The Hill News

"States' rights, states’ rights, states’ rights!" â€" Rick Perry, governor of Texas, at the first Tea Party event on April 15, 2009.

To put it simply, the most astonishing thing that has happened these past two years is that the states have suddenly seen, as if through a glass darkly, that they do not have to do what the federal government tells them to do.

Consider the consequences. The idea seemed incomprehensible when it was first presented up here in northern New England five years ago. And backwoods governors up here, like Vermont’s Peter Shumlin today, saw themselves exclusively as pharaoh’s agent. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) truly shocked comment when she was told she couldn’t do just anything she wanted was, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Today, the Supreme Court faces state sovereignty challenges which promise to shake the nation.

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