COLUMBIA (WACH) — South Carolina lawmakers are proposing a bill that would give the state another form of legal tender. Sen. David Thomas, a Republican from Greenville, wants to make gold and silver coins another option in the Palmetto State.  Lawmakers are calling it the Sound Money Legislation. “I’m no financial expert but am I smart enough to know that you can’t keep printing money when it has no backing,” says SC Republican Representative Mac Toole. Thomas also wants a special joint committee to study the need and process for establishing an alternate currency.  Read the entire bill here.

The administration of this web log strongly encourages readers to click on the hyperlinks above to gain further insight on this developing story.

Readers of this blog may be aware that the sovereign Commonwealth of Virginia appears to have a similar bill in her legislature while the Governor of the sovereign State of Utah recently was reported to have signed similar “sound money” legislation thereby apparently enacting legal tender reform in that State.

Meanwhile, the issues associated with States’ Rights are coming to a head in the context of the sovereign State of Arizona as that jurisdiction may see a bill brought to the State legislature which would divide the State into two separate sovereign States. To quote directly from what appears to be a Reuters story posted on Yahoo News Canada:

TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – A long-simmering movement by liberal stalwarts in southern Arizona to break away from the rest of the largely conservative state is at a boiling point as secession backers press to bring their longshot ambition to the forefront of Arizona politics. A group of lawyers from the Democratic stronghold of Tucson and surrounding Pima County have launched a petition drive seeking support for a November 2012 ballot question on whether the 48th state should be divided in two.

Readers of this blog are asked to click upon the hyperlinks above to learn more about this interesting state of affairs.

Under American law it is generally considered possible in an intraState context to see a State legally and peaceably subdivide herself. This is not a common occurrence within the American political system and the ramifications on a geopolitical level could be tremendous. At the same time, such a subdivision could have an important impact upon American national politics as the addition of a new American State to the United States of America would mean that the United States House of Representatives and and the United States Senate could see new membership traveling to those hallowed halls from a newly created “Baja Arizona” (the current label apparently being applied to the as-yet unborn State).

How all of these issues will play out over the course of the coming weeks and months remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: it is an interesting time to be an American.

For related information please see: Full Faith and Credit Clause.