Daily Kos and Nathan Newman debunk the GOP on 'states' rights'.

We agree. As the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers ( NACDL) points out in its Legislative Priorities:

In recent years, crime bills have granted federal prosecutors greater and greater authority by creating more federal crimes out of historically state and local crimes. For example, domestic violence, carjacking and failure to pay child support are traditionally the prerogative of state and local governments; federal jurisdiction is unwarranted, unwise and contrary to the Constitution. Regarding these and other federalized crimes, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed that "one senses from the context in which they were enacted that the question of whether the states were doing an adequate job in this particular area was never seriously asked."

Before enacting federal criminal legislation, Congress should consider whether a federal interest is implicated and whether the state or local remedy is inadequate to address that interest. The impact on federal law enforcement and court resources should also be assessed.

For anyone not familiar with the term, "states' rights" refers to:

...a doctrine based on the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The term embraces both the doctrine of absolute state sovereignty that was espoused by John C. Calhoun and that of the so-called strict constructionist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves to the state governments all powers not specifically granted by that document to the federal government.