TG, it is the right and duty of anyone, whether a private citizen or government official, to nullify a bad law. Where do you think government power comes from? Is it not from the consent of the governed, as Jefferson wrote? Bastiat expanded on this later on, explaining that for this reason, government cannot do anything (legitimately) that private individuals cannot do. Therefore a government cannot exercise legitimate power if it does not have the consent.

Jefferson, if you bother to check his first inaugural address, was supportive of the idea that states may secede. That's where we get his "error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it" quote. Jefferson and Madison, in fact, wrote the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions as the states' methods of nullifying the clearly tyrannical Alien and Sedition Acts.

Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

Think about what you're saying: you're arguing that judging a law must be left up to a judiciary, which oftentimes has been corrupt or wholly mistaken. Never mind the decisions against Kelo and Raich. Need I remind you of our highest court ruling that Dred Scott was property and not a human being?

So as I have said before, just because something is "the law" does not mean it is moral or correct. Just because someone is called "Your Honor" does not mean he is the sole decider of what is moral or correct, or "constitutional."

You said, "the judiciary is the one body who is to lawfully judge the constitutionality of the government's actions." According to whom? I never said so. The Constitution does not explicitly say so. Yet you and most Americans seem to accept the Marbury v. Madison decision without question, which was merely the SCOTUS giving itself a power that it was never explicitly given.

The concept of "jury nullification" -- jurors ruling on the law -- used to be a time-honored principle. It wasn't just an American one, but an English one that predated the Constitution's ratification by over two centuries. That is the reliable method to judge the government's actions. "Assemble" and "petition" all you want, but if the people have no power to overturn any bad part of government, then it's no less than tyranny. The government might be as "democratic" as could be, which is no contradiction, because democracy is a form of tyranny.

My family has had police barge into our home on the basis of pure hearsay. There was no suspicion of a crime, let alone probable cause or a warrant. It would have been our right to shoot down the bastards, then try and convict their supervisor as the mastermind of the crime, as is proper to do with any other criminal. And they were certainly criminals, regardless of what badge they sported, because they violated our rights.

I have been threatened by a judge whose friend was suing me. The ruling was eventually in my favor, because I brought up a solid point of law the judge couldn't contradict. If it had gone against me, however, it would have been my right to defend my person and property as I saw fit. Even now, with the judge in a higher office and as corrupt as ever, it would be the right of "the people" to march upon his office and hang him from the nearest suitable tree branch.

You need to read my piece that distinguishes between justice and law, for they are not the same. If justice is pursued and achieved outside the bounds of "the law," then so be it. Justice is the highest pursuit of government, not "compliance" with whatever statutes are on the books.

For the record, this Yankee agrees that "The War of Southern Secession" is the proper name. I use "Civil War" only so people won't be confused.

JK, you say, "Yet I feel the Union provides benefits which outweigh her overbearance." That applies to many situations but in all applicable cases is true only to a certain extent. A wife might stay with an abusive husband because she has nowhere else to go and/or cannot support herself. The relationship between state governments and Washington went beyond that in the late 1850s, and that bastard tyrant Lincoln showed he was willing to shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of people to get his way. The vast majority of Northerners actually wanted to let the South secede peacefully. Part of it was remembering that several decades before, it was Northern states who had threatened secession. The other part was a fear, later proved correct, that Lincoln would resort to conscription for an unpopular war.

So Lincoln was a hypocrite, and more so because he had no problem with part of Virginia seceding to form West Virginia. By the standard Lincoln set, the South had every right to use its military to subjugate and destroy the newly seceded Virginians.