James Raymond Reese

Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence, who pointed out in 1798 after the writing of the constitution that the several states had...

"...constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: …that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that…each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

In Thomas Jefferson's own words, the action's of the federal government over the past eight decades or so have made it "unauthoritative, void, and of no force."

A growing number of citizens is beginning to recognize this fact. It remains to be seen what they plan to do about it.