Ammo shortage

Folks, The situation on getting ammo is getting really tight, but this morning I lucked out and was able to buy two boxes of ammo.

I placed the boxes on the front seat and headed back home, but stopped at a gas station where a drop-dead gorgeous blonde in a short skirt was filling up her car at the next pump.

She happened to notice my two boxes of ammo, bent over and leaned in my passenger window, and said in a sexy voice, "I'm a big believer in barter, old fella. Would you be interested in trading sex for ammo?"

I thought for a few seconds and asked, "What kind of ammo 'ya got?"

Red States vs Blue States

Survivor, Texas-Style!

Due to the popularity of the "Survivor" shows, Texas is planning to do one entitled, "Survivor, Texas-Style!" 

The 9 contestants will all start in Dallas, then drive to Waco, Austin, San Antonio, over to Houston and down to Brownsville ...

They will then proceed up to Del Rio, El Paso, Midland, Odessa, Lubbock, and Amarillo .

From there they will go on to Abilene, Fort Worth and finally back to Dallas ...

Each will be driving a pink Volvo with bumper stickers that reads: 

"I'm a Democrat,"
"I'm Gay,"
"I love the Dixie Chicks,"
"Boycott Beef,"
"I Voted for Obama,"
" George Strait Sucks,"
"Hillary in 2012"
   And
"I'm here to confiscate your guns.." 

The first one to make it back to Dallas alive wins. 

God Bless Texas !! 

Well......

The Flag of People Against PRISM

Speaking of Teams and Opinions

I'll be frank, since it's good to speak clearly and be heard as such. Everyone is playing for a team. They are born into these teams, genetically hardwired to come out black or brown or male or female, and you'd be hard-pressed to get them to back the opposition on any front. Stretch?

Well, have a look at American elections; people are so polarized between conservative and liberal groups, they don't think for a second they're wrong about anything, even if they're doing the exact same things they've previously called the other team out on.

A lot of this also has to do with where they pick it up at. On a campus, if you're not a liberal, you're a goddamned pariah. The ideas of institutional racism/tyrannical patriarchy are greatly emphasized in almost all aspects of college life now, and along with them, the justification that it's acceptable to be prejudiced against white males. 

The irony, of course, is lost on them; they have become the monster in the mirror, and vehement (and grossly intentional) denial of the truth behind what they stand for says one thing: For some reason, they are unwilling to look into that mirror, perhaps because they're afraid of what they'll see. 

Much of this doublethink and the terms they use smack greatly of communist subversion, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist - which is another term they bandy about to isolate and silence any dissenters. Obviously.  That's my take. 

I read the whole entry and understand your perspective, and your frustrations. Perhaps open-mindedness isn't something to be sought out through political affiliations, as many would have us believe. When politics come into play, everything has interchangeable meanings – especially "open-mindedness."

-- Author Unknown

BE PREPARED !!!!!!!

Rumors are circulating in California that radical Muslims are planning to go on a rampage in Los Angeles, killing anyone who is a legal U.S. citizen.

 

Police fear the death toll could be as high as 23.

How come?

Liberty

It starts and ends with one question: "who owns you?"

If you believe that you are owned by your society, that others are entitled to your person, your property, and your compliance with their beliefs, then your demand of the law is that it limits freedom in order to maximize equality.

Conversely, if you believe that you own yourself, that you alone are entitled to your person, your property, and your compliance, then your demand of the law is that it protects your rights from those who would limit your freedom.

This is why we do not get along anymore. We want different things from the law, from our leaders, from our government, and from each other. In the first case, the owned person seeks to negotiate the terms of his existence through the passage of laws which bind individuals. In the second case, the free person seeks to keep his liberty non-negotiable through the passage of laws which bind government.

We call the owned person “socialist” and the self-owned “libertarian”; both are better adjectives than nouns. One turns to government reflexively to solve all his problems, the other turns against government reflexively, the cause of all of our problems. Right or left has lost all meaning; up or down, more or less, bigger or smaller – this is the choice we must make regarding government.

