6-16-25

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…..