Like many people, I am frustrated with higher gas prices and President Barack Obama's ability to block America's development of all its energy resources, leaving us at the mercy of Middle East instability and some nations that hate us and our way of life.
Pending the 2012 presidential election, there are several remedies. One is House Joint Resolution 46, a proposed constitutional amendment that would give more power to the states to overrule detrimental federal laws and regulations.
This amendment helps overcome the increasing centralization of power in the federal government since the Civil War. After all, the states gave up a portion of their powers to create the federal government, never intending to become mere servants to it and subject to all kinds of costly and freedom-limiting mandates and regulations.
Thomas Jefferson drafted what later became the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. He argued that the United States is a "compact" of the states, that the states are not in "unlimited submission" to the federal government, that the federal government is not the "final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself," and that the states may nullify unconstitutional federal actions. House Joint Resolution 46 fleshes out Jefferson's views into an amendment.
I encourage everyone to voice support for this proposal and encourage their state legislators to enact it since it takes a three-fourths vote of states to ratify an amendment.