We are a nation divided because the two things are mutually exclusive - liberty and government. One cannot expand unless the other necessarily contracts; we can be free or we can be governed, but we can not be both at once. Our government is approaching smothering mass; we must either constrain it or lose ourselves in it.

In Wisconsin, the socialists are attempting to recall a Governor for passing a law that binds government. In Washington D.C. an incumbent President faces an uphill re-election bid after passing a law that binds individual choice. One race is about collective bargaining, and the other collective medicine; two referendums on coercion that will set the trajectory of our liberties for decades.

In a nation of free people, liberty would defeat government by a crushing margin; coercion is toxic to the self-owned. But in our nation, polls show both races too close to call - such is the sad state of liberty in 21st century America. A century of drift away from the Liberty Principle has left the idea of true self-ownership unimaginable to most people. We have relied on the force of government so long we need to remind ourselves how to live as free people.

Free people do not engage in coercion; they interact with each other through voluntary exchange. Labor is exchanged for wage, risk is exchanged for profit, property is exchanged for property, compliance is exchanged for reciprocal obligation, and charity is exchanged for self-satisfaction. Our associations are voluntary, our purchases are voluntary, and our commitments to each other are voluntary. Our strongest bonds are those freely formed – family, faith, friends, patriotism, civic pride, shared interest, volunteerism – not those codified into law.

The social contract between free persons is based upon value, and the self-owned person values his fellow citizen too highly to take their person or property by force or fraud. He cherishes his own liberty too much to restrict the liberty of others. He loves his freedom too much to hate it in others.

The free person does not take, does not coerce, does not compel by force of law; he persuades, he offers, he cooperates, he engages in reciprocal exchange that can only take place when the transaction benefits both parties. We rely on the law to record our agreements, not to impose upon us the agreements made by others.

Mandates, prohibitions, subsidies, licenses, and preferences distort the proper workings of free markets, and free enterprise is the only kind that is sustainable. It is hard to imagine that these fundamental principles upon which our nation was founded – self-ownership, individual liberty, free markets - could now be so misunderstood, so feared and so mistrusted. But that is where we find ourselves.

Freedom is hard, and we have become soft. Living as free persons demands a measure of independence that few willingly undertake; and it demands a measure of tolerance that few of us are willing to give.

Living free means respecting the freedom of others, and the self-owned must tolerate choices we find morally reprehensible. We need not approve, endorse, accept, or subsidize reprehensible choices of others, we must simply tolerate them.

This is a small price to pay, considering the alternative. The state-owned must not only tolerate the morally reprehensible, but must pay for it and be subjugated to it by the force of law. Every mandate of government violates some citizen’s moral code. Every penny spent is a penny taken; every prohibition is the denial of choice; every ban is a violation of the right to pursue happiness – a right once viewed as so fundamental it was simply declared without need for justification.

And yet how do our politicians measure their legacy? They count the number of laws they passed, the quantity of things they banned, the amount of money they spent, the size of fines they imposed, the level of subsidy they provided, the scope of mandates they imposed. Those are not the accomplishments of statesmen; they are the meager boasts of common scoundrels.

This year’s elections are shaping up to be a nationwide referendum on the fundamental question of ownership. The names will differ, but the choice – liberty or government - will be same. The important question is not the one you might ask of each candidate but the one you ask of yourself – who owns you?

From there, the right choice is easy.

Tim Nerenz

Please Don't Feed the Animals

I went to a park the other day where a ranger was “on patrol”. I saw a sign that said, “Please do not feed the animals.” I thought it strange. Why, I wondered, should we allow the animals to go hungry when we have a tremendous abundance of food with much of it going to waste. I wondered why we should NOT feed the animals.

I queried the ranger, “Why NOT feed the animals. It looks like they could use a bit of food.”

The ranger replied, “Well, there are MANY reasons. One reason is that we have many visitors here each year. If all the visitors routinely fed the animals, they would grow quite fat. Also, they would not have to forage for their food, and would become dependent upon the visitors for food. They would ‘forget’ how to forage for themselves and lose their independence. Not only that, but they learn to eschew their natural food and prefer ‘human’ food—which is not healthy for them. Also, since they don’t forage, they don’t get exercise, they develop health problems, and die early because of the improper diet and lack of exercise.

