Federal Government Needs To Think Big

Federalism has been a big issue with conservatives this year. Two big Supreme Court decisions went against Federalist principles this year, and Congress has all but considered the issue an afterthought.

Few libertarian leaning conservatives will argue that the Federal government isn't big enough. Even neo-libertarians would like to see a smaller domestic government. Ironically, the problem seems not to be that the Feds are thinking big. It is that the Feds are increasingly thinging too small. Edwin Feuler explains:

When the federal government was small, it thought big. Indeed, it focused exclusively on big issues. For example, when the Constitution was written, it listed only three federal crimes. Today there are more than 4,000.Where once our national government concerned itself with preventing only counterfeiting, piracy and treason, it’s now involved in measuring the length of lobster tails and prosecuting importers if those tails are too short. All this is a relatively new development. Almost half of all federal crimes have been added to the criminal code since 1970.

The most troubling aspect of this trend is that it is increasing, and even the most conservative Congress and Supreme Court in decades is unwilling to slow it down. The most that can be said is that violence against women and possession of a firearm are not "commerce." And we needed the Supreme Court to tell Congress that.

I do not deny that terrorism has placed new challenges on the Federal government. In fact, one would think that given the need to conserve resources for such a large task -- think big -- Congress would encourage the movement of most crime and regulation away from the Fed level and push it back onto the States. How much bigger can domestic programs that have nothing to do with national defense or national commerce, identified in the Constitution, get?

There is no end in sight. The House is now taking on "street crime." The most local of crimes is about to burden another Federal prosecutor.

Recently the House of Representatives approved a gang deterrence measure. The Senate is considering a similar bill. Either would make a number of gang-related crimes federal offenses.Now, we’re all opposed to gang violence. But let’s remember that such activity -- shooting, drug running, gun trafficking -- already is illegal in every state. Turning gangland violence into a federal offense doesn't guarantee we’ll have less violence; it simply means we'll be trying defendants in a different venue.

The problem here isn't just some "small government" Constitutional philosophy. What happens when the Feds step into local street crime? They stretch the FBI, which should be focusing on national security and large scale Federal crime, much too thin. The Feds push out any local law enforcement, who then abdicate their responsibility. We end up with ineffective national law enforcment, and ineffective local law enforcement. And the sad thing is, it is unnecessary.

Section 201 would be a major step toward turning all double murders [in more than one state] into federal crimes. . . . Of course, such killings are illegal already and in many states are punishable by death.

[T]his measure seems to be aimed specifically at John Allen Muhammad. He and his associate Lee Boyd Malvo allegedly used a sniper’s rifle to kill people in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia in 2002. But the Muhammad case actually proves there’s no need for another law. He’s already been convicted of murder in Virginia and sentenced to death. While on death row, he may face further charges in Maryland. Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the killings, has been handed a life sentence without the chance of parole. The system already has worked well, convicting these killers without any federal involvement.

The Constitution envisioned very few Federal crimes. While admittedly the economy has nationalized, and many issues that didn't before now cross state lines, there is no justification for the widespread Federalization of our criminal law. We have terrorist cells that need attention. We don't need vandalism being investigated by the FBI and tried in Federal court.

Why are we voting for Republicans again? Oh yeah, that war. What a price we pay for a two party system with only one marginally competent political party.