On Sovereignty Alliance: Stealth Anti-Federalism

We received this from Sheridan Folger, of The Sovereignty Alliance on Ning.com today:

Attention, 10th Amendment fans, Here’s a little lesson in how laws get subtly rewritten – Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

[Read the entire article on The Volokh Conspiracy]

Excerpts:

The end result: In the last two years, Congress has essentially gutted the idea of computer crimes that are beyond the reach of the federal government.

If a computer is involved — any computer — it’s very likely to be a federal issue.

An interesting question is, how did this happen without anyone noticing?

I’m not entirely sure, but here are two possibilities. First, the press isn’t too likely to pick up on a subtle change like this. In a bill, the language is easy to overlook: it will be something like, “insert ‘or affecting’ after the term ‘used in’.” You would need to be pretty sharp to see the issue. Second, there are no natural constituents to object to Congress gutting federalism provisions in criminal law. These sorts of changes are generally framed as efforts to help the feds catch the bad guys by getting rid of annoying technicalities. Framed in that way, the legislation is likely to have broad popular support.

[Read the entire article on The Volokh Conspiracy]