Continue reading at Whiskey & Gunpowder

We Mutually Pledge to Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

Of the 56 men who signed the ‘Declaration of Independence’ in the summer of 1776, some names are still common among us: Franklin, Jefferson and Hancock. But the remaining 53 have been largely forgotten. What kind of men were they? What did they stand to gain from this Revolution?

They ranged in age from 23 (Edward Rutledge of South Carolina) to age 80 (Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania). 24 of them were lawyers or judges, 11 of them were merchants of various kinds, nine were farmers, and the remaining members were ministers, doctors, and statesmen.

With just a handful of exceptions, these were all men of substantial education, property and public standing. As compared with the rest of the populace of the 1700s, they had blessings, eases, and pleasures in life enjoyed by very few. All of them had more to lose, than they had to gain.

John Hancock, who already had a bounty of 500 pounds on his head, was one of the wealthiest of the signers. From a family of considerable wealth, he inherited his mercantile fortune from his Uncle, Thomas Hancock. He was educated at Harvard, and had all that life could give him at the time. Yet he signed his signature with such size and flourish, that “it might be read without spectacles.”

He was not alone. The fever of liberty was running at a high pitch. Yet each of them knew the risks. Treason was punished by hanging. And the consequences did not end with themselves, but extended to their families as well. And there was already a massive English fleet docked in the harbor at New York.

And Hancock’s actions did not go unnoticed by the British. Nor did the those of the other suspected signers. All of them became ferociously hunted. Delegates from New York, William Floyd, Philips Livingston, Louis Morris, and Francis Lewis, each had their homes destroyed. Mrs. Lewis was captured and brutalized. Though later exchanged for two British prisoners, she never recovered. The Floyds were able to flee from New York into Connecticut, where they lived as refugees for the next seven years. Upon their return, they found nothing left of their estate. Livingston, whose large possessions were confiscated, died two years later still working in Congress. Morris was deprived of his family for the next seven years.

Delegate John Hart of New Jersey, attempted to come home to see his dying wife, but was turned back by soldiers. As she lay dying, soldiers destroyed his livestock and burned his farm. He was hunted from pillar to post. When the manhunt finally relented, he returned to find his wife dead and buried. His 13 children had been taken away. He died three years later absolutely broken, never seeing his family again.

Judge Richard Stockton rushed home from Philadelphia to evacuate his wife and children. Betrayed by a sympathizer to the Crown, he was torn from his bed where they were hiding in the middle of the night and subjected to a brutal beating. He was jailed, starved, and finally released after becoming an invalid. He did not see the end of the war or its victory, and his family was required to live off of the charitable help of friends and strangers.

The list goes on and on. One heartbreaking, gutwrenching story after another. Each of sacred honor, fortunes sacrificed and lives lost or forever altered. Yet not one recanted. Not one relented. Not one failed to deliver on his pledge to the others.

And most remarkably, there was one man...a man who had the chance to see his family spared. A man who could have saved his two sons if only he had rejected the colonial revolution and supported the King. He was Abraham Clark of New Jersey. Clark had two sons who fought for the new nation. They were eventually captured and taken to the notorious British prison ship Jersey, where more than 11,000 American soldiers died. The two suffered most severely for the “crimes” of their father, brutally beaten and starved.

Clark was offered his two son’s lives if he would just come out in support of the King. To those of us who live so soft and comfortably 200 hundred years in their wake, it must seem astounding that with a broken heart, he said, “No.”

Life. Fortune. Sacred Honor.

Democrats (Liberals) vs. Republicans (Conservatives)

I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there, so I asked her, 'If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?'

She replied, 'I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.'

Her parents beamed.

'Wow...what a worthy goal.' I told her, 'But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house.'

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, 'Why doesn't the homeless guy go over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?'

I said, 'Welcome to the Republican Party.'

Her parents still aren't speaking to me.

Al Gore's Glass House

LOOK OVER THE DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FOLLOWING TWO HOUSES AND SEE IF YOU CAN TELL WHICH BELONGS TO AN ENVIRONMENTALIST.

