Kevin and

I'm not worried about finances at all. I'm concentrating on assets and portability.
Most rich that I know are well diversified on paper. When it comes to "real" assets, they don't have much in the way of things that'll be necessary after a currency failure.

He is a religious terrorist. How is he any different than Muslim terrorists?

it was a terrorist attack no matter what the media called it then or now. innocent people were murdered for the sole purpose to insight terror. it does not matter what the religion or motivation for the events were. innocent children were stalked & murdered after the coward bombed a downtown building murdering adults.

I believe it. I've seen poverty up close in India too and the 'poor' here have it real good.

I'll tell you one thing for certain- being poor in the U.S is a lot different than being poor in Vietnam.

He could be our first black President.

The guy is smart in the way he is fighting here.
One of the few gun activists I've seen that can stand firm in what they are fighting. You can argue all day the meaning of the second amendment, but the way he approaches attacking the commerce clause and use of the tenth amendment is dead on.
Good for him.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584404576442440490097046.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
MISSOULA, Mont.—With a homemade .22-caliber rifle he calls the Montana Buckaroo, Gary Marbut dreams of taking down the federal regulatory state.
He's not planning to fire his gun. Instead, he wants to sell it, free from federal laws requiring him to record transactions, pay license fees and open his business to government inspectors.
For years, Mr. Marbut argued that a wide range of federal laws, not just gun regulations, should be invalid because they were based on an erroneous interpretation of Congress's constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. In his corner were a handful of conservative lawyers and academics. Now, with the rise of the tea-party movement, the self-employed shooting-range supplier finds himself leading a movement.
Eight states have adopted his Firearms Freedom Act, which Mr. Marbut conceived as a vehicle to undermine federal authority over commerce.
Ten state attorneys general, dozens of elected officials and an array of conservative groups are backing the legal challenge he engineered to get his constitutional theory before the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court in San Francisco is now considering his case.
Mr. Marbut isn't basing his pro-gun effort on the Second Amendment, the one that talks about a right to bear arms, but on the 10th, which discusses the limits of federal power.
"This is really about states' rights and federal power rather than gun control," Mr. Marbut says. There is "an emerging awareness by the people of America that the federal government has gone too far," he maintains, "and it's dependent on a really weird interpretation."
He is talking about the 1942 Supreme Court case of Wickard v. Filburn, which looms for him the way the Dred Scott decision denying rights to blacks did to antebellum abolitionists.
The narrow question in 1942 was whether the federal government could regulate wheat a farmer grew for use on his own farm. But the constitutional issue concerned how far Congress's authority to oversee interstate commerce stretched.
The court ruled Congress could regulate almost any activity that might interfere with national policy. That set the legal basis for a panoply of federal laws.
The principle underpins the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Controlled Substances Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Congress drew on its commerce power to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed segregated hotels, restaurants and theaters because these could serve "interstate travelers" or sell food that crossed state lines.
More
Court View of Commerce Power Has Waxed, Waned
.The ruling is also at the center of a challenge to part of last year's health-care overhaul, requiring most Americans to carry insurance. In June, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati cited the Wickard case in upholding that. Several other suits against the act are pending.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who filed a brief representing 10 states in support of Mr. Marbut's case, says it will be tough to get the Wickard decision overturned outright.
But he believes today's Supreme Court could be persuaded to narrow Congress's commerce-regulation authority.
In recent years, the court's conservative majority has overturned precedents to strike down laws restricting handguns and regulating corporate political spending.
"Clearly, since Wickard, the federal government has gone way beyond" its authority, Mr. Shurtleff says. "We would like to see that rolled back."
Mr. Marbut wants the court to declare that the Wickard case "was wrongly decided, and the whole trail of cases that rely on it were wrongly decided."
Mark Meckler, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots, says Mr. Marbut has engineered "a wonderful legal approach to doing" what he considers "the fundamental issue of our time…putting government back in the box."
Mr. Marbut says he doesn't belong to a tea-party group, though "I get along with them, philosophically."
The Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which he drafted and pushed through his state's legislature, declares that guns made in Montana, stamped "Made in Montana" and staying in-state aren't subject to federal regulations.
After the state enacted it, he announced plans to manufacture the Buckaroo, a miniature rifle that is based on an 1899 Winchester model and intended for children between ages five and 10. Orders, at $200 apiece, poured in. Some came from lawmakers.
"I have four grandkids on the ground, two more on the way, and my youngest gets married on June 12th, so I expect results from him by mid-winter," Republican State Rep. Krayton Kerns told Mr. Marbut by email last year. "Put me down for seven with the option to purchase more."
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was less enthusiastic. It wrote to Mr. Marbut saying: "Federal law supersedes the [Montana Firearms Freedom] Act, and all provisions of the Gun Control Act and the National Firearms Act" remain in force.
Mr. Marbut went to court. The "Constitution confers no power on Congress to regulate the special rights and activities contemplated by the MFFA," his petition argued, while the Ninth and 10th Amendments assign "all regulatory authority of all such activities within Montana's political borders" to "the sole discretion of the State of Montana."
