As the state coordinator for the Campaign for Liberty, I wanted to address the Wisconsin State Journal editorial, The Tea Party Risks Irrelevance.
The writer for some reason thinks that it is absurd that we have state's rights that supersede the federal government’s power. After all, the constitution was written to form a small and limited federal government while leaving the rest of the rights to the states or to the people of those states. Because of this, the states have the right to nullify unconstitutional federal law. The Supreme Court and the federal government are not the final arbiter of what is or is not constitutional — the states are.
The media stories have only focused on the arrest provisions of our bill and have ignored the bigger fact that nullifying federal law is fully within states’ rights and has been used many times.
Recently we have seen many examples of states nullifying federal law. REAL ID, for example, was nullified by more that two dozen states. REAL ID was a law passed by the federal government essentially forcing everyone into a national database and forcing unified identification cards on all Americans. Two dozen states refused to enforce this law within their borders and thus, while still on the books, the federal law is not enforced in the states.
Let’s take a look at another law that is being nullified in more than a dozen states and most recently Colorado and Washington — the law that makes marijuana illegal. It is federal law that marijuana is an illegal substance, yet states are evoking states rights and nullification to say that those laws are null and void in their states.
If the Campaign for Liberty had been proposing nullifying federal law to legalize marijuana, stopping the arrest of illegal immigrants, or when it was used by Wisconsin to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, I am willing to bet the author would be in favor.
The objection to this nullification bill is simply because it is going to be used to stop ObamaCare in Wisconsin, plain and simple.
In closing, we knew we would not get the press we wanted on this issue. But because of the press that we are receiving, nullification is making the rounds and people are becoming educated on the rights of their state to stop unconstitutional federal law.
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