HOUSE # 1:
A 20-room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house all heated by gas. In ONE MONTH ALONE this mansion consumes more energy than the average American household in an ENTIRE YEAR. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400.00 per month. In natural gas alone (which last time we checked was a fossil fuel), this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not in a northern or Midwestern "snow belt," either. It's in the South.

HOUSE # 2:
Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house contains only 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on arid high prairie in the American southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in winter and cools it in summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas, and it consumes 25% of the electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Flowers and shrubs native to the area blend the property into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE # 1 (20 room energy guzzling mansion) is outside of Nashville, Tennessee. It is the abode of that renowned environmentalist (and filmmaker) Al Gore.

HOUSE # 2 (model eco-friendly house) is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas. It was also known as "the Texas White House," it was the private residence of President of the United States, George W. Bush.

So whose house is gentler on the environment? Yet another story you WON'T hear from the main stream media. Indeed, for Mr. Gore, it's truly "an inconvenient truth."

Which One Are You?

Definitions - Basic Principles

If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.

If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

If a conservative sees a foreign threat, he thinks about how to defeat his enemy.
A liberal wonders how to surrender gracefully and still look good.

If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.

If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.

If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.

If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)

If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.
If a liberal slips and falls, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues.

If a conservative reads this, he'll forward the link so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will flag it because he's "offended".

How to be a Good Republican

I found this on a left-wing blog. I took their test and answered "yes" to two of their questions. I guess I'm not really a good Republican.




HOW TO BE A GOOD REPUBLICAN

1. You have to believe that the nation's current fiscal disaster is due eight months of Obama and not eight years of Bush.

2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own.

3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time.

4. You have to believe that AIDS victims deserve their disease, but smokers with lung cancer and overweight individuals with heart disease don't deserve theirs.

5. You have to believe that assault weapons and handguns are intended for purposes other than killing people.

6. You have to believe everything Rush Limbaugh says.

7. You have to believe that the agricultural, restaurant, housing and hotel industries can survive without immigrant labor (or that your own household can, for that matter)

8. You have to believe God hates homosexuality, but loves the death penalty.

9. You have to be that black people who do not succeed "just don't work hard enough," but that white people who don't succeed are discriminated against

10. You have to believe that pollution is OK as long as it makes a profit.

11. You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don't pray to Allah or Buddha.

12. You have to believe that philanderers and adulterers make the best representatives of your party to pontificate on moral matters.

13. You have to believe speaking a few Spanish phrases makes you instantly popular in the barrio.

14. You have to believe that only your own teenagers are still virgins.

15. You have to be against government interference in business, until your oil company, corporation or Savings and Loan is about to go broke and you beg for a government bailout.

16. You love Jesus and Jesus loves you and, by the way, Jesus shares your hatred for AIDS victims, homosexuals, and Hillary Clinton.

17. You have to believe government has nothing to do with providing police protection, national defense, and building roads.

18. You have to believe a poor, minority student with a disciplinary history and failing grades will be admitted into an elite private school with a $1,000 voucher.

19. You have to reject the notion of government-run healthcare of any kind, but expect folks to pry Medicare from you cold, dead fingers.

20. You have to be willing to associate with every tin-foil hat-wearing, anti-abolitionist, pro-militia, Third Reich nut job in the country just to reach a quorum at your own meetings.

21. You have to be more outraged by Bill Clinton staining Monica's dress that you are by George Bush staining this country's world reputation.

22. You have to be willing to realize that all those Constitutional rights that you blithely discarded during the last administration might well have protected you when the current administration comes after you for your crimes.

23. You have to believe that Halliburton and its ilk perform a vital service to this country.

24. You have to believe that artificial limbs and massive lifetime healthcare for our deserving veterans is going to magically pay for itself.

25. You have to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11, despite eight years of documentation to the contrary.

It should be noted that a good Republican may have a momentary urge to angrily respond to the above before surfing to another page.

A Liberal will simply laugh and be so convinced of the absolute truth of this list that it will be forwarded immediately to other true believers and to more conservatives just to tick them off.


And there you have it. Let your next action reveal your true self.

TWO DISTINCT SUBGROUPS OF HUMANITY

History 101 ---A condensed version.

