[tacticalogic]

BUT, if Congress IS regulating interstate commerce and some intrastate activity "substantially effects" Congress' interstate regulatory efforts, the Necessary and Proper Clause gives Congress the power to write laws covering that particular intrastate activity.

That's your current pet theory. Got anything to support it?

[VaBarrister]

The Shriveport Rate Cases.

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)

[robertpaulsen]

"That's your current pet theory. Got anything to support it?"

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)