Posted on 11/03/2005 2:24:08 PM PST by inquest
There's a new poll up on the side. Do you think the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution authorizes federal laws against narcotics and firearms? Now lest everyone forget, this isn't asking whether you personally agree with such laws. It's about whether your honest reading of the Constitution can justify them.
While you're thinking it over, it might help to reflect on what James Madison had to say about federal power over interstate commerce:
Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.I'll be looking forward to your comments.
No.
First of all, I see that Zon is now backtracking and not calling for legalization but decriminalization. That would leave the laws on the books.
In my mind I've always thought that they should be decriminalized -- not a crime. They're inanimate objects. Can you post a quote where I said drugs should be legalized. If you do I'll correct that error. It would not leave the laws on the books because the laws deems a person in possession of drugs or dealing drugs has committed a crime. Frankly, that is embarrassingly obvious.
That is, the law should read that drug possession while travelling interstate is against the law. Or drug possession with the intent of travelling interstate (about to get on a plane) is against the law. Something like that.
Your motive for feigning inability to recognize the embarrassingly obvious was to set up your straw man. I won't dignify your straw man by responding to the rest of it.
BTW, as I've previously told you, I'm not a Libertarian.
BTW, thanks -- NOT! -- for "talking" behind my back by not pinging me -- grrrr! :-(
Apparently you didn't bother to read my post before mashing "Reply" - perhaps you should back up and try again. Hint: I'm talking about what happens after the verdict for the plaintiff comes in.
Actually, that's pretty much the way Congress phrased it in the Controlled Substances Act.
Hey! Wrong guy!
Can it ban the movement of machine guns between the several states?
That's okay - he didn't read the body of that post either, nevermind something so pedestrian as the "To:" field.
Can Congress regulate interstate air traffic -- set air corridors, flight rules, radio frequencies, landing patterns, etc.?
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I'll correct the error in the following post.
BTW, thanks -- NOT! -- for "talking" behind my back by not pinging me -- grrrr! :-(
Senator Bedfellow: After all, he didn't forcibly or fraudulently deprive you or anyone else of life, liberty, or property - he just offered your third grader a big fat rock. So as a practical matter, under such a scheme, neither you nor the state have any legal justification for depriving him of his property, or his liberty. 604
You argued that the victim/child's parents have no right to sue in the first place. Thus invalidates your premise that a jury would be present to give a verdict one way or another.
Basically, you shot yourself in the foot. ...Sophistry bites back at you.
Well then, I say that drug use imposes an unacceptable risk and a threat to the health and safety of our society in general and should be regulated.
I know that, It's a communitarian collectivism potion that sacrifices the individual to the good of the group and while depriving people of a society of self-governed persons. It takes a village, a'eh?
Actually, that's pretty much the way Congress phrased it in the Controlled Substances Act.
Yep, legalized plunder sacrificing the individual for the good of the group.
I have argued no such thing. Read for content, instead of just inventing points and then "refuting" them.
The argument stands. You have no legal or moral justification under your own scheme for enforcing any judgement, because the crack dealer has perpetrated neither force nor fraud by offering crack to the kiddies.
LOL
Have the courts used the Constitution to restrict certain basic rights of individuals, thereby negating a presumption of liberty? Yes and no. Did the Congress overstep its bounds when it created the Brady Bill, prohibitng semi-automatic weapons? Yes. Did the Congress overstep its bounds when it created the CSA of 1970, unifying existing drug regulations and continuing prohibition of illicit drugs. No.
Are you then saying that if I grow pot in my back yard for private consumption (which I do not, btw, I do not take any drugs, other than caffeine and alcohol), that the fed has no authority or jurisdiction?
"Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."
-- Thomas Jefferson to William H. Crawford, 1816.
You have no legal or moral justification under your own scheme for enforcing any judgement, because the crack dealer has perpetrated neither force nor fraud by offering crack to the kiddies.
Do have legal and moral justification. It should be illegal to sell alcohol and drugs to minors. Even if it weren't, parents have the right if not obligation to protect their child from their immaturity that renders them unable to make informed choices. An impartial jury could decide if the dealers act of attempting to make a sale threatened harm to the child and what restitution is due.
If it were an adult (potential customer) the dealer was attempting to make a sale to the potential customer could take the dealer to court and try to convince an impartial jury that he was harmed by the drug dealers attempt to sell him drugs. Most likely, if the judge didn't dismiss the case the impartial jury would find that no harm was done to the plaintiff.
Adults have full right of free association. So long as two adult's agree to associate neither is being defrauded. A child can be defrauded when an adult convinces the child to associate.
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