6-16-25
Monologue:
Tenth Amendment Under Fire
Triple Dipper:
1. Army Strong
2. Citizen Legislators
3. California Dreaming
Guests
3pm: MG Joe Arbuckle
3:30: former State Senator Scott Beason
4pm: former CA State Senator Melissa Melendez
Resources
1. Army Strong
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-hosts-surprised-lack-dark-malevolent-energy-military-parade-dc
2. Citizen Legislators
https://www.foxnews.com/us/suspected-minnesota-lawmaker-assassin-vance-boelter-captured
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/06/16/so-the-mn-dem-shooting-suspect-never-worked-for-a-private-security-firm-n2658851
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-responds-to-attack-on-state-lawmakers-such-horrific-violence-will-not-be-tolerated
3. California Dreaming
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/14/the-week-trump-rocked-california-00405932
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2025/06/15/padilla-interview-on-cnn-n2190525
https://www.foxnews.com/media/john-fetterman-bill-maher-agree-chaos-la-dem-reaction-riots-good-trump
Rightside Way Monologue
This past weekend was so full of newsworthy stories that literally had to pick and
choose where to go with today’s show…..Israel versus Iran….Ukraine funding
being downgraded…..riots in Portland and LA…..the awesome 250 th birthday
celebration of the US Army…..and so much more…..but one story struck me as
being particularly newsworthy…..maybe because it struck close to home…..this
past weekend two state legislators in Minnesota, along with their spouses, were
gunned down in their homes in what was believed to be targeted attacks…..there is
so much that we don’t know about it all….but after a massive manhunt the shooter
was captured this morning…..he had posed as a police officer, came to the doors of
the former Speaker of the Minnesota House, and a State Senator…..and for reasons
that are yet unknown he gunned them down…..regardless of his motivations, what
we do know is that it was something about their positions as lawmakers in their
state legislature that made them the targets…..as many of you know I served in the
Alabama State Senate for 8 years…..it was an honor, and one of the highlights of
my very full life….it was some of the most meaningful professional time of my
adult existence….there were any number of times when I knew that I was able to
make a difference, able to provide relief, pass a law, intervene for a
constituent….but the most disappointing and sometimes shocking aspect of it was
how many people viewed anyone who dared to run for office as automatically
corrupt and no longer worthy of common courtesy…..I saw it all…..People who I
went to church with who suddenly wouldn’t give me the time of day…..people I
had never met claiming they knew things about me that had no bearing in
reality….people who would shout foul things in a public square while I rode by in
a parade or cut a ribbon…..people who would demand some funding, some
attention, some pork project, and then scream epithets and claim that they would
make sure I never ran for office again…..there were kooks, to be sure…..most of it
just rolled off the back, and made no never mind to me….but then there were some
that stood out….like the middle of the night calls from teachers union members
because the teachers union had doxed me and encouraged their folks to call and
rail…..or the attempts to smear my name on social media…..or finding out that
discussions were being had about my children….yelling at me as I jogged my
neighborhood…..anger, shaking fists, mocking….the guy who stormed into my
law firm and angrily slapped a written hate note down on the desk that he just had
to deliver personally…..or the threatening letters that showed up in my mailbox
without a stamp on them meaning that someone had delivered them to my house
personally…..none of that is okay…..and I wasn’t just some solo act, every single
member of the state house and senate probably have their own versions of those
stories…..my point is twofold…..one, those things are not okay – not in a civilized
society – not in a world where civil discourse is supposed to be civil……and two,
state legislators pass the laws that govern our state but they do it as a part time job
and they live right there in your neighborhood…..with very few exceptions every
person in the nation who chooses to run for the State House or Senate of their
respective state is a part-time legislator who still eats in your restaurants, goes to
your churches, shops in your stores, and runs their business, or works their job, just
like the rest of you……they are real people, and they are dangerously accessible to
kooks who would try to do them harm…..
But the role of a state legislator is imperative…..every state has them…..and they
are sometimes more impactful on our daily lives than anything that comes out of
DC…..the members of the state House and Senate are the embodiment of the Tenth
Amendment to the US Constitution…..
