Forget the Supremacy Clause, What about the Sanity Clause?

“Go sell crazy somewhere else” – Jack Nicholson, 1998, “As Good As it Gets”

Some bad ideas return constantly to the public stage. People try to rewrite the US Constitution, or re-litigate the issue of states’ rights, whenever the existing law seems inconvenient to them. This is another example.

Nevada is considering “The Nevadan’s Resource Rights Bill (NRR) AB408”, which if passed, would declare that all federal lands not used for military, etc. should be owned and controlled by the state of Nevada. That is not inconsequential, since 85% of Nevada’s lands are owned by the US Government. Who is behind this bill? None other than Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who doesn’t recognize the supremacy of the US Government. His issues with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) were well-covered last year.

Back then, The Atlantic reported that Bundy hadn’t paid his grazing fees since 1993, and owed $1.2 million. Bundy does not recognize federal authority over the land where his ancestors first settled in the 1880s, which he claims belongs to the state of Nevada. His governmental issues go much farther than just the BLM:

I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada…I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.

OK. Now Bundy is proposing a bill to get Nevada’s land back. The Nevada-based Ralston Reports quotes from a Bundy email call to action:

The natural resources of America are being stolen from the people and claimed by the federal government…If we lose access to the land and natural resources, we become beggars to those who control access. Without doubt this is the greatest immediate threat to the individual person and people as a whole. More lives, liberties and property can be taken under this threat than any other we see.

Bundy’s big problem is that the Constitution says he is wrong. His bill in the Nevada legislature is just another attempted attack on Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. For those who took US government way too long ago, here is what it says:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

So, when state law is in conflict with federal law, federal law must prevail. There have been many claims that state laws conflict with federal laws. In those lawsuits, The Supreme Court looks at whether the state law directly interferes or is in conflict with federal law. The US has won the vast preponderance of those suits.

But, maybe to Bundy, the Constitution, like the Bible, says only what the reader believes it says.

Enough civics for today. Bundy and supporters have no idea how the nation they profess to love so much actually works. They seem to have no idea what the Constitution, which they say they revere, actually says.

They are “patriotic” only to point that patriotism will justify whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it. The Bundys are about to re-litigate over a settled constitutional issue, 170 years after the fact.

Just keep this in mind: No matter how wild and crazy you and your friends get on your Las Vegas weekend, you will not be the craziest person in Nevada when you wake up with your hangover.

It’s well past time for the government to nullify Bundy’s attempted nullification, and make him pay the $1.2+ million he owes the US taxpayers.

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Terry McKenna

President Grant scoffed at the notion of state’s rights. What turned out to be a mistake was allowing states into the union that were created out of what was Federal land. The first colonies may have been marginally sovereign when they joined the union. The rest were never sovereign.

wrongologist

Not sure that adding states which were mostly federal lands was a mistake, but what IS a mistake is not hitting that deadbeat Bundy hard. His “claim” to public lands begins in the 1880’s, while Nevada became a state in 1864. Nevada’s constitution has an explicit clause that accepts Federal legal sovereignty, as do all states that entered the Union after the Civil War, when it was a “lesson learned”.

terry Mckenna

I have long felt that we should have created non sovereign regions even then. not all that dissimilar to our territories. granted the vote but never the dignity of the original colonies.

re Bundy, if Harry Reid was not in office, i believe Bundy would now be dead.