The Wickard case involved a challenge to a 1938 law that sought to keep farmers from going bankrupt. It said if the size of a year's wheat crop was projected to exceed the norm by 35%, the Agriculture Department could prop prices by setting a cap on wheat acreage. A farmer who ignored it had to surrender his excess production or pay a penalty.
Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn, who had planted double his allotted 11.1 acres, preferred to do neither. Saying he planned to use the excess wheat himself, he argued that it fell beyond federal regulation by never entering the stream of commerce.
The Supreme Court disagreed, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Robert Jackson.
He invoked an 1824 case in which Chief Justice John Marshall said federal interstate-commerce power doesn't stop at state boundaries but reaches any activity that "may affect other States." Thus, even local, noncommercial activity "may still…be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce," he wrote.
The idea was that every bushel Mr. Filburn grew was one less he needed to buy, reducing demand; if every farmer did the same, the price pressure would be "far from trivial," the court said.
Coming at the end of a string of similar rulings, the decision wasn't controversial at the time, says Jackson scholar John Barrett, a law professor at St. John's University in New York. It was seen as reflecting the framers intent to create a powerful federal government.
In drafting the Constitution, "there really was an interest in creation of a national market and an empowering of the government to oversee a national market," he says.
Some conservatives never accepted the reasoning; a 1988 Reagan Justice Department document said it stretched "the power of Congress to regulate pursuant to the Commerce Clause to the breaking point."
A 2005 suit contended the commerce power shouldn't permit federal authorities to prosecute someone for growing marijuana if his state's law let him do so for personal medical use. Invoking the Wickard reasoning, the Supreme Court held otherwise, 6-3.
Until Mr. Marbut, few imagined overturning it. He quotes science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein: "When it's time to railroad, people start railroading."
He might seem an unlikely candidate to lead a constitutional counterrevolution. Mr. Marbut, 65, lives alone outside Missoula, in a solar-powered geodesic dome he built from a kit, on the remnant of a cattle ranch his family once owned. He started college but didn't finish. After Army service, he knocked around Alaska before coming home to devote himself to guns, his passion.
After a dispute with others in the state's National Rifle Association affiliate in the late 1980s, Mr. Marbut set up his own lobbying organization, the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
He teaches gun-safety classes, has self-published a book on Montana gun laws and manufactures targets for sale to shooting ranges. The NRA didn't respond to requests for comment.
Though he lost a bid for the Montana Legislature, he became the state's pre-eminent firearms advocate because of his singular focus. He organizes shooting matches to raise money for pro-gun politicians. He writes legislation for the lawmakers he helps elect. Montana lawmakers have enacted dozens of his bills, most of which relax gun regulations.
But Montana couldn't alter federal law. That led Mr. Marbut to the source of congressional authority over guns in the state, the Wickard case.
He concluded the Supreme Court had twisted the words of the commerce clause, which grants Congress authority to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States."
Last year, in an essay that incorrectly attributed Justice Jackson's opinion to Justice Owen Roberts, he wrote: "It's time for the [Chief Justice John] Roberts of 2010 to trump the squishy [Owen] Roberts of 1942."
He conceived of the Firearms Freedom Act as a way to get it reconsidered. He says he focused on the commerce clause, rather than Second Amendment theories popular with firearms enthusiasts, to prompt a broad ruling that would rein in federal power.
The bill failed twice but passed in 2009, after Republicans won statehouse majorities. The Legislature's nonpartisan legal adviser said it would probably be found unconstitutional.
Gov. Brian Schweizter, a Democrat, signed it anyway. "It's a gun bill, but it's another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana," the governor said at the time.
State Rep. Robyn Driscoll, a Democrat who got a grade of F from Mr. Marbut's political-action committee, called the bill "absolutely appalling," saying legislators "would not support funding for education or women's clinics or anything like that, but they'll pass this blatantly unconstitutional bill and pay for the Supreme Court fight."
Infusing the dry concept of commercial regulatory authority with the emotional issue of gun rights was political "genius," says Barak Orbach, a University of Arizona law professor who has studied Mr. Marbut's impact on lawmaking.
On his website, Mr. Marbut posted a seven-step plan for attacking the federal commerce power, centering on passage of Firearms Freedom Acts. Enthusiasts got them introduced in more than 20 states. Nine legislatures passed them. Only one governor vetoed the bill, Democrat Brad Henry of Oklahoma.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed, even as she vetoed a similar measure applying to light bulbs. "Both bills invite lawsuits that would restore our Founding Fathers' vision of a limited federal government based on the 10th Amendment," said her veto message, but "the Firearms Freedom Act is the more immediate and practical vehicle for achieving the objective."
Following a strategy pioneered by Thurgood Marshall and the civil-rights movement, Mr. Marbut rounded up allies to file friend-of-the-court briefs. In addition to gun groups, conservative advocacy organizations such as the Goldwater Institute filed briefs backing the court challenge.
Mr. Marbut took an even more restrictive view of federal commerce power than did farmer Filburn. Where the farmer claimed his wheat was beyond congressional regulation because he didn't seek to market it, Mr. Marbut says Congress lacks authority over products even when they're sold, if not sold over state lines.
As he predicted, he lost the first round in federal court. Federal District Judge Donald Molloy wrote that the Montana legislature was free "to riddle the statutory code with 'political statements'" but not to invent its own constitutional law.
Mr. Marbut expects to fall short at the appeals court, as well. If he gets to the Supreme Court and loses there, he is readying a Plan B. He calls it "Sheriffs First," a bill that would authorize Montana sheriffs to arrest federal lawmen who enter their counties without permission.