The Founding Fathers knew their business!.....they were operating on an inspired
level as they passed the first ten amendments to the US Constitution…..commonly
referred to as the Bill of Rights….those ten amendments were drafted and passed
within just a few years of the drafting of the Constitution itself and for the most
part the Bill of Rights was also prepared by many of the same founding fathers
who drafted the original document…..not without some fuss mind
you….apparently debate got pretty heated over some but in the end they were
adopted, duly passed, ratified by the Colonies, and enshrined as actual rights…and
I want to stress these are “rights”, not permissions, not opportunities, not
allowances…..but rights! It’s the difference between the words “may” and
“shall”…..if I were to tell you that you may have a right to bear arms, or you may
have a right to free speech….well, that would not mean near as much as saying that
your right to bear arms “shall” not be infringed……or that Congress “Shall” make
no law respecting an establishment of religion or abridging the freedom of
speech….rights are imperatives….they are deemed absolute in nature….they are
defensible….and they are designed to barriers to tyranny and crime…..
People talk often of the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments…..Freedom of
speech, freedom of religion, the right to assemble, the right to bear arms, and the
right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure….but the Tenth Amendment
is what keeps DC from taking over everything…..let me just quote the actual
verbiage:
The Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution states – “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”……why was this
important?....why did the founders spend so much time seceding from Great
Britain….absolving themselves of a monarchial form of government only to pass
an amendment that seems to limit their newly found governmental powers by
giving away part of that authority to other bodies of governance at the state level?
It’s a worthy question and it comes down to the fact that we are a
Republic….founded upon the concept of federalism…..Two words that are key to
all of it: Republic and federalism…..a republic, meaning that we are a public form
of government, one in which the people have their say through elected
representation……and federalism, meaning that it is designed not to be one
central form of government which holds all power and authority but must in fact be
shared with the states…..They Tenth Amendment is a wall against tyranny….
When the American colonies declared their independence from the British crown
they really declared their desire to live freely, to be able to have a say in their own
day-to-day affairs……they had none of that in pre-revolution colonial days…..they
all lived and worked and had the privilege of doing so at the discretion of the
King…..a centralized government, with no fetters or restraints is the base
ingredient for tyranny and the founding fathers knew that……when they built the
framework for the three branches of government – the Legislative, the Executive,
and the Judicial – it was all designed for checks and balances….the ability of one
branch of government to have some authorities that others didn’t because they
knew that without those checks and balances that ultimate power would wind up
vesting itself so deeply in one single form of governance that they would be right
back where they started from…..but they also saw a need to make sure that one
detached form of federal government…..sitting in our nations capital…..could not
decree from afar that which did not make sense for the outlying states…..when all
power and decision making authority is vested in one office…..potentially one
person….the temptation to do all that comes to that persons mind can prove to be
alarmingly overwhelming…..and the consequences can be horrific…..
Every state has their own governance and their own sovereign right to make
determinations as to what constitutes the protections, health, wellbeing, and legal
standards by which their respective state shall abide…..States also have a
sovereign duty to protect and defend the interests of their citizens against
encroachments by the federal government…..they do, its real…..we cannot have an
unrestrained majority that focuses all of its power into one place to the detriment of
all else and all others…..every time you hear that Alabama’s Legislature is passing
laws that differ from other states, or the Attorney General is taking legal action
against the federal government…..that stance is predicated upon the fact that we
have a tenth amendment to the US Constitution that gives our Governor, our State
Legislature, and our Attorney General the right to do so……the Founding Fathers
knew what they were doing….they had lived through it…..they knew that
devolving power outside of central government was key…..a Republic…..and
Federalism…..the Tenth Amendment is a wall against tyranny….and state
legislators, for all of their warts and blemishes….of whatever party they are
involved with…..regardless of whether they are liberal or conservative, Republican
or Democrat….they are people who have chosen to grab ahold of the Tenth
Amendment and act on it…..
What happened in Minnesota to two members of their state assembly cannot
happen in a civilized society…..you don’t have to respect their views, but you do
need to respect their jobs…..State legislators are really citizen legislators…..they
are the Tenth Amendment in action….
And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way…..