To add to the sage observations of my friends John Fonte and Ed Whelan, I offer this from Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny (I think we’re going to be saying that a lot):
Thomas Jefferson, in an 1803 letter to Senator Wilson Cary Nicholas of Virginia respecting the Louisiana Purchase, explained:
Our peculiar security is in possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty-making power as boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution. If it has bounds, they can be no others than the definitions of the powers which that instrument gives. It specifies & deliniates the operations permitted to the federal government, and gives all the powers necessary to carry these into execution….
This will be the battle ahead. Those John has brilliantly coined the transnational-progressives will attempt to impose unconstitutional, sovereignty-sapping arrangements by treaty and other international agreements. It will be up to the Republicans to block ratification by mustering 34 no votes. But an important bedrock principle must be: The Constitution cannot be changed by a treaty. A treaty is only “the supreme law of the land” in the same sense that a statute is, meaning: If it violates the Constitution, it is invalid.






Comments