From the February 2009 Idaho Observer:


States entertaining new round of 10th Amendment resolutions

Legislators from at least eight states have introduced "10th Amendment resolutions" for consideration during the 2009 legislative session. The following list of states are currenty considering or have already passed 10th Amendment resolutions: AL, AK, AR, CA, CO, GA, HI, ID, IN, KS, ME, MI, MO, MT, NH, NV, OK, PA, TX and WA. While the text of each resolution may vary, the purpose and intent does not: The federal government is to cease its encroachments and adhere to limitations imposed upon it by the Constitution. Most of the 10th Amendment resolutions came as a result of the work by Dr. Eugene Schroeder in the 90s when the Clintons were nationalizing land and destroying rural America under the guise of environmentalism. The renewed interest has been prompted by several "notices" of overreaching federal intent being promoted by Obama as "change we can live with." The most powerful 10th Amendment resolution introduced this year comes from New Hampshire, a truncated version of which appears below:

HCR 6—State of New Hampshire, 2009 Legislative session

A RESOLUTION affirming States’ rights based on Jeffersonian principles.

Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 1, Article 7 declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto, which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in congress assembled; and

Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 2, Article 1 declares that the people inhabiting the territory formerly called the province of New Hampshire, do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each other, to form themselves into a free, sovereign and independent body-politic, or State, by the name of The State of New Hampshire; and

Whereas the State of New Hampshire when ratifying the Constitution for the United States of America recommended as a change, "First That it be Explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly & particularly Delegated by the aforesaid are reserved to the several States to be, by them Exercised;" and

Whereas the other States that included recommendations, to wit Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia, included an identical or similar recommended change; and

Whereas these recommended changes were incorporated as the ninth amendment, the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and the tenth amendment, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, to the Constitution for the United States of America; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring:

That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress; and...

[The 2,300-word resolution goes on with a spirit that would have made the Founders proud and includes forming committees of correspondence to send representatives as diplomatic envoys to discuss matters with the legislatures of the several states].