Last updated on 2021-10-18
South Dakota Republicans aren’t the only gun nuts who’ve been pushing bills to nullify federal laws regulating firearms. Republican legislators across the country are ignoring the Constitution and betraying the Union by arguing that local cops should have more authority than the United States Constitution:
Federal nullification bills have been introduced in more than a dozen other states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wyoming, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa. In Texas, the governor has called for the state to become a Second Amendment sanctuary.
In Arizona, a Senate proposal that passed the chamber on Wednesday would allow officers to be sued for enforcing federal gun restrictions that the state considers violations of the Second Amendment. They potentially could face criminal charges [Lindsay Whitehurst, “GOP State Lawmakers Seek to Nullify Federal Gun Limits,” AP via U.S. News & World Report, 2021.03.04].
One such secessionist bill, Senator Jessica Castleberry’s (R-35/Rapid City) Senate Bill 129, died in Senate State Affairs. Senator David Johnson (R-33/Rapid City) proposed a much broader nullification measure, Senate Bill 122, which would have usurped judicial authority and given the South Dakota Legislature power to declare any federal law unconstitutional. That radical proposal also perished on first committee contact in Senate State Affairs.
Rookie Representative Aaron Aylward (R-6/Harrisburg) tried nullifying federal authority over our National Guard with House Bill 1122, which didn’t get out of committee. But Rep. Aylward has gotten a little further with his other nullification bills (yes, plural… perhaps explaining why Aylward prefers a Gray suit over Union Blue). Rep. Aylward tucked nullification of gun restrictions into his House Bill 1194, which would have subjected a wide range of Presidential orders to nullification. HB 1194 survived the House but died in Senate Judiciary Thursday. Another quasi-treasonous act from Rep. Aylward, House Bill 1075, would nullify federal laws and executive orders authorizing extreme risk protection orders—“red flag” laws—that could keep mentally unstable people from accessing guns. Senate State Affairs killed HB 1075 Wednesday, but a repressive minority revived it Thursday in last week’s smoke-out orgasm.
We should be uneasy that so many South Dakota legislators want to break away from the Union. But for now we can take solace over the fact that, should any of these nullification acts pass, we can immediately overturn them in court. If HB 1075’s smokeout works and gives Governor Noem a chance to put her pen to her opposition to red flag laws, this attempt to nullify potential federal laws will not survive judicial scrutiny. See the South Dakota Constitution’s Bill of Rights, Article 6, Section 26, last sentence:
All political power is inherent in the people, and all free government is founded on their authority, and is instituted for their equal protection and benefit, and they have the right in lawful and constituted methods to alter or reform their forms of government in such manner as they may think proper. And the state of South Dakota is an inseparable part of the American Union and the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land [SD Const., Art. 6, Sec. 26].
That one sentence makes pretty clear that any bill seeking to separate South Dakota from the American Union by setting our laws above the legislative and executive actions of the Constitutional federal government are illegal.
I guess Aylward, Johnson, Castleberry and the other secessionists in the Capitol are free to have their fun. But put any of that traitorous garbage into law, and your “law” will end up in court, and you will lose.
Seems sort of like ‘Cancel Culture’ to me. Or am I missing something?
You know it’s simply that pubs like to spend the peoples money foolishly.
Seriously, if these legislators can’t support our form of government, why are they still here? They should be ushered out of the legislature and sent back where their ancestors came from.
It’s not that I think the federal government does everything right. I have engaged in plenty of protests, legal challenges, grassroots organizing and legislative efforts to correct what I thought were federal overreaching or mistakes. If you’ve got a beef with the way the federal government does something, there are ways to correct it. Secessionist legislation ain’t it; voting and peaceful activism is.
It’s not surprising that these bills get dropped in the hopper, because these type folks don’t like people voting. They hate activism. They hate democracy. They love and engage in sedition, illegality and unconstitutional bills that pander to the dumb crowd. What they stand for and what they do is anti-American.
What did these folks do during the most corrupt, most incompetent Administration in American history? NOTHING. Did they fight the nearly infinite lawlessness of the Trump Administration? NO.
Generally, I supported Obama’s policies, but when it came to that administration’s nuclear waste borehole effort, I opposed it, wrote letters against it, reached out to help people in South Dakota get information about it, and encouraged South Dakotans to work against it. Local governments listened to the people. And local governments told the Obama Administration to forget it. That’s how you do it, not some secessionist law.
There is something to be said for the notion that lawyers make better law-makers compared to the kind of lawmakers one gets from go cart mechanics and lumber salesmen.
Mr. Pay, I remind you that you are not a resident of South Dakota, and as such have no voting rights in these matters. By extension, since you are not a South Dakotan, your opinions in these matters are diminished to a point that probably doesn’t really register at all with the voters in South Dakota. I talk to people frequently about the out-of-stater meddling, and everybody I speak to are angry about it.
grudznick knows you know this, but people here in South Dakota do resonate with grudznick and speak to me often. It is simply easier for me to hit up the coffee shops than it is for a Wisconsinite to really gauge the feelings in the belly of the masses here, in South Dakota, where over the next few days the final decisions will be made by the legislatures. You should hump over here and help them be made.
