To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

This is the single most frequently abused clause of the entire Constitution. Commonly referred to as "The Commerce Clause" or the "Interstate Commerce Clause".

There was a time when I thought fit to repeal this clause, I no longer hold that position.

In favor of repealing it, I equated its abuse to if you gave a child crayons and they started off writing on paper, but ended up drawing on the walls. When a child abuses their toy, the parent takes the toy away. We The People, are essentially the parents of Congress, we create Congress when we create the Constitution. The Commerce Clause is the toy, and Congress has habitually abused it by regulating nearly everything we do.

But The Commerce Clause is, as are all things in a just government, a necessary evil. You don't want to have a situation where the states impose tariffs on goods that pass through them, this is very bad for the economy of the union. This clause was lacking in the Articles of Confederation and that combined with the decentralized authority to coin money and regulate the value thereof was detrimental to the union and why we created the Constitution in the first place.

The problem lies in the interpretation of the word "regulate". This is also part of the problem we have in the debates over the Second Amendment, which I will address separately.

I subscribe to the views of James Madison in Federalist Paper #42. In short, regulate meant to keep regular. You will frequently hear this said in the debate over health care from Judge Andrew Napolitano, who I also tend to agree with almost invariably. James Madison explains the need for this clause very clearly in the following quote "A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out, to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter, and the consumers of the former." Clearly the need for this clause arose as a result of taxes being levied by states against states, and this caused a great deal of trouble under the Articles of Confederation. Mr. Madison went on to say "To those who do not view the question through the medium of passion or of interest, the desire of the commercial States to collect in any form, an indirect revenue from their uncommercial neighbours, must appear not less impolitic than it is unfair; since it would stimulate the injured party, by resentment as well as interest, to resort to less convenient channels for their foreign trade."

Thomas Jefferson said on the subject of the commerce clause, in a letter he wrote to Albert Gallatin in 1802 about the United States Federal Government building piers in Delaware, "This act has been built on the exercise of the power of building light houses, as a regulation of commerce. But I well remember the opposition, on this very ground, to the first act for building a light house. The utility of the thing has sanctioned the infraction. But if on that infraction we build a 2d, on that 2d a 3d, &c., any one of the powers in the Constitution may be made to comprehend every power of government."

Again, Mr. Madison lays out the perfectly reasonable argument for the need of the power, and Mr. Jefferson properly speaks of what we commonly refer to as "The Slippery Slope", these were some smart guys, even all those years ago.