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To: Rockingham
in exercise of federal commerce clause power, Congress can and did properly find that the cultivation and sale of marijuana must be suppressed comprehensively.

Even assuming it's true that the feds can effectively suppress interstate trade of marijuana only by suppressing intrastate cultivation and possession, it doesn't follow that they have the Constitutional authority to do so. There is no reason to think the Framers were unaware that placing limits on federal power would make permitted actions less effective than they might be in the absence of such limits.

87 posted on 11/05/2005 5:52:26 AM PST by Know your rights (The modern enlightened liberal doesn't care what you believe as long as you don't really believe it.)
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To: Know your rights

I grant that in the early era of the Constitution, there would have been great arguments over intrusive federal laws based on the commerce clause, or anything else, for that matter. But the potential for such arguments does not usefully illuminate the commerce clause issue because intrusive federal laws about commerce would have been politically impossible due to the weakness of the federal government and physically impossible and unnecessary due to the rudimentary state of communications in that era.


101 posted on 11/05/2005 9:23:47 AM PST by Rockingham
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