Has the design for government persisted over the years as the Founding Fathers have originally intended? In the span of barely one lifetime, a nation grounded in ideals of individual liberty has been transformed into one in which federal decisions control even such personal matters as what health care we buy -- a nation now so bound up in detailed laws and regulation that no one can know what all the rules are, let alone comply with them. The U.S. Supreme Court, whose function is to protect the Constitution, has become a part of the mob to destroy it. For example, the Court has facilitated congressional use of the Constitution's "commerce clause" to abuse liberty. The Court's 1942 decision in Wickard vs. Filburn gave Congress the power to regulate anything. In that case, the Court held that the interstate commerce clause could be used to regulate an individual farmer's wheat production for his family's consumption. The reasoning was that since the farmer grew his own wheat, he affected interstate commerce; otherwise, he might have purchased wheat that had moved in interstate commerce. This is hardly what the framers of the constitution had in mind.
Just as Wickard vs. Filburn first gave the Congress power to do almost anything, United States vs. Lopez is just as important. The case is important because it indicates that the justices may be starting to reconsider the court's extremely expansive view of Congress' power to regulate based on the commerce clause. Lopez was charged with state firearms violations, and could undoubtedly have been charged with others if prosecutors had so chosen. Instead, federal agents charged him with violating the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act, and the state charges were dropped. Lopez was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison and two years of parole. Lopez appealed his conviction through the federal court system. The Gun-Free School Zones Act prohibits possession of a firearm within 1,000 feet of any school in the United States.