The UN can kiss my @ss

Jose Antonio Vargas: Poster child for why E-Verify must be mandatory
Washington Post’s illegal alien stole a job from an American
By Dan Stein
The Washington Times
9:02 p.m., Monday, July 4, 2011
Jose Antonio Vargas, a former Washington Post reporter, has come out of the closet and announced to the world that he is an illegal alien. In his tell-all confession, published in the New York Times Magazine, he outs not only himself, but others who abetted his illegal presence and employment in the United States, including The Post itself, which continued to employ him even after a member of the paper’s management learned that he had lied about his citizenship.
Most important, Mr. Vargas‘ confession exposes the ease with which he, and millions of illegal aliens like him, can circumvent the law. It was as easy as a piece of white masking tape and a photocopy machine. Mr. Vargas writes that when he was a teenager, he and his grandfather covered over the portion of his Social Security card that said he was ineligible to work in the United States before photocopying it. Using a copy of an already flimsy card that constitutes the most important piece of identification Americans possess, Mr. Vargas was able repeatedly to flout the law against illegal aliens working in this country.
If any of his employers - The Washington Post, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post - had simply verified his Social Security number, they would have learned that it was invalid for employment. If the Social Security Administration (SSA) had been required to disclose that it was collecting taxes on an account that was not authorized for employment, the government itself could have identified Mr. Vargas as an illegal alien and taken action. But employers are not required to verify Social Security numbers, and government agencies are not required to inform other government agencies that laws are being violated. And so we have an estimated 7 million illegal aliens on payrolls in the United States.
Whether it was his intent or not, the timing of Mr. Vargas‘ confession provides compelling testimony in support of legislation introduced earlier this month by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (Texas Republican) and the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa Republican). Both of these bills would mandate that instead of a cursory inspection of any of more than two dozen different documents, all employers would be required to use the E-Verify system, which verifies information against Social Security and immigration records.
The Smith and Grassley bills also would discourage an additional and common form of fraud perpetrated by Mr. Vargas. In his public confession, Mr. Vargas admits to having perjured himself repeatedly by attesting that he was a U.S. citizen on the I-9 forms he filled out for employers. Mandatory verification of his Social Security number would have revealed that he was neither a citizen nor an alien authorized to work in this country and could have subjected him to criminal charges.
The common practice of using someone else’s valid Social Security number to gain employment would become more difficult and riskier under both the House and Senate bills. The bills require SSA to flag numbers being used by more than one worker, in much the same way that credit card companies routinely freeze accounts when they suspect fraud. Enhanced civil and criminal penalties, including mandatory prison sentences, against illegal aliens or employers who engage in identity theft or fraud would be an additional deterrent to this sort of abuse. To prevent this sort of fraud from occurring, greater cooperation and information-sharing between government agencies would be required.
As Mr. Vargas‘ story illustrates, employment of illegal aliens is not limited to shady businesses on the fringes of the American economy. Even companies whose integrity is their stock in trade are affected. A system that depends on employers examining documents they have no way of knowing are valid or allowing people who are intent on breaking the law to check a box attesting that they are citizens makes a mockery of the law.
E-Verify is a proven secure and reliable system for denying jobs to illegal workers. For those who still may harbor doubts that universal employment verification is necessary, Jose Antonio Vargas is Exhibit A.
Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/4/jose-antonio-vargas-poster-child-for-why-e-verify-/

My first question: has Mr. Vargas now been arrested and charged with document fraud and false claim of US citizenship?
My second question: why not?

