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Handyman's essay seems to be based mostly on his reading of Article I, sec. 10, clause 1, which is a limitation on state governments but not on the federal govt. For example the same clause also prohibits states from coining money.
On the other hand, Art. I sec. 8, clause 5, authorizes the federal govt to coin money and regulate the value thereof. The second of these (regulate the value) is indicative that Congress could (as part of coining money) authorize the use of paper money and of coins of base metals -- if all the money had to be made of precious metal, the Congress would be powerless to regulate its value as the market prices for the precious metal ingredients would be dispositive. The narrow authority allowed states in Art. 10, clause 1, means that states can authorize -- as a supplement to federally-issued money (in case there wasn't enough for all the transactions) -- gold and silver coins - but since the same clause says that the states themselves cannot mint their own coins, the only gold and silver coins that a state could authorize would be foreign coins, whose value is already regulated by Congress under the aforementioned Art. 8, clause 5; but a state cannot (1) reject the federally-issued money nor (2) authorize as money foreign paper currency or base metal coinage. The argument based on this misunderstanding of the Art. I, sec. 10, has already been tried many times - and always rejected. Handyman is offering nothing new, and evidently worked up this argument without researching the readily available case law interpreting the two constitutional clauses.
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