1. What ails America? Is it our Constitution or our Congressional, Presidential, and bureaucratic non- compliance with the Constitution?

The central problem with American government is the belief that the purpose of government is to provide for our needs. Washington, D.C. carefully nurtures this belief because it serves its own prime purpose—the aggregation of federal power. Accordingly, Washington, D.C. has gradually amassed overwhelming power that is clearly outside of the boundaries that the Framers intended when they wrote the Constitution.

This improper aggregation of power crisis, in fact, arises indirectly from the Constitution itself. The Constitution permits the federal judiciary to be the final interpreter of the Constitution.1 Because the

1 Some argue that the Founders never intended for the Supreme Court to have the power of judicial review. History does not support this assertion.

In the records of the Connecticut ratification convention we find a very clear statement on this issue from Oliver Ellsworth. Ellsworth was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, a delegate to the ratifying convention in his home state of Connecticut and was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1796 to 1800. Here is what he said in the Connecticut convention:

If the general legislature should at any time overleap their limits, the judicial department is a constitutional check. If the United States go beyond their powers, if they make a law which the Constitution does not authorize, it is void; and the judicial power, the national judges, who to secure their impartiality, are to be made independent, will declare it to be void. On the other hand, if the states go beyond their limits, if they make a law which is a usurpation upon the federal government the law is void; and upright, independent judges will declare it to be so.

A very similar statement was made by James Wilson during the state ratifying convention for Pennsylvania. Wilson also possesses a tremendous resume. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, and was one of George Washington’s initial appointees to the Supreme Court.

Wilson said:

If a law should be made inconsistent with those powers vested by this instrument in Congress, the judges, as a consequence of their independence, and the particular powers of government being defined, will declare such law to be null and void; for the power of the Constitution predominates. Any thing, therefore, that shall be enacted by Congress contrary thereto, will not have the force of law.

The Federalist No. 78 contains yet another declaration to this same effect: 2 | ConventionofStates.com