Revolt of the lesser magistrate: It's happening in Indiana

Brad Rogers, a "stealth candidate" in the 2010 election, won a stunning upset primary victory for the open seat of county sheriff over his boss, the assistant sheriff. His first priority was "changing hearts and minds for inmates and transitioning them back to the community successfully, thereby reducing recidivism" at the Elkhart County Jail where he had been Commander. Time will tell if and when that goal is reached, but in the meantime, Brad Rogers has made a name for himself in patriotic circles as one of the first local government officials in his state to send federal agents packing.

Roger’s Sheriff’s Department told the FDA to back off:

He wrote two letters to the Justice Department warning it not to conduct inspections of Hochstetler’s [Amish dairy] farm without a warrant from a local judge. In the process, he got into a debate over the limits of federal power and the U.S. Constitution with the Justice Department’s Goldstein.

Earlier this month, Rogers emailed Goldstein that there had been “a number of inspections and attempted inspections on (Hochstetler’s) farm…” He warned that “any further attempts to inspect this farm without a warrant signed by a local judge, based on probable cause, will result in Federal inspectors’ removal or arrest for trespassing by my officers or I.”

Imagine that. A federal agent doing business as usual, arrested for trespassing by the local sheriff! It may not play on the state or national level, but in Elkhart County, Indiana, there is now someone who actually takes the Constitution seriously, and has the legal means to back it up.

And Brad Rogers appears to understand the Constitution better than any federal officer taking a vow to "uphold and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

The Goldstein letter prompted Rogers to reply, in a letter just being sent today, “When you assert that federal law trumps state law, it is a distortion of the intent, content and extent of the supreme law of the land–the U.S. Constitution-seen through a myopic and misunderstood view of Article VI, section 2 (The Supremacy Clause).”
He also asserted that “the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act could be deemed unconstitutional if and when challenged vis-a-vis the Tenth Amendment juxtaposed with The Commerce Clause.” 
He added that “our form of government was based on the principle that all officials exist to secure ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.’…Your ‘cosmetic’ regulations will never ‘trump’ those principles. The citizen in question is a good man and has committed no crime. He is an upstanding member of this community. He does not have to allow you access to his property for the FDA to conduct random inspections.”