On federal authority to do whatever they want

In light of the FCC's ruling 'granting' the federal government (i.e. themselves) the ability to regulate the internet, I thought these two quotes particularly timely:

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and nlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." ~ James Madison

"The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands." ~ John Locke