Has Minnesota GOP Gone Insane ?

This is hard to believe, even for the Republican Party. I had thought Minnesota had made a bad enough mistake when they elected current right-wing Republican governor Tim Pawlenty, but the man the Minnesota GOP has nominated to replace him makes Pawlenty look downright liberal (and that's scary).

At their state convention, the Minnesota Republicans chose to endorse State Rep. Tom Emmer in his run for the governor's office. There will still be a primary, but tradition dictates that the other candidates drop out and let the convention-endorsed candidate have the nomination. That means it is extremely likely that the party's nominee on the November ballot will be Emmer.

Why is that scary? Well, Emmer (pictured) is one of those extreme right-wingers known as "tenthers" -- politicians who believe the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution gives the states the right to ignore any federal law they don't happen to like, and for Emmer, that would include nearly any federal law.

Here is what the Tenth Amendment actually says:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Now that is pretty clear. There are areas in which the Constitution grants power to the federal government, and the states retain power in all other areas. I don't know why that is so hard to understand, but for people like Emmer, it seems to be undecipherable. He thinks the state of Minnesota has the right to reject and disobey any federal law that it doesn't like.

In fact, this fool would go even further. He wants to pass an amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would invalidate ALL federal laws (regardless of their constitutionality) unless those laws were agreed to by a two-thirds vote of both state legislative houses and then signed by the governor. Here is how his proposed amendment reads:

"A federal law does not apply in Minnesota unless that law is approved by a two-thirds vote of the members of each house of the legislature and is signed by the governor. Before voting to approve a federal law, each legislator must individually affirm that the legislator has read the federal law and understands it."

This amendment, if passed, would be blatantly unconstitutional. Even worse, it would make our country ungovernable. This is basically a throwback to the Articles of Confederation, and it took our Founding Fathers only a short time to realize that was not a workable system. We simply cannot have the 50 states picking and choosing what laws they will or won't obey.

One thing is clear from this -- Emmer does not believe the United States Constitution is the law of our land. And electing a governor that does not believe in our national Constitution would be a very dangerous thing to do.

Surely the good people of Minnesota would not elect this fool to be their governor -- would they?