Posted on 10/23/2006 5:03:34 PM PDT by JTN
Nevada is known for gambling, 24-hour liquor sales and legal prostitution. Yet the main group opposing Question 7, an initiative on the state's ballot next month that would allow the sale and possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults 21 or older, is called the Committee to Keep Nevada Respectable.
In Colorado, opponents of Amendment 44, which would eliminate penalties for adults possessing an ounce or less of marijuana, are equally certain of their own rectitude. "Those who want to legalize drugs weaken our collective struggle against this scourge," declares the Colorado Drug Investigators Association. "Like a cancer, proponents for legalization eat away at society's resolve and moral fiber."
To sum up, smoking pot is less respectable than a drunken gambling spree followed by a visit to a hooker, while people who think adults shouldn't be punished for their choice of recreational intoxicants are like a tumor that will kill you unless it's eradicated. In the face of such self-righteous posturing, the marijuana initiatives' backers have refused to cede the moral high ground, a strategy from which other activists can learn.
The Nevada campaign, which calls itself the Committee to Regulate and Control Marijuana, emphasizes the advantages of removing marijuana from the black market, where regulation and control are impossible, and allowing adults to obtain the drug from licensed, accountable merchants. To signal that a legal market does not mean anything goes, the initiative increases penalties for injuring people while driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
The "regulate and control" message has attracted public support from more than 30 Nevada religious leaders. The list includes not just the usual suspects -- Unitarian Universalist ministers and Reform rabbis -- but also representatives of more conservative groups, such as Lutherans and Southern Baptists.
"I don't think using marijuana is a wise choice for anyone," says the Rev. William C. Webb, senior pastor of Reno's Second Baptist Church. "Drugs ruin enough lives. But we don't need our laws ruining more lives. If there has to be a market for marijuana, I'd rather it be regulated with sensible safeguards than run by violent gangs and dangerous drug dealers."
Troy Dayton of the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative, who was largely responsible for persuading Webb and the other religious leaders to back Question 7, notes that support from members of the clergy, which was important in repealing alcohol prohibition, "forces a reframing of the issue." It's no longer a contest between potheads and puritans.
The Colorado campaign, which goes by the name SAFER (Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation), emphasizes that marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and asks, "Should adults be punished for making the rational choice to use marijuana instead of alcohol?" This approach puts prohibitionists on the defensive by asking them to justify the disparate legal treatment of the two drugs.
So far they have not been up to the task. Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger has implicitly conceded marijuana itself is not so bad by implausibly linking it to methamphetamine. In a televised debate with SAFER's Mason Tvert, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers insisted "the only acceptable alternative to intoxication is sobriety."
That's fine for those who avoid all psychoactive substances as a matter of principle. But since most people -- including Suthers, who acknowledges drinking -- like using chemicals to alter their moods and minds, it's reasonable to ask for some consistency in the law's treatment of those chemicals, especially at a time when police are arresting a record number of Americans (nearly 787,000 last year) for marijuana offenses.
Despite a hard push by federal, state and local drug warriors who have been telling voters in Nevada and Colorado that failing to punish adults for smoking pot will "send the wrong message" to children, the latest polls indicate most are unpersuaded. Perhaps they worry about the message sent by the current policy of mindless intolerance.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine and a contributing columnist on Townhall.com.
It means they do what they feel would be best. Have you read any of the Court's decisions lately? Many of the opinions have little to do with the Constitution, and everything to do with what they personally think things should be. Kings and dictators don't get bogged down with lobbyists either, does that make them referable to you?
Who said it was?
That would be you. You are the one advocating USSC rule.
Should a bare majority of the houses of Congress be any more comforting?
Absolutely. That's two houses of Congress AND the President. Opposed to your five buddies, that like to feel important. The additional benefit is that it is far more easily changed. The ability to make things right, is a definite plus.
You want it decided by backroom deals and midnight sessions of Congress?
I do? Let's see, public votes with representatives and the President answerable to the People, over a liberal book club, with a God complex, that answers to no one. More open and well informed debate in this country would be wonderful, as would full disclosure on all political money, but I'm not going to let some corruption drive me into the arms of a Politburo.
Just where do you think the debate over the Constitutionality of an act of Congress is going to take place? On the floor before the votes are taken?
Like Jefferson, Madison, and the rest did it for the first 140 years after ratification? Yes. I think that's the absolute best place to do it. In a public forum in front of the People by their Representatives. A shame you have given up on the Republic, and wish it to be run by a Politburo.
Indeed, what happens in your world if the President packs the court, like FDR did? Or the Congress disbands it through impeachment?
You have so little faith in the People that I'm surprised that you can get yourself out of bed in the morning. But its not your skepticism that disappoints. Skepticism can be healthy. It is that you have no accompanying skepticism of the Court that is scary. From the frying pan into the fire.
Many of them have little to do with the Constitution. If you have your way none of them will ever again. I'd prefer that they limit their deliberations to measuring current legislation against the original intent of the Constitution and those who wrote it.
That would be you. You are the one advocating USSC rule.
The USSC was intended and created as a check against the power of Congress. It was created and it's function laid out in the blueprint of the Republic - the US Constitution. If you don't like that arrangement, there are procedures to change it. If you have to mischaracterize wanting to hold to that arrangement as "advocating USSC rule" then you're wasting your time.
Absolutely. That's two houses of Congress AND the President. Opposed to your five buddies, that like to feel important. The additional benefit is that it is far more easily changed. The ability to make things right, is a definite plus.
The "ability to make things right" is and has always been there. There is no decision by the USSC that cannot be overridden by Amendment. We can explicitly make anything constitutional they rule is unconstitutional. It's not particularly easy, and it isn't supposed to be.
Without any independent review of the constitutionality of Congressional legislation, you're left with a pure representative democracy, not a constitutional republic.
Another career bureaucrat?
Could be..
Do you suppose The School for Bureaucrats has courses in Empty Rhetoric?
Mollification 101.
What's the average tenure of a SC Justice?
For someone who says they support the Constitution, you are deathly afraid of its constructs.
During the Cold War, I wasn't shocked by the peaceniks' lack of trust in our government, but rather the unquestionable faith and trust that they put in the Soviet Union. This is how