Humans originally existed as members of small bands of nomadic hunters/gatherers.

They lived on deer in the mountains during the summer and would go to the coast and live on fish and lobster in the winter.

The two most important events in all of history were the invention of beer and the invention of the wheel. The wheel was invented to get man to the beer. These were the foundation of modern civilization and together were the catalyst for the splitting of humanity into two distinct subgroups:

Liberals and Conservatives.

Once beer was discovered, it required grain and that was the beginning of agriculture. Neither the glass bottle nor aluminum can was invented yet, so while our early humans were sitting around waiting for them to be invented, they just stayed close to the brewery. That's how villages were formed.

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to B-B-Q at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly B-B-Q's and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women. Those became known as girlie-men. Some noteworthy liberal achievements include the the concept of Democratic voting to decide how to divide the meat and beer that conservatives provided.

Over the years conservatives came to be symbolized by the largest, most powerful land animal on earth, the elephant. Liberals are symbolized by the jackass.

Modern liberals like imported beer (with lime added), but most prefer white wine or imported bottled water. They eat raw fish but like their beef well done. Sushi, tofu, and French foods are standard liberal fare. Another interesting evolutionary side note: most of their women have higher testosterone levels than their men. Most social workers, personal injury attorneys, journalists, dreamers in Hollywood and group therapists are liberals. Liberals invented the designated hitter rule because it wasn't fair to make the pitcher also bat.

Conservatives drink domestic beer, mostly Bud, Coors or Miller. They eat red meat and still provide for their women. Conservatives are big game hunters, rodeo cowboys, lumberjacks, construction workers, firemen, medical doctors, police officers, engineers, corporate executives, athletes, members of the military, airline pilots and generally anyone who works productively. Conservatives who own companies hire other conservatives who want to work for a living.

Liberals produce little or nothing. They like to govern the producers and decide what to do with the production. Liberals believe Europeans are more enlightened than Americans. That is why most of the liberals remained in Europe when conservatives were coming to America. They crept in after the Wild West was tamed and created a business of trying to get more for nothing.

Here ends today's lesson in world history.

Tearing Down the Statue of LIberty...???

Newspapers simply won't publish letters to the editor which they either deem politically incorrect (read below) or which does not agree with the philosophy they're pushing on the public. This woman wrote a great letter to the editor that should have been published; but, the newspaper squashed it as they will when faced with difficult choices.

From: Unknown

My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to 'print' it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Register:

Dear Editor:

So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statue of Liberty because the people now in question aren't being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.

Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today's American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer. Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to the United States, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in New York and be documented . Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new American households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home.

They had waved goodbye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture. Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity.

Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany , Italy , France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people.

When we liberated France , no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.

And here we are in 2008 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules; one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900's deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.

And for that suggestion about taking down the Statue of Liberty , it happens to mean a lot to the citizens who are voting on the immigration bill. I wouldn't start talking about dismantling the United States just yet.

--Author Unknown

The Case for a Federalism Amendment

How the Tea Partiers can make Washington pay attention.

In response to an unprecedented expansion of federal power, citizens have held hundreds of "tea party" rallies around the country, and various states are considering "sovereignty resolutions" invoking the Constitution's Ninth and Tenth Amendments. For example, Michigan's proposal urges "the federal government to halt its practice of imposing mandates upon the states for purposes not enumerated by the Constitution of the United States."

While well-intentioned, such symbolic resolutions are not likely to have the slightest impact on the federal courts, which long ago adopted a virtually unlimited construction of Congressional power. But state legislatures have a real power under the Constitution by which to resist the growth of federal power: They can petition Congress for a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.

Article V provides that, "on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states," Congress "shall call a convention for proposing amendments." Before becoming law, any amendments produced by such a convention would then need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states.

An amendments convention is feared because its scope cannot be limited in advance. The convention convened by Congress to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation produced instead the entirely different Constitution under which we now live. Yet it is precisely the fear of a runaway convention that states can exploit to bring Congress to heel.

