Dangers Are Coming to the Rule of Law, by Andrew J. Napolitano

Has President Trump ever focused his variegated thought processes long enough to read the Constitution end to end? “No way” is the betting favorite. From Andrew J. Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

Amid the bad news this summer of racial tensions in Charlottesville and biblical-like floods in Houston and preening saber rattling between Pyongyang and Washington, a dangerous below-the-radar trend has been developing about which all who believe that the Constitution means what it says should be concerned. It is the reckless influence upon local law enforcement coming from the Trump administration.

Here is the back story.

When the states joined the union, they gave certain powers to the federal government, and they kept others to themselves.

The powers surrendered are articulated in the Constitution, and the 10th Amendment clarifies the truism that those powers not surrendered have been retained.

The traditional terminology for the powers retained is the “police power.” The police power does not refer to police as in cops on the streets, but it does refer to states’ powers to make laws and policies that are often enforced by cops on the streets.

In constitutional parlance, police power is the right and obligation of each state to legislate for the health, safety, welfare and morality of people in the state.

This is basically what state governments — and local governments with the approval of their state governments — do. And it is basically what the Constitution was written to prevent the federal government from doing.

Those who wrote, ratified and amended the Constitution all took pains to keep the police power out of the hands of the federal government for several reasons. One was federalism. The states are sovereign entities, 13 of which are older than the federal government. By retaining the police power in the states, the Constitution’s drafters provided a check — a limitation — on the reach of the federal government.

To continue reading: Dangers Are Coming to the Rule of Law