary econo-political, geopolitical and environmental trends in the Americas today. In Latin America there is a profound shift toward an as-yet unnamed socialism based on workers' and peasants' cooperatives that will eventually lead to proclamation of a new manifesto or a modified version of the original Communist Manifesto calling for local self-governance, the disolving of national boundaries, trans-national socioeconomic union and then, inevitably, to defensive military action against El Norte. In North America there are six trends in three pairs of antitheticals. One set of antitheticals is the secularism of the coastal regions and Canada versus the incipient theocracy of the South and the midlands. While the One Percent's preference is obviously theocracy, the forces of secularism and/or unapologetic Gaian paganism are strong enough in the coastal cities to mount an effective resistance, hence in the interest of profit the corporations will have to adopt at least the pretense of tolerance outside the officially Christian domains. The second pair of antitheticals is the accelerating passage toward zero-tolerance tyranny manifest in the total surveillance state versus the accelerating passage toward entropy manifest in the ongoing and soon-to-be-total collapse of infrastructure both political and physical. However this conflict is resolved, it will be the ruin of the federal union as we know it. The fifth North American trend is the One Percent's effort to convert the 99 Percent to "human capital" in the original sense -- that is, from a workforce to slave labor. Even if that is largely successful -- and I believe it will be (the reason now at age 73 I celebrate the fact my one child did not survive beyond his mother's womb) -- the unmitigated horrors of life under slavery will nevertheless produce a people with strong basic survival skills, especially for living off the land, witness, for example the British Isles after the withdrawal of the Roman Legions. The counter-trend is the tendency of the One Percent to abandon North America entirely -- to seek greener pastures overseas amongst peoples who are easier to exploit and enslave. The seventh trend is the wild card: the fury of Gaia or Mother Nature. Eruption of the super-volcano heating up under Yellowstone could be as destructive to the United States as the eruption of Calliste (Thera) was in 1650 BCE to the global trading commonwealth that for a thousand years had been based on Crete. More superstorms of the Katrina/Sandy class will destroy more cities -- and as we see in New Orleans and New York, the One Percent has no intention of paying the costs of full recovery. These results of terminal climate change will undoubtedly wreak havoc. Based on history (and if indeed any humans at all survive), societies will be radically transformed. The more high-tech the technology, the more fragile it is; hence no surveillance state (or any other human construct) can ultimately withstand the forces of Nature.

Which means the great fear that is now driving the One Percent to ever-intensified tyranny -- the terror of losing control -- is almost certain to be fulfilled. What comes after that -- again note the example of post-Roman Europe -- will largely be determined by the societies that were there before the collapse. The human tendency is toward restoration -- note how efforts to restore the Roman Empire shape European politics to this day. Given that tendency, I see post-apocalyptic North America and Latin America each taking shape much as I described. As to a timeline, my sense is probably 50 years to total North American collapse and political contraction into smaller units (though Mother Nature could certainly accelerate that process), probably another 50 years to evolve the socioeconomic systems I described. And -- yes -- there are two hopeful elements implicit in this. One is that in the wake of Gaia's revenge, the god of Judaism, Christianity and Islam will be the god who failed, which portends an eventual end to Abrahamic theocracy. Conversely, the rise of feminism and environmentalism presage a new, Earth-centered religion a key purpose of which will be nurturing human sustainability. Indeed the Gaia Hypothesis -- essentially that Earth (and by implication the entire cosmos) is alive, conscious and self-regulating -- scientifically restates what was the core principle of all religions until the advent of the anti-Nature, anti-woman male super-gods mandated the imposition of patriarchy about 5000 years ago. And global warming may not continue indefinitely. When I studied geology in the 1970s, there was a computer model of the oceanic currents based on several million years of geological history that postulated once polar ice melt has raised the seas to a certain level, the currents (the Gulf Stream, the Japan Current etc.) will reverse, bringing cold air from the poles toward the equator -- starting the earth toward another ice age.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of a very complex estimate of probabilities, something I have been thinking about for nearly 50 years. Amongst its early influences were Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, Gastil's Cultural Regions of the United States, and Vacca's The Coming Dark Age, not to mention the experience of being two cars into the 14th Street Station on the Eighth Avenue IND when the still-unexplained blackout of 1965 hit the Northeast. After about an hour we passengers organized our own escape; I will never forget climbing from the Stygian darkness of the subway into a Manhattan illuminated only by a preternaturally brilliant full moon. The sense of witnessing prophecy -- of seeing the City as it will look a few hundred years from now -- literally stood my hair on end, as remembering it will still sometimes do even now.

Loren Bliss ~ Quite a thoughtful analysis from a non prophet. Kudos to you. Especially that section about global warming and the potential for the eruption of Yosemite.

