Law vs. Regulation

There is something that is just not right in the world that gives me an unsettled feeling. Kind of like when there is background noise from a fan running. It isn’t obvious, but makes you edgy. It comes from a couple things that I have held to be true my whole life that are now being ignored.

Currently, illegal immigration is a big issue. The federal government is standing in the way of Arizona enforcing federal law. It isn’t that alone that gives me an unsettled feeling. It is the apparent reason that the federal government is doing it. Opposing the Arizona law is being called the largest voter registration event in history. That is where my brain can’t compute. I have this belief ingrained in me from my school days that a benefit of citizenship is the right to vote. So if the right to vote is only granted to citizens, resident aliens, legal or illegal, still don’t have the right to vote. This is a law without any regulation, apparently. ID is not required in most polling places. There are lots of regulations, not even laws, that have many more inconvenient rules that you dare not break. When did regulations begin to carry more weight than laws? Let me clarify, laws are made by our representatives whom we have elected for that purpose. Regulations are rules made up by government bureaucracies to carry out their mission which could be environmental protection, education, food production and distribution, drug oversight, etc. Laws should be regulated, and regulations should not carry more weight than laws.

Another belief I hold, learned from my public school education, is that a president has to be a natural born citizen. I am not saying our president is or isn’t a natural born citizen. I am just saying that he hasn’t proved that he is. I don’t understand why the law is that you have to be a natural born citizen is not regulated. Why don’t you have to give proof that you are a natural born citizen when you file the papers to run for president? That documentation is required to get a driver’s license or a passport. Had that been a rule and the president followed it there wouldn’t be any question as to his citizenship status.

I think our country would not be in the trouble it is in today if we understood the difference between laws and regulations. Laws need more regulation, and regulations should not carry the same weight as laws.