The Congress votes on restricting the size of ammunition magazines, expanding controls over who can buy guns, and limiting the types of guns that citizens can buy, even though the Constitution expressly forbids them from passing any such laws.

The EPA director uses a false email identity to hide her communications from public scrutiny. An entire network of three-letter agencies takes over Congressional functions and operates outside of Constitutional bounds as unaccountable lawmakers, enforcers, and judges in every area of life.

The president decides he doesn't care for certain laws and therefore won't enforce them, even though that is his job. He demands that private companies obey his wishes, and attacks those who don't.

The Congress votes on far-reaching laws without even reading them. The Supreme Court declares them to be Constitutional even though they are outside the functional areas delegated to the federal government. The Senate can't be bothered to consider a budget.

The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal treatment under the law, but the president casually waives the application of onerous legislation for companies he favors, sparing them massive cost and compliance burdens that their competitors must still bear.

The federal government refuses to carry out its Constitutional border control responsibility, and sues a state that tries to protect itself by enforcing existing federal law.

The Tenth Amendment reserves all undelegated powers to the states or the people, but the docile states take federal money and mostly operate as federal departments, not as independent and sovereign entities.

In 2008 our current president said we need a "civilian national security force" as large and well-funded as the U.S. military. Domestic agencies have now stockpiled over a billion rounds of ammunition, much of it hollow-point cartridges designed for close-combat use... inside the country?

Does the Constitution not matter anymore?

George Washington believed that

...the Constitution, which at any time exists 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all.

The means of changing it "by an explicit act of the whole People" are set forth in the document itself, and they don't include having a "living document" draw deeply on something that looks like a homemade cigarette, wander among the penumbras and emanations, and declare itself to mean something new, something never before imagined.

The only alternative is for it to be discarded, if not kept; there's no provision for it to be gently smudged into a slightly different set of "suggested guidelines" for each new administration. It has no severability clause allowing some pieces to be kept and others struck. Picking and choosing is not an option.

So has it been discarded? Are we in a post-Constitutional period, as Mark Levin suggests?

Let's take a stroll through a world where the Constitution no longer governs:

The first Article is gone. Well, look at that. We no longer have a Congress, and no one has the power to tax us for the responsibilities listed in Article I, Section 8. There is no Senate, and no House of Representatives. The smoke-filled cloakrooms can be aired out and turned into museum storage. The restaurants around the Capitol will have 535 fewer customers for lunch when the moving vans are gone, not counting reporters, lobbyists, and others who can go back to their hometowns and find real work.

Article II is gone. We no longer have a president. Whoever is living in the White House needs to pack up his family and go find a job; he's trespassing on someone else's property, and there's no Treasury to pay that pension he was counting on. Put the teleprompter on eBay and give the Japanese shotgun to someone who can actually point it at the skeet.

Article III is gone. That grand Supreme Court building is empty. The District of Columbia can use the building for a City Hall. Oops, the District of Columbia is gone, and we have a square section of land between the states that has no government. (Actually, that's not much of a change.)

The ACLU no longer has to worry about the Ten Commandments being displayed in a government building, since the building has outlasted the government. In fact, the ACLU may need to find real work too.

Article IV is gone. No new states can be admitted to the Union; of course, there's no Union left to be admitted to.

Article V? No need for rules to amend a discarded document. Article VI? The states can make their own treaties, and there's no more need for an oath to support the abandoned document.

And so it goes. If the Constitution no longer matters to the president, the Congress, or the Supreme Court, then it no longer matters. To anyone.

But that's the document that creates and defines the structure and role of the federal government itself. If we have no Constitution, then we have no federal government.

Perhaps those who refuse to honor the Constitution should consider where that road leads. This could have a serious impact on the housing market along the Potomac.

And without a federal government, who will bail out California?

Gary Henderson is the author of Freedom. You Can Handle It. But Hurry!