“There’s an old joke in South Carolina: Confederate President Jefferson Davis may have surrendered at the Burt-Stark mansion in Abbeville, S.C., in 1865, but the people of state Rep. Michael Pitts’s district never did. With revolutionary die-hards behind him, Mr. Pitts has fired a warning shot across the bow of the Washington establishment. As the writer of one of 28 state ’sovereignty bills’ … Pitts is at the forefront of a states’ rights revival, reasserting their say on everything from stem cell research to the Second Amendment. … Just as California under President Bush asserted itself on issues ranging from gun control to medical marijuana, a motley cohort of states … are presenting a foil for President Obama’s national ambitions. And they’re laying the groundwork for a political standoff over the 10th Amendment, which cedes all power not granted to Washington to the people.” (03/27/09)