Posted on 01/17/2006 7:07:26 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
BREAKING ON THE AP WIRE:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has upheld Oregon's one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.
You are responding to someone else. That is not my quote.
Didn't sound like the Admin made the smart play in fighting this. Quite a stretch to extend the drug laws to ban euthanasia.
It appears statutory.
I'm not sure that's very useful, as it deals with the Feds imposing an affirmative duty onto the states. But SCOTUS did say that one of the three provisions exceeded the power of FedGov over states, and severed that provision from the federally imposed nuclear waste disposal regime. IOW, the case is sort of a mixed bag.
That has to be the most leftist statement I've seen on FR, a complete advocacy of the nanny state.
Loopholing.
No wonder it confused me. It was cited by another FReeper as a landmark fed gov vs states rights case.
NOW, I am going to do my laundry!
Agreed. We need to be consistent.
"Again I state that anyone who wants to die isn't mentally sound and that no one is arguing against pain medication."
Could you please scan and post here a copy of the certificate that says you are legally empowered to diagnosis thousands of people with a mental illness that you haven't even met?
After Alito is confirmed next week, we will be one vote closer. Gotta hope one of the other geezers retires before Bush leaves office.
It is a landmark fed gov v. states' right case, but the fact pattern it was regulating and the genesis and purpose(s) of the federal regulations are fairly far removed from regulating individual conduct and doctor liability at end-life, etc.
Not completely useless in the instant case, but tangential and difficult to apply to the facts of physicial assisted suicide and the degree of superiority of federal regulation of controlled substances.
"Yeah, that's what we need - a theoracracy. It works so well in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Maybe we should derive our basis of law from those "Godly" plastic-haired, snakefondling moneygrubbers on TV, huh?"
Let's get a little perspective on the Law.
To understand the Constitution and this government of laws, it is important that we realize that the founders saw that because the rights they were seeking to protect were God- given, Creator- endowed rights, they would not be able to be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with the Creator's law. They called this higher law, "natural law" or the "laws of nature."
James Madison, known as the major framer of the American Constitution, and one of its brilliant defenders, identified the leading principle for the success of the first form of a Republican government: "We have stacked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self- government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God"
It is clear that the Law we talk about is divined as coming from God.
I hate to be pedantic, but it's something to do until I screw up myself.... :-)
So the liberals in OR can commit suicide...and the downside is?
I agree with limiting the applications of the CSA in a
manner consistent with the principles of federalism and
our constitutional structure. Raich, supra, at ___ (THO-
MAS, J., dissenting); cf . Whitman, supra, at 486487
(THOMAS, J., concurring) (noting constitutional concerns
with broad delegations of authority to administrative
agencies). But that is now water over the dam. The relevance of such considerations was at its zenith in Raich,
when we considered whether the CSA could be applied to
the intrastate possession of a controlled substance consis-
tent with the limited federal powers enumerated by the
Constitution. Such considerations have little, if any,
relevance where, as here, we are merely presented with a
question of statutory interpre tation, and not the extent of
constitutionally permissible federal power. This is par-
ticularly true where, as here, we are interpreting broad,
str aightforward language within a statutory framework
that a majority of this Court has concluded is so compre-
hensive that it necessarily nullifies the St ates' " `tradi-
tional . . . powers . . . to protect the health, safety, and
welfare of their citizens.' "2 Raich, supra, at ___, n. 38 (s lip
op., at 27, n. 38). The Court's reliance upon the constitu-
tional principles that it rejected in Raich--albeit under
the guise of statut ory interpretation--is perplexing to say
the least. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
The CSA was fine, it just came down to Ashcroft not having the power to make that interpretation of it. I'm sure the fact that he didn't consult the Secretary of Health and Human Services as required by law didn't help. As a senator, he was behind a failed attempt to change it to cover assisted suicide, so this was an issue of one person trying to use law to push his personal beliefs.
The stated purpose of the law was to stop illicit trade in controlled drugs, to keep prescribed drugs out of the illegal drug trade. It also says that states have an interest and say in regulating their own medical practices. Ashcroft ignored the role the states play, in fact opposed a state's power to regulate its medical practice, and tried to extend the law into where it wasn't intended.
“No provision of this subchapter shall be construed as indicating an intent on the part of the Congress to occupy the field in which that provision operates . . . to the exclusion of any State law on the same subjectmatter which would otherwise be within the authority of the State, unless there is a positive conflict between that provision . . . and that State law so that the two cannot consistently stand together.” §903.Since the law is about illicit trade and recreational use, there is no conflict. The only conflict is in Ashcroft's extended interpretation of the law.
The dissenters were wrong.
Well, if the Supreme Court has no problem with "hubbies" murdering "wives" via slow, cruel & unusual starve/dying of thirst, then allowing others to 2nd guess disabled and old folks wishes re. live/die is to be expected.
Kill babies ok? Ok, sure, why not kill the elderly/infirm?
Next on to Jews, Gypsies and other sub-humans...ah, oops, I forgot, the 3rd Reich is no longer with us, right?
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