The "Repeal Amendment"

My Congressman, Doug Lamborn, ne plus ultra right-winger, is touting a proposal called the "Repeal Amendment" to the Constitution. Here's the text of the proposed amendment.

“Any provision of law or regulation of the United States may be repealed by the several states, and such repeal shall be effective when the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states approve resolutions for this purpose that particularly describe the same provision or provisions of law or regulation to be repealed.”

In other words, thirty-four state legislatures would be able to stop federal law.

On the surface, this seems innocuous, even democratic. Does anyone think two-thirds of the state legislatures could agree on anything, much less agree on wording that "particularly describe the same provision. . ." of a federal law or regulation? Even presuming that the legislatures would vote by simple majority, I doubt you could get two-thirds of them to agree that on a clear day the sky is blue. So it would seem this is a dead letter, a way to make the rabid right happy without actually accomplishing anything.

Still, I smell a rat. Thinking back a hundred years, I remember that federal law was needed to begin conservation of natural resources because numerous state legislatures were simply in the pocket of energy producers, in those days the coal companies. It seems to me that state legislatures nowadays are more susceptible to being bought or stampeded than the Congress is.

Procedurally, the whole thing is a nightmare. What if, for example, the states agree for the most part on repeal of a federal law, but the language of their repeals differs slightly? What if a legislature repeals its own repeal act before the two-thirds majority has been obtained? What about federal lands? They are within the borders of states, but many have exclusive federal jurisdiction. Would their laws and regulations now be subject to state repeal?

The whole thing is just a mess, in my opinion, and like many other attempts to take a meataxe to the Constitution, it should just disappear without a trace.

For the record, my Congressman, the redoubtable Mr. Lamborn, also supports a Congressional resolution aimed at preventing the president from negotiating arms reduction agreements without congressional involvement. The Constitution clearly empowers the president to negotiate treaties, subject to Senate ratification. So much for Mr. Lamborn's version of strict constructionism.