Here's how: State legislatures can petition Congress for a convention to propose a specific amendment. Congress can then avert a convention by proposing this amendment to the states, before the number of petitions reaches two-thirds. It was the looming threat of state petitions calling for a convention to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators that induced a reluctant Congress to propose the 17th Amendment, which did just that.

What sort of language would restore a healthy balance between federal and state power while protecting the liberties of the people?

One simple proposal would be to repeal the 16th Amendment enacted in 1913 that authorized a federal income tax. This single change would strike at the heart of unlimited federal power and end the costly and intrusive tax code. Congress could then replace the income tax with a "uniform" national sales or "excise" tax (as stated in Article I, section 8) that would be paid by everyone residing in the country as they consumed, and would automatically render savings and capital appreciation free of tax. There is precedent for repealing an amendment. In 1933, the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th Amendment that had empowered Congress to prohibit the sale of alcohol.

Alternatively, to restore balance between federal and state power and better protect individual liberty, the repeal of the income tax amendment could be folded into a new "Federalism Amendment" like this:

Section 1: Congress shall have power to regulate or prohibit any activity between one state and another, or with foreign nations, provided that no regulation or prohibition shall infringe any enumerated or unenumerated right, privilege or immunity recognized by this Constitution.

Section 2: Nothing in this article, or the eighth section of article I, shall be construed to authorize Congress to regulate or prohibit any activity that takes place wholly within a single state, regardless of its effects outside the state or whether it employs instrumentalities therefrom; but Congress may define and punish offenses constituting acts of war or violent insurrection against the United States.

Section 3: The power of Congress to appropriate any funds shall be limited to carrying into execution the powers enumerated by this Constitution and vested in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof; or to satisfy any current obligation of the United States to any person living at the time of the ratification of this article.

Section 4: The 16th article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed, effective five years from the date of the ratification of this article.

Section 5: The judicial power of the United States to enforce this article includes but is not limited to the power to nullify any prohibition or unreasonable regulation of a rightful exercise of liberty. The words of this article, and any other provision of this Constitution, shall be interpreted according to their public meaning at the time of their enactment.

Except for its expansion of Congressional power in Section 1, this proposed amendment is entirely consistent with the original meaning of the Constitution. It merely clarifies the boundary between federal and state powers, and reaffirms the power of courts to police this boundary and protect individual liberty.

Section 1 of the Federalism Amendment expands the power of Congress to include any interstate activity not contained in the original meaning of the Commerce Clause. Interstate pollution, for example, is not "commerce . . . among the several states," but is exactly the type of interstate problem that the Framers sought to specify in their list of delegated powers. This section also makes explicit that any restriction of an enumerated or unenumerated liberty of the people must be justified.

Section 2 then allows state policy experimentation by prohibiting Congress from regulating any activity that takes place wholly within a state. States, of course, retain their police power to regulate or prohibit such activity subject to the constraints imposed on them, for example, by Article I or the 14th Amendment. And a state is free to enter into compacts with other states to coordinate regulation and enforcement, subject to approval by Congress as required by Article I.

Section 3 adopts James Madison's reading of the taxing and borrowing powers of Article I to limit federal spending to that which is incident to an enumerated power. It explicitly allows Congress to honor its outstanding financial commitments to living persons, such its promise to make Social Security payments. Section 4 eliminates the federal income tax, after five years, in favor of a national sales or excise tax.

Finally, Section 5 authorizes judges to keep Congress within its limits by examining laws restricting the rightful exercise of liberty to ensure that they are a necessary and proper means to implement an enumerated power. This section also requires that the Constitution be interpreted according to its original meaning at the time of its enactment. But by expanding the powers of Congress to include regulating all interstate activity, the Amendment greatly relieves the political pressure on courts to adopt a strained reading of Congress's enumerated powers.

Could such a Federalism Amendment actually be adopted? Stranger things have happened -- including the adoption of each of the existing amendments. States have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making this Federalism Amendment the focus of their resistance to the shrinking of their reserved powers and infringements upon the rights retained by the people. And this Federalism Amendment would provide tea-party enthusiasts and other concerned Americans with a concrete and practical proposal by which we can restore our lost Constitution.

Mr. Barnett is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University and the author of "Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty" (Princeton, 2005).