Global warming legislation limits freedom

By Kerry W. McCarthy

The cap-and-trade bill, passed in the House of Representatives, will set industrial policy for the nation if it becomes law. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court, in violation of the separation of powers, ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency of the Executive branch, to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. These two actions, in concert, result in governmental control that could assume the power to regulate individuals as emitters of pollution.

Americans cannot believe they will ever lose their freedoms. Those who warn of the ever-increasing size of government have mostly been ignored. Media and politicians have successfully convinced Americans that in time of crisis, the solution is to accept bigger government. It’s logical that politicians continually try to convince America that an emergency exists.

Global warming is the latest vehicle by which Americans are being induced to accept bigger government despite the fact that global temperatures rose only about one degree since records have been kept, most of that before 1940. The temperature flat-lined in 1998, and has actually cooled lately.

The cap-and-trade bill was not available to be read by many who cast votes. It also did not undergo adequate public scrutiny because the media focused attention on the health care debate. Democrats’ determination to pass this bill is demonstrated by news reports that Congressman Patrick Kennedy, Rhode Island Democrat, was released from rehab to vote. Among other things, the thousand-odd-page document contained a tax on cows as methane-emitters which was later struck out to gain the support of farm-state Democrats. The only farm-state Republican who voted for this bill was Congressman Mark Kirk from Illinois.

The enforcement of this law will require the federal government to exert more authority through its policing agency, the EPA. Eventually, even people who now support government intrusion into health care, pollution control and the economy, may look to the U.S. Supreme Court to check government’s expansion beyond the limits of the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court stood by idly while the government deprived legitimate bond-holders of their property and violated bankruptcy laws in taking over GM and Chrysler. It’s highly unlikely that the court that ordered the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant (a gas exhaled, remember, by every creature on earth as a part of natural respiration) will have the moral constitution to provide a check on our ever-expanding government.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that “a black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect.” Plessy v. Ferguson legalized segregation. Korematsu v. U.S. authorized the Roosevelt administration to strip Japanese Americans of their property and forcibly remove them to concentration camps. These decisions are not consistent with the high-minded, apolitical group envisioned by our founding fathers. Rather, they reflect and sustain the prejudices of their times.

William J. Watkins, Jr. proposes in his book, Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and their Legacy, a constitutional amendment providing for the establishment of a commission which would review the constitutionality of activities of all three branches of the national government. The commission, made up of one member from each state, would have the power to overturn court decisions, executive orders, laws and regulations, and would return power to people and to state legislatures.

Each legislature would nominate two qualified people. Voters would then choose between the candidates, who would serve a limited term. Power would be returned to the states in a regulated manner that avoids the encouragement of frivolous action: initiation of a review would require petition by one-fifth of the states.

Mr. Watkins asserts that “whether the framers intended the Court to exercise such immense power, or the Court’s power evolved to its present level, is immaterial. Either way, the problem exists and requires correction. Otherwise, we will have reverted to the English view of sovereignty whereby ultimately sovereignty resides in an artificial body, rather than with the people of the several states.”

The mere proposal of such an amendment, if supported, could have a restraining effect on our governing bodies. U.S. Supreme Court confirmation battles could lose their ferocity. The court would no longer have license to act as a ruling council. Wrong decisions might still be reached, but the fact that they would reflect the opinions of “the people of the several states,” as intended by our founders, would encourage citizenship.

Questionable legislation such as cap and trade might be challenged by a Constitutional Commission.

-Kerry W. McCarthy is a writer living in Indiana.