Easy way is to fly to Mexico and then run across the border. It's fast and cheap. Then when Obama passes the Dream Act so that he can reward all the peeps that broke the laws of the United States of America your good to go.

This is what happens when the government decides what's right and wrong.

Is that all you have the balls to do? Sit back and call people bigots.
That's all you do. Day in and day out on these boards is call people names/bigots. You never argue any real points, you just sit back and name call. You're starting to sound a lot like Rob actually, which is really sad.
Seperating race, gender, and sexual orientation is the worst thing we can continue to do. The more we treat people differently, the most animosity there is going to be towards certain groups. Do you realize that this younger generation is one of the worst closeted racist groups in a generation or two? Those are the dangerous ones and the ones you have to worry about at the end of the day. Their racism and animosity doesn't come from their parents, it's from seeing their peers of a different race treated different, treated with special attention, focus on them as a seperate group of people and not as one of them.
Its bigoted to treat us a seperate groups and not as one. Not the way you are trying to spin it.

Leave it to you to politicize the 4th of July.
Let me now post something for you STEVEN, and as the most anti-constitution member of those board, maybe you will learn something.
July 4, 1776:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

There's an awful lot misinformation or misunderstanding in this thread. This post contains the best advice I've seen so far.
Without pointing out any specific posts that contained misleading or incorrect information...
Sex offenders are required to register their address whenever they move. That information is publicly available. The OP would be doing neither a favor to the public nor a disservice to her fiance by posting any information about him because anyone who wants to find this information can do so. You can find information on sex offenders living near you at the Department of Justic NSO public website:
http://www.nsopw.gov/Core/Portal.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
The questions in section C.2 of the I-129F have to do with the IMBRA, which is about disclosure - not denial. The Adam Walsh Act is something entirely different - it's about sex crimes involving children. Someone with a conviction covered by the AWA is not eligible to submit any family visa petition. Getting a waiver is possible. The thread linked in the post I quoted above contains stories of people who have gone through the process, and some have been successful.
Finally, we don't know the circumstances surrounding what the OP's fiance did. There is a huge amount of porn on the internet. It's not possible to know the ages of every model or actor/actress depicted in those photos and videos. It's not like they pose with their ID cards. Title 18 of the federal law requires that producers of sexually explicit material verify the ages of the people depicted in their work, and that they keep the proof of age on file. There have been many cases where young people have lied about their age and used false ID in order to make money as porn models and actors/actresses. Anybody remember Traci Lords? She went into the adult film business as an actress when she was only 15 years old using a fake ID. She even appeared in Penthouse magazine when she was only 16. Would everyone who purchased that particular issue of Penthouse be classified as a sex offender?
The point is that it's illegal to possess this material, even if you were unaware that the persons depicted were under age. We don't know the exact nature of the material that the OP's fiance had, nor if he was aware that the material depicted children who were under age. The fact that a professional psychologist confirmed that he wasn't a danger is a pretty good indication that he's not a potential child molester.

why are you worrying about marriage in vietnam if she's going on a k-1 interview? you don't have faith that she's going to pass the k-1 process?

Just get the profit motive out of incarceration and the rate will go down. As long as there is a buck to be made from locking people up, people will get locked up in ever larger numbers. This is where privatization isn't saving a dime but rather ends up costing billions.

Prison Corporations need to grow. They need more inmates, more demand for more facilities. So they lobby legislatures and judges to bring more business their way. It's really not that hard to see.
Does that help the country? No. Does it help the economy? No. Does it curb crime? No. Does it make stakeholders and executives of prison corporations a boatload of money? You betcha.

So that's what Obama meant by "most transparent administration ever."

Two long needed actions for two useless government agencies full of a bunch of taxpayer teet suckers.

Sounds great to me but lets not stop there. There are many other departments we can abolish and never will anyone notice a difference except bureaucrats whining while they are in the unemployment line.

Ron Paul

Chris Matthews

Striking federal laws from the books doesn't necessarily make somethign legal, it simply leaves it up to the states to decide. The flip side of that (and the real reason RP is pushing this) is because once the laws are off the books, the federal government is no longer required to enforce those laws.