[mugs99]

I believe the Black Robed Deities have suspended the Constitution.
.

[NonValueAdded]

I see two separate issues there.

[Atlas Sneezed]

It must make the drug warriors squirm to have to answer this with the gun issue involved.

[Know your rights]

Hell, no!

[kublia khan]

A strict interpretation would leave drug enforcement exclusively to the states, gun control would also be a state issue as long as it did not conflict with the second amendment

[Rockingham]

The commerce clause is a more complicated issue than many conservatives realize or are willing to accept. Oddly, marijuana advocates are some of the most rabid as to federal commerce clause even though, as a group, they are not conservatives or natural or reliable allies for conservatives.

In essence, beginning in the late 19th Century and through the 1920's, federal courts -- composed mostly of Republican appointees -- expanded the reach of the commerce clause as they decided cases involving federal laws that promoted and protected interstate commerce. Railroads and telegraph companies lead this trend, often by seeking to overturn local and state laws that attempted to regulate their operations.

Then in the 1930's, for the sake of the New Deal, federal courts -- now with mostly Democratic appointees -- relied on those precedents from business disputes to expand the commerce clause as a basis for federal power to regulate the entire economy.

My take on the matter is that there is no going back to some Edenic era of constitutional law in which limitations on the commerce clause restrained federal power. At best, federal and state interests might be better balanced and an irreducible core of exclusive state authority reestablished. This could probably be done through revising the federal preemption doctrines that were developed in the 1940's and after to supplant the "dual federalism" approach.

Of course, that would not satisfy marijuana advocates because effective suppression of marijuana cultivation and sale in interstate commerce necessarily requires its suppression in intrastate commerce. No matter how energetic and ingenious, arguments to the contrary from lifestyle libertarians are wrong on the facts.

Fundamentally, conservatives (and economic libertarians) should aim at new political and legal arguments and doctrines that limit federal power. The commerce clause is a weak and broken levee against the great torrent of public expectations that long ago mobilized federal law, tax power, and cash toward national purposes great and small.

Over the next generation though, there will be a slow motion federal bankruptcy due to the massive generational and structural deficit caused by low native birth rates and excessive federal benefits promised to the baby boom generation. The impending painful adjustment can be used to definitively discredit and prune back federal power -- but only if we adapt ourselves to the times instead of missing opportunities by trying to re-fight commerce clause battles that our great-grandparents lost.

[Ken H]

Latest result, Member Opinion:

No 84.7% 607
Undecided/Pass 11.0% 79
Yes 4.3% 31

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/poll?poll=124

Vote early and often!

[Reagan Man]

Not all inanimate objects are created equal.

Drug use/abuse isn't the same as the RKBA.

>>>>Do you think the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution authorizes federal laws against narcotics and firearms?

Narcotics = Yes.

Firearms = NO!

The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 is the law of the land. The 1991 SCOTUS decision in Touby v USA was unanimous and upheld the CSA.

Congress can legislate under the Commerce Clause. The ONLY issue was one of delegation, can Congress delegate it's legislative authority to an executive-branch agency. Again, under fairly settled law, Congress can so long as it limits the discretion of the agency and provides the overall structure/guidance to the agency in the grant of delegation, and so long as the agency follows established principles of administrative law (due process, review and comment, etc).

[Tench_Coxe]

The answer, quite simply, is no.

[Whitewasher]

What Constitution?

[tacticalogic]

Wickard marked a philosophical shift. FDR demanded and exerted whatever political pressure he could to get the court to abandon original intent and use a "living document" interpretation of the Constitution to avoid having to get a constitutional amendment to authorize the New Deal.

With that came the idea that the federal commerce power was not restricted to the objective of regulating commerce among the several states, but that it encompassed not only interstate but intrastate commerce, not only actual but potential commerce, and that it need not be used with the objective of regulating commerce, but as a tactic to regulate things that were not commerce.

That's a lot of authority to be assumed on the basis of what appears to be nothing more than an exercise in creative semantics.

[MamaTexan]

Do you think the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution authorizes federal laws against narcotics and firearms?

No.

Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce among the several States means just what it says.

To 'regulate' (or make regular) simply gives Congress the authority to oversee any transactions between the States. Say if the State of Kansas were to trade wheat for pineapples with the State of Hawaii, Congress would have the authority to step in and dictate HOW MANY bushels of wheat it would take to purchase a certain amount of pineapples.

This insures that the transaction is equitable for all parties concerned.

The Commerce Clause is NOT talking about physically moving material over the imaginary boundaries of the respective 'States', nor does it give Congress ANY authority over the People.

_________________________________________

"When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

-------------

They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please ... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.

Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on National Bank, 1791

[mysterio]

Federal gun laws and the WO(s)D are certainly unconstitutional. And the damage they have done to the integrity of the Bill of Rights far outweighs any benefits.

[LibKill]

No. If I read the original framers right, the second amendment is absolute.

Yes, in that drugs are an item of commerce. They can be regulated as to purity, efficacy, and also to prevent monopolies. SO LONG AS THAT DRUG IS TRADED INTERSTATE. If a drug is manufactured/grown in a state and does not leave that state it is up to the state to regulate it. Not the feds.

The 10th amendment died at Appomattox in 1865. This whole question is merely an intellectual exercise over a moot point.

The feds have the power now. I hope WE can regulate THEM.

ceteris parabus

[N3WBI3]

Why not use ISC to edit newspapers, internet sites, ....

[Paige]

Have you read the Virginia Resolution (Madison)as well as the Kentucky Resolution (Jefferson)? Also, during the "Era of Good Feeling" James Madison vetoed a bill pertaining to building roads, canals, and bridges. This was not one of the enumerated powers according to the Strict interpretation of the Constitution.
In other words, The Federal govt. is superseding what the Intent of the Framers actually was when the Constitution was written but Hamilton and the Federalist along with Washington believed in the Elastic Clause....that pesky little idea of what is deemed "Necessary and Proper." What say ye?

[SauronOfMordor]

If it took a Constitutional Amendment to grant the feds authority over alcohol, it strongly implies that they have no such authority over drugs, firearms, polar fleece, or anything else just because it happens to move in interstate commerce

The founders own writings make clear that the intention of the Insterstate Commerce clause was to remove the ability of the states to interfere with interstate commerce (for example, by taxing goods originating in another state in preference to in-state goods) by lodging that power in the federal government

I also strongly object to the feds "back door" approach to getting states to pass legislation by making federal funds dependent on their doing so

[Torie]

Yes, absolutely. Congress has the power to regulate under the commerce clause any product if such regulation reasonably affects interstate commerce.

[Paul_Denton]

Undecided/Pass here. I do not know enough about it.

[Calamari]

No