Is Pres. Obama changing his view of gun laws?

I doubt it. Lots of times gun charges like that are add-on charges, especially with drug crimes.

Once more, there are 6 explicit federal police powers in the Constitution. All other usurped police powers that the feds exercise are NOT granted.

Some try to claim that the necessary & proper clause implies these other powers BUT if one accepts the implication of the unlisted police powers, the enumerated police powers become unnecessary. In that case, anyone taking the position that the N&P clause carries associated powers with it, is saying that the Framers were too freaking stupid to understand the document that they created.

Why would they need to include granted police powers like that for counterfeiting when the N&P simply made sure that everything they missed would be included. Why would they miss the power to punish violations of tax laws (not explicitly granted) or of commerce laws and include the power to punish counterfeiting? Were they stupid or are we?

The truth is the N&P DOES NOT add anything. That concept is a lie perpetrated on the People by the government, especially the judicial branch. The 6 police powers granted were all that the Framers decided the federal government needed. All the other police powers were retained by the States and the People.

Thus the federal laws concerning drugs, firearms violations, etc are UNCONSTITUTIONAL and always have been.

The real separation of powers can be found in the fact that the feds cannot Constitutionally enforce the laws Congress passes and so the States are to enforce those laws under State police power. Except the States can decide whether or not a federal law passes Constitutional muster and decide NOT to enforce it (them).

Obama's pardoning of these folks is actually removing an unconstitutional conviction.

Excellent response, FWB, thanks.

The Won is removing those convictions not because they are unconstitutional, but because he derives political benefits from the act of pardoning the offenders.

The Won will happily leave similar convictions in place for other offenders, when the convictions suit him or he has contempt for those offenders.

I am sure that those 50 people are thankful for the commutations. I am happy that Obama chose to commute those sentences. I wonder why he couldn't have done it three years ago but better late than never.

What would be really good would be a discussion of the police powers actually delegated to the federal government versus those that have come to be exercised by the the federal government through judicial decisions or simply by usurpations by Congress. Also it would be good to discuss the lack of constitutional authority for the judicial branch to add powers. One must merely review the granted powers in Article I Section 8 to understand that there are no implied powers and that using the N&P to expand the granted powers makes the inclusion of most of the powers in Article I Section 8 wholly unnecessary. For good sources on the the powers that were considered and withheld one should read either Eliott's Debates ( 5 vol) or a copy of Meig's book, The Growth of the Constitution (1900) in which Meig's organizes Eliott's by topic. Also one can read the 1899 work by John Randolph Tucker, The Constitution of the United States: A critical discussion of its genesis, development, and interpretation.

One need only look at the power to coin money to understand that implied, related powers were NOT granted by the N&P clause. If they were there is no reason for the Framers to have separately included the power "to regulated the value thereof" as related to the coins or to grant another separate power granting Congress the power "to punish counterfeiting of the current coin and securities of the United States". If the N&P clause is as is claimed these two grants were a waste of time and effort and the Framers must have been ignorant of the extent of their other grants. One must also ask why the Framers granted punishment powers for counterfeiting but not for tax law and commerce laws.

Reason and logic dictate that IF the Framers considered a power in the 1787 Convention and failed to include that power, then that power is withheld from the federal government and retained either by the States or the People (10th). One example is the discussion during the Convention to allow the President to temporarily suspend laws which was voted down 10 states to none. One can only conclude that the President does not have such authority regardless of the innuendo and claims under executive authority.