Yesterday, the Kentucky legislature gave final approval to a bill that will set the state on the road to full compliance with REAL ID.
Gov. Bevin has expressed support for the bill and will likely sign it into law.
Pres. G.W. Bush signed the REAL ID Act in 2005, creating a framework that was meant to coerce the states into creating a national ID system. I wrote an article last month explaining more about this unconstitutional exercise of federal power, and why the Kentucky legislature should resist it. Implementation of REAL ID creates grave privacy concerns. and the state of Kentucky simply doesn’t have the resources to comply with this massive unfunded federal mandate. But more importantly, the federal government lacks any constitutional authority to create a national ID system.
As North Carolina ratifying convention delegate James Iredell put it, a law “not warranted by the Constitution is a bare-faced usrupation.” Kentucky, and every other state, should resist REAL ID based on that fact alone.
James Madison wrote, “…the state legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operation of this government, and be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power than any other power on earth can do; and the greatest opponents to a federal government admit the state legislatures to be sure guardians of the people’s liberty.”
Yesterday’s vote in the Kentucky legislature demonstrates how completely the states have failed in their role as a check on federal power. In fact, states have effectively become just another branch of the federal government – servants doing the bidding of their overlords in D.C. in exchange for the occasional scrap from Uncle Sam’s table.
If you click HERE, you will find a list of all of the Kentucky state legislators who voted to fund and implement an unconstitutional federal ID system. You will find my representative Robert Benvenuti and my senator Alice Forgy Kerr in the “yes” column.
Fact: every man and woman who voted for REAL ID is an oath breaker.
Some will accuse me of hyperbole. But in fact, each one of those senators and representatives violated their oath to defend and protect the constitution. Soon, Gov. “tell the feds to pound sand” Bevin will join them.
James Madison wrote that that “in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.”
State officers have a duty to resist unconstitutional federal actions. The people they represent depend on them to serve as a check on federal power. They swear an oath to do so.
Kentucky’s state government failed.
When state legislators and executive officials swear to protect and defend the constitution, they make solemn promise to do everything within their power to maintain the integrity of the American constitutional system. That includes resisting federal usurpation of state power.
The Kentucky legislature did the exact opposite of “protect and defend.” Instead it chose to become complicit in shredding the Constitution.
Wrap your head around this: the Kentucky legislature just set the mechanisms of state government in motion to actively assist the federal government in creating a national ID – a clear violation of the Constitution. Gov. Bevin will approve it.
James Madison some harsh words for those complicit in allowing government overreach.
“The preservation of a free Government requires not merely, that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants.”