Let me begin by saying I too am no prophet. However, I do believe the song, "Throwing Stones," was written by a Great Prophet. It would be worth it to check it out. If I'm right, the 1% and many, many others are goners. The future will be a better place to live... eventually. Here's the link again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WninWFtO0Gg

Loren Bliss

I find your comments interesting, provocative and scary. But you do toss out two somewhat optimistic possibilities--one on feminism and Gaia (despite some obvious contradictions such as our own Michelle Bachman) i think we'd have a much better country and world if women had at least half the power of men. The other is the possible reversability of climate change.

Keep writing.

Loren Bliss ~ Concerning a pure theocracy in the South and mid-states, I don't see that happening. For a theocracy to flourish it has to be accepted by the vast majority. The current fundamentalist influences in these areas are so laced with hypocrisy and hatred I don't see the vast multitude of any major region embracing it long enough for it to develop into a theocracy. If I'm wrong, I don't see that theocracy lasting very long. Eventually, it would become very hateful to the people.

I realize how ironic and confusing it may seem to many that in one post I attack slavery and in another I defend the actions of the descendants of slave owners. Please bare in mind that I only seek what is moral, legal and right. Just because a group in history has been on the wrong side of the law doesn't mean that they can never be on the right side of the law. I am not prejudiced in any way concerning the law or what is in the best interest of this country. I stand by my opinions. I'm sorry for any confusion.

Gary the Gun Nut: I think your position on "regulation" is flawed. If, by ANTICIPATING the illegal use of firearms either in-state or across state lines the federal government is preemptively restricting access to those individuals that, in its estimation (subject to some criteria that can only be guessed at when you take the long view) then it's violating the Constitution. What about the rights of all those individuals that might be arbitrarily excluded? Do you actually believe that our government is above this? And if it isn't, what is its underlying motive? Concern for the welfare of those injured or killed as a result of gun violence? Our government displays its compassion and concern for the sanctity of life every day in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

And as an aside to the "history writer", when I said in an earlier post that Obama was using every trick in the book to ram through his agenda of more stringent gun controls I was referring to his playing on the big public outpouring of sympathy for the children of Newtown, attending funerals, crying big crocodile tears, while his Vahrmacht continues to pour the equivalent of napalm on "brown children" in places far out of view.

But back to why your logic is flawed. An exact parallel exists in connection with the First Amendment. As you seem to be pretty familiar with the Constitution, I probably don't need to point out the fact that your freedom of speech cannot be abridged through "prior restraint". You can be drawn and quartered for a lot of things (a growing list it would seem - in the near future possibly even my present criticism of the Administration) by the Sedition Act, but the Constitution guarantees your right to say what you have to say. You cannot be preemptively cut off .... yet.

Naturally, yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater or opening up with an assault rifle in that same venue is and should be considered a felony. Likewise, restricting the sale of firearms to people with demonstrated serious mental issues and or criminal records, or children for that matter, only makes sense. But the legal system in this country is structured on the notion that an individual is innocent until "proven guilty". When you forget that principle, my friend, you are standing on a very slippery slope, whether you're a "gun nut" or not.

Outback & DAnnemarc..#34, #35, #36: Yes, I agree except I'd even go further to say that as I've heard so many others say...like Michael Hudson, Chris Hedges, and even Jeremy Scahill...that had Obama lost, the ruling elite with their puppet Republican President, would not have been able to get away with everything they have gotten away with under Obama.

I believe that the ruling elite knew this and actually supported Obama. Obama was the popular slick tongued devil that was actually backed by the ruling elite as a way to sneak in everything they wanted with very little opposition from Democrats.

They knew that there would be a natural tendency for Democrats to back a Democrat President...even if he is not acting very much like a liberal Democrat. The Democrat Congressmen don't want him to fail...because it would make the whole Democrat party look bad. But, it looks like the whole Democrat party looks bad anyway.

If a Republican had taken the Presidency...most of the Democrats would all be in opposition to every one of those Republican bills especially their attacks on Social Security and Medicare. The Democrats would have howled bloody murder. But with a "Democrat" turn-coat President there is not very much real opposition...just enough to make some constituents think, maybe, that it is still worthwhile to vote Democrat the next time around...but not enough to effectively stop the ruling elite from taking all they want.

Danne: Of course these slave owners didn't write "white men." Although that's what they actually meant. Not just white men but propertied white men. It may have been unconstitutional but these guys were willing to trade off American rights for the signatures that would allow the government to have a constitution and move forward.

The whole writing of the Constitution was far more complex and fraught than most of us know.

Let me recommend to ALL of you that you watch Peter Sagal narrating the 4-PART PBS special that starts next week--May 7, I'm pretty sure. Then come back and tell us about it.

It's things like this that should cause Americans to look honestly at the Constitution and how it was created, not as a sacred document that is absolutely unchangeable -- the so called strict constructionists (Does that include the guys who made Citizens United ther law of the land). If we can ever quit bowing down in the belief that angels and various other heavenly creatures hammered out the constitution and left it infallible (much like the Pope I suppose), we might be able to get some revisions that would address modern, 21st society. (And let it be revised again, if necessary, for the 22st and so on.)