Off the topic, but is there a chance that Mr. Biden will support the re-digging of The Borehole? I mean, was that not green as all get out ?
FYI grudzi, Donald Pay was capable of, and did more for the well-being of all South Dakotans in the years he lived here as resident than you in your wildest wet-dreams ever could imagine! You and your kind welcome ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council, hard-ass right-wing bunch of out-of-staters that foster, breed and get these crazy ideas into state legislatures) all the time and blather with your gravy-laden breath while espousing all the goodness of the GOP that is no longer the grand old party of Lincoln, a great President that would have taken your golden-boy Tr*** and pilloried him with verbiage the way he split rails….
and Grudz, just like your hero Tr***, you like to say “People all over are sayin'” and you fall right in with his ilk.
FYI Gov Noem sent her legal counsel to Senate Judiciary to express her endorsement of one of the anti-Constitution bills. Luckily there were enough patriots on the committee to kill it
Mr. jake, you seem to need to get ahold of yourself as you appear a bit on a spin, spittle flying, out of control.
In your blathering you have misplaced where grudznick stands related to Mr. Trump. You should go back and review, or perhaps ask Mr. Pay to set you right. I know all about Mr. Pay’s fine service, likely more than you know about Mr. Pay, yet you know nothing about grudznick and Mr. Pay does.
You should squire up, get knowledgeable, and then Don Quixote up to The Donald Pay.
Then you can talk, Mr. jake. Until then, you are just a libble blatherer who contributes yet another goat to grudznick.
Noem’s lawyers are probably as damn dumb as drumpf”s crack team of legal loonies.
If I was a betting man, I’d place my money of Donald Pay’s connections in South Dakota being better informed and educated than mealy mouthed magats Grudzilla cultivates.
Mr. mike, grudznick can understand that because you are from Iowa you don’t understand, but what you need to bet on is Mr. Schoenbeck and his next moves. Mr. Schoenbeck and his fellows in the legislature are where you need to focus your attention, not on where grudznick herds the goats from you I have gotten. Watch Mr. Schoenbeck very carefully these next 3 days. If you can. From Iowa.
Corey, I do appreciate your reporting but please see the difference between nullification and secession. There’s a difference. Restoration of federalism does not mean that one wants to secede.
Also, please review the supremacy clause (in pursuance thereof), Article II of the US constitution, the 9th and 10th amendments to the US constitution, Federalist 45 and 46, the nullification of the fugitive slave act in various states in our union’s history, and the anti-commandeering doctrine.
I’ll also be wearing my blue suit tomorrow, if you’d like a picture? 😉
Well…as Walter observes in “The Big Lebowski” “Nihilists…”
I’m not going to get sucked into crypto-fascist word games. Representative Aylward has been trying to pull South Dakota out of the Union by passing state laws that would declare federal law inapplicable in our borders.
Nullification of unconstitutional acts passed by Congress has a long storied history in the USA. It was thanks to such heroic people that the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was nullified to the point that 🤔 white supremacists seceded from the USA, formed the Confederacy, and we all know the rest of the story.
It wasn’t Liberty minded young Republicans that seceded from the USA, it was such people who nullified the unconstitutional Fugitive Slave Act and who opposed slavery.
Perhaps grudznick would care to demonstrate the notion of his and the GOP’s commitment to transparency and drop the pseudonym in favor of hoc verum nomen eius? No? Yeah – thought not.
Aaron Aylward – Psychiatry knows that psychosis LOVES to immerse and imbed itself in complex machinations of thought mazes. All the better to hide escapes hatches from rationality in little cracks of “logic” structures based on the camouflage of false premises. Just sayin’.
well…now its psychotic nihilists….it explains “Hang Mike Pence”…that’s next in South Dakota
At least DD agrees with us that nullification is bad and should be opposed no matter which party’s fringes are pushing it to unravel the Republic.
Grudz, I see that you took my name in vain. Tsk, tsk, tsk. No, I am not a resident anymore, but I have opinions, and since opinions easily cross state lines via electrons, they come to pollute your eyes. You are always free to ignore my missives, since everyone else does.
Regarding nuclear waste boreholes, I am also concerned that Biden’s Administration may reverse one of the few good Trump policies which ended that effort. Trump also ended the idea of formalizing a process for “consent,” a decision which pretty much negates the whatever he did on the borehole issue. So, really, Trump was all over the map on this. He preferred dictatorial policies which could change anytime Stormy Daniels moaned, so he could have stuck South Dakota with nuclear waste, and it could be right now in your rectum, and he didn’t even tell you.
The thing with Biden is he will do what he does on the nuclear waste borehole more out in the open. Yucca is done, so they will probably propose some sort of interim storage. South Dakota was trying to finagle something like that with their shale studies 5-10 years ago, but Texas and New Mexico have their foot in the door right now, though opposition is building to those sites. Sec. of Energy Granholm will push “consent,” and if she’s smart she will do that before she does anything else. What that will look like is up for grabs.
Texass got nukular waste dump because Guv “Good Hair” Perry got tons of campaign cash. legally and otherwise, from Harold Simmons who owned the proposed site for dumping waste.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/03/texas-nuclear-waste-dump/