Well, in this case it’s being referred to as neutralization rather than nullification. As I posted yesterday, Alabama is considering a bill that would attempt to thwart federal gin control laws. As this segment from Comedy Central’s Colbert Report shows, it’s not just Alabama (in fact Colbert doesn’t even include Alabama):
Of course, Colbert’s comments are anything but flattering to the concept of state nullification of federal law and he follows up with guest, Cliff Sloan, who once having been a clerk to Supreme Court judge John Paul Stevens, makes the very compelling case that federal law trumps state law and if you don’t believe that all you have to do is ask anyone in the federal government. Furthermore, only the federal government (the Supreme Court, to be precise) gets to determine whether a federal law is Constitutional. No conflict there, right?
Now, if you want to hear something intelligent and thoughtful on the topic, I suggest you might want to look at this 48 minute video of Tom Woods whose credentials are also quite impressive.
Don’t have the time? I know. I don’t either. So what I’ve started doing is loading up my MP3 player with podcasts and listen to them on the drive to and from work which for me is about 25 minutes each way. There are plenty of websites with podcasts to choose from, but not all content is in audio format. Videos seem much easier to come by, so I convert videos to MP3s. Free converters are easy to find on the web. Tom Woods, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is probably one of the most interesting libertarian lecturers around. He covers numerous topics, he’s an enthusiastic speaker, and he’s funny. I recommend him highly. If you’d like help finding video to MP3 converters, let me know.