By the time of the founding, the definition of federalism was already so firmly settled and so deeply imbedded in the American understanding of good government that James Madison, in his defense of the proposed constitution, felt it necessary to assuage worries of some Americans that the state would surrender sovereignty under the new federal system. “Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act,” he wrote in The Federalist, No. 39.

The Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was apparently dumbfounded recently when a reporter asked about the constitutional authority for requiring people to buy health insurance, as mandated in the healthcare reform bills before Congress.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, on November 5 went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas. The ensuing gunfire left 13 dead and 30 injured. Hasan himself was shot four times by law enforcement personnel. He survived and is currently under military guard in a hospital.