Herbert and Krugman are closer to the mark- in 1980 to a majority it was a coded appeal to bigotry. How many constitutional scholars/criminal defense attorneys  do you think attended the 1980 Neshoba County fair?  

Furthermore there is the issue of the head of the GOP in Mississippi giving Reagan a memo on attracting "Wallace Voters". What in the heck do you suppose that was about?

Finally in Mississippi, in my experience between about 1975-1980 telling bigoted jokes even among whites only was frowned upon. After 1980, people assumed, because I was white and everyone there was white, that it was Ok and that no-one would take offense.

Most women are killed by their significant other, current or former. Some HUGE problems like this should be tackled by the whole country.

The question is NOT what you or Grits for Breakfast thinks "states rights" meant, it is what Reagan and Republicans mean.

Once the SR arguments in support of segregation were demolished and demonized, no one bothered to re-establish that SR was a valid concept. Another example of no one wanting to argue against a PC concept. See BTD's comment for a typical reaction and comment used as a political attack.

In other words, we were successful in getting what we wanted, but now we find that we are not happy with ALL that we got.

NACDL urges Congress to reject its tendency to federalize crime and repeal legislation that is contrary to our system of federalism and sound crime control policy.

In recent years, crime bills have granted federal prosecutors greater and greater authority by creating more federal crimes out of historically state and local crimes. For example, domestic violence, carjacking and failure to pay child support are traditionally the prerogative of state and local governments; federal jurisdiction is unwarranted, unwise and contrary to the Constitution. Regarding these and other federalized crimes, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed that "one senses from the context in which they were enacted that the question of whether the states were doing an adequate job in this particular area was never seriously asked."

Before enacting federal criminal legislation, Congress should consider whether a federal interest is implicated and whether the state or local remedy is inadequate to address that interest. The impact on federal law enforcement and court resources should also be assessed.

...Likewise, in the collaborative article, Justice That Makes Sense (1998), the then-leaders of the nation's three largest criminal justice groups -- NACDL President Gerald B. Lefcourt, National District Attorneys Association President William L. Murphy, and ABA Criminal Justice Section Chair Ronald Goldstock -- agreed: "Criminal and social problems are increasingly being addressed by the Congress with what many have come to regard as a purely political response -- calls to federalize more criminal activity and to lengthen already unwieldy prison terms. . . . There can be little doubt that increased federal prosecutive authority has adversely affected the Department of Justice's ability to fulfill its role of enforcing traditional federal offenses."

The problem is that the title "states' rights" was taken over to mean almost exclusively resistance by (southern) states to enforcement of civil rights laws.  Those laws stemmed from and sought to end practices (primarily in those southern states) which resulted in a war which those states lost.  And they never got over that.

I do not know whether it is, at this point in our history, even possible to rectify the meaning of "states' rights" away from that narrow racist one and toward rebalancing the relationship between the federal government, the states, and the people they both (should) exist to serve.

Moreover, the point TL is trying to make - that the federal government has simply overwhelmed the states and gone into too many places where federal involvement is not appropriate - is only highlighted by one of the cases pending in the S.Ct. this term - Medillin v. Dretke.  

That is the capital case out of Texas involving the Vienna Convention.  Astute readers will remember is it the case in which Bushie decided that he could just order Texas to comply with the Vienna Convention (providing aliens in custody with access to consular representatives) because he, as Preznit, claims to have sole authority to dictate on issues involving foreign affairs, and can tell states what to do (without going to a judge or a court) under/through the Supremacy Clause.  It put Killer George in the curious position of siding with the captial defendant against the Texas government, but that only came about because a ruling in Bushie's favor would mean he could rule by decree.  The transparent fraudulency of his position and its use as a vehicle for another power grab was made manifest when, after tying that case into knots, Bushie seems to have tried (and may have succeeded, IIRC) in withdrawing the US from the Vienna Convention.

(And please note the capitalization; it was not a mistake on the Founder's part. Each State was meant to be in essence a nation among a federation of nations, not provinces as today's States essentially are.)

'Federalism' was meant to re-invigorate that concept, and was and still is favored by many rank-and-file Republicans. But with Raich that concept has been shot down in flames...thanks to a largely Republican dominated Supreme Court. The irony of this canot be overemphasized.

Like every dynamic society, ours has evolved far from the original form. Universal suffrage, laws ensuring equal treatment regardless of race, creed, color (and no doubt in the future, laws against discriminating against those with differing sexual preferences) etc., would not be undone without violence in the streets. The cultural precedent has been set. To claim that a return to 'state's rights', even were it possible, would result in the re-institution of such abominations as slavery (as some commenters on other sites have claimed it would) becomes an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, and isn't worthy of comment.

  In any real sense, the concept of states' sovereignty was decided by the Civil War because once the idea that a State cannot secede and membership in the Union is not voluntary is eliminated it is difficult to speak in terms of states'"sovereignty." The EU shares many (but not all) characteristics with our Union, but because each member nation can withdraw it still makes sense to describe the EU members as "sovereign."

  In terms of the balance of power here, I like many people tend to be pragmatic rather than pure. Most people want the Feds to control sectors if and when the Federal government imposes a regime more closely aligned with their preferences but object to federal control when when the Federal government  imposes a regime less in accordance with personal preferences than my state would.

  Abortion is a prime example of an area where most liberals support federal usurpation of state power. Inconsistently, in "federalism terms"  many liberals however strongly denounce federal usurpation of power over regulation of marriage.

  If we are honest, most of us must admit that we are not primarily "federalists" or anti-federalists" but rather goal-seeking pragmatists exalting the power of those allied and seeking to lessen the power of those opposed-- and out "federalism" views vary from issue to issue depending on the nature of the policy alignment in that area.

Do you think there is a principled way to distinguish the federal interstate commerce power over crimes and the IC power to pass civil legislation?  For instance, United States v. Lopez (1995) was a criminal case under the Gun Free School Zones Act.  But United States v. Morrison (2000) started because Christy Brzonkala brought a civil suit for damages against Morrison (one of the guys who raped her) and the defendant challenged the constitutionality of the Violence against Women Act (VAWA).  Both cases restrict the power of Congress to  pass laws under the IC clause.

For policy reasons, I think that Congress passes far too many criminal statutes and that we would be better off without the feds and the state double-teaming.  On the other hand, federal power over interstate commerce is the basis of the Fair Labor Standards Act (the wage and hour law), Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and many other civil rights statutes.

How can a court strike down just the criminal statutes and not the civil rights statutes?

Gonzales v. Raich is the recent case in which the Supreme Court upheld federal drug control laws against a Commerce Clause challenge when  California residents argued their use of the marijuana was lawful under California law (as "medical marijauna"), but it violated the federal Controlled Substances Act.  The Californians sought an injunction to prevent the enforcement of the federal law against
them arguing Congress lacked power under the Commerce Clause to regulate their marijuana because they either grew it themselves solely for their personal use or obtained locally (in-state) grown marijuana for free.

  The Supreme Court upheld the federal statute (21 U.S.C. § 801 et seq.), finding it constitutional following the precedent of Wickard v. Filburn (this is the famous 1942 ase which held Congress could regulate (forbid) a farmer's growing of wheat even where he grew the wheat solely for his and his family's personal consumption).

   The Raich Court said: Wickard thus establishes that Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself "commercial," in that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity.

 This is the downstream effect of a New Deal era case in which the Court made the profound discovery that the Congress can under the ICC, regulate activity that is neither interstate nor commercial.