Pirate's Cove

The “or something” refers to the crazy headline at The Daily Beast “Exclusive: GOP Senate Candidate Caught Saying States Can Nullify Laws” which is not born out by the article

Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, appears to believe states can nullify federal laws. In a video obtained by The Daily Beast, Ernst said on September 13, 2013 at a forum held by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition that Congress should not pass any laws “that the states would consider nullifying.”

“You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator why should we be passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws. We’re right…we’ve gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going against the Tenth Amendment’s states’ rights. We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be passing laws as federal legislators—as senators or congressman—that the states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line.”

Except, she did not specifically state that states can nullify laws, she said that Congress should not pass laws that states might consider nullifying. There is a difference. Many states are truly unhappy about many of the insane laws passed by Washington. This is a direct result of the passage of the 17th Amendment, which made Senators directly elected by the citizens, rather than appointed by the state legislators. No longer are Senators representatives of their state government, who put their states first, but minions of their national parties, simply looking at national solutions (or, is that “solutions”?).

Ernst, a first-term state senator, has never explicitly supported pro-nullification legislation in her time in the Iowa state senate. However, she co-sponsored a resolution that says “the State of Iowa hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.” It was introduced in response to “many federal mandates [that] are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

Good grief, a legislator who apparently thinks highly of the Constitution! The nerve! But, she never said that states can nullify.