House Bill 1076 by state Representative Steve Toth (R-The Woodlands) would prohibit any state agency or agency employee from enforcing a federal statute or regulation on firearms or firearm accessories that does not exist under Texas state law. Any agency that violated this prohibition would not be allowed to receive state grant funds for the fiscal year in which a violation occurred.This is only one of a raft of bills* that recently passed significant legislative hurdles in the same week when the NRA held a big rally in Houston, including proposals to eliminate criminal penalties for inadvertent display of a concealed weapon, to streamline the CHL license procedure, to penalize state agencies that post erroneous notices prohibiting the carrying of weapons, to limit the ability of private college campuses to restrict the transport of licensed firearms in students' cars, and to allow police to auction seized firearms rather than destroy them, if they can't be returned to their rightful owners.
It's nice to get cheerful political news now and then. If you'll excuse me, I've got to go pop some corn in preparation for the kick-off of the Benghazi hearings. To my amazement, the subject is finally getting coverage on CBS, PBS, and CNN. Even more shocking: on NBC and in the Washington Post. The NewYork Times has gone so far as to publish comments from its Public Editor about whether the New York Times should be covering the story. Much of the coverage naturally focuses on attempts by unscrupulous Republicans to politicize a story about the Obama administration's presidential campaign strategy to leave Americans to die without help overseas and then lie about it.
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*I got the House bill information from an NRA email update, but the website is here.
7 comments:
I like this concept of states forcing the Federal government to defend a host of nullification crises at once. I think I would like it just as much if it were liberal states doing it. A 10th Amendment supporter ought to want to see the Feds forced to defend every inch they seek beyond the actual text of the Constitution's enumerated powers.
I wonder about Benghazi. It isn't too hard to imagine that one might hang the consulate out to dry to keep secret from the enemy some sensitive contacts. That's not unheard-of in wartime. Or they could have been abandoned from incompetence and confusion, or because they were doing something they didn't want Americans to know about.
I already know that Obama et al are willing to sacrifice national security for political advantage (thereby losing them the benefit of the doubt), but I wish I were more confident that the Republicans won't play politics with national secrets too.
Somehow we've got to get past the idea that any attempt to hold people to account for really ugly crimes should be dismissed as motivated by politics. Otherwise the only people who will be authorized to investigate crimes by high-ranking political officials will be their own political supporters, and the behavior of the administration and the traditional media have thoroughly established what a futile hope that is.
Destroying an enemy in war by cutting off the sinews of their funding is a classic concept.
Wow, that's a real mangling of Cicero's comment on financing warfare, and where does that have any application to the state nullification of Federal laws?
It seems pretty clear to me. Texas can't directly overturn federal law, but it can remove state funding from any state agency that persists in enforcing federal law in preference to Texas law. The feds can then send in (and fund) their own enforcers if they like. State agency employees who are unhappy about it can quit and go to work for the feds.
It's kind of an interesting reversal of the Arizona immigration-law conundrum, where the state wants to spend its own money enforcing a federal law, but the feds don't want the law enforced and actually go to the trouble and expense of suing to stop it.
It's also of a piece with Perry's demand that the Feds return to the physical possession of Texas all the Texas gold currently stored in Ft Knox.
Eric Hines
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