Posted on 12/17/2004 9:12:14 AM PST by inquest
You're right. All that needs to be done in that case is to simply challenge the laws written under that usurped power in court as unconstitutional.
Oops. Wait. That was done, and the courts have found that the power was NOT usurped.
Now what?
That's your current pet theory. Got anything to support it?
Oops. Wait. They couldn't do that so the courts "found" the power someplace.
Such usurpation will continue until there is a police state (followed by a civil war) or a court will actually read the constitution.
Congress ... does possess the power to foster and protect interstate commerce, and to take all measures necessary or appropriate to that end, although intrastate transactions of interstate carriers may be thereby controlled."
Houston, East & West Texas Railway v. United States, 234 U.S. 342 (1914)
That was an excerpt of an earlier robertpaulsen comment, hence the italics.
Indeed they did.
James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell 13 Feb. 1829
Letters 4:14--15
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. 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.
So you would be in favor of all substances being legal as long as the personal responsibilty was added back in?
It was very specific -- even our Mr. Filburn was allowed to grow his own wheat for personal use. He merely had to pay a per-bushel penalty (which he refused to do).
Now, to say that the court ruled the way they did because we were at war is a bit of a stretch. I don't buy it.
The Shreveport case involved regulation of intrastate commerce indirectly because it was done by a registered carrier of interstate commerce. The decision states "by reason of their control of the carriers". What was being regulated was the carrier, as an instrument of interstate commerce. By robertpaulsen's logic, it was necessary and proper for Congress to declare each and every one of us an "instrument of interstate commerce" for the purpose of regulation under the Commerce Clause.
I wasnt saying I bought his application of it, just supplying a possible source of his logic.
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."
The Public Choice effect has seldom been stronger than it is in the War on Drugs. I can think of one other case where this much effort and this much stridency went into trying to sustain an irrational and unsustainable law: alcohol Prohibition. That one created a river of blood, too.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit Eternity Road:
http://www.eternityroad.info
Of course I do. But it's just a start. You got anything (besides your tired old opinion) to negate it?
"[T]he New Deal Court’s own constitutional justification for its radical expansion of the scope of federal power over commerce was that the congressional measures in question were valid exercises of the power granted by the Necessary and Proper Clause and were not direct exercises of the power to regulate commerce among the several states. That is, the Court did not simply and directly enlarge the scope of the Commerce Clause itself, as is often believed. Rather, it upheld various federal enactments as necessary and proper means to achieve the legitimate objective of regulating interstate commerce."
--Stephen Gardbaum, Rethinking Constitutional Federalism, 74 Tex. L. Rev. 795, 807-08 (1996)
Move to Florida the land of flowers, where this flowering herb will someday be legal to possess again. Our prison system here is so overcrowded that a good civil disobedience foray could really tax the system to the point of collapse.
Great movie.
What we really have is a failure to communicate our real agendas. All this "pot isn't medicine" nonsense is a smoke screen for authoritarianism.
And the warriors say the medicine thing is a smoke screen. Maybe it is, that's why I never argue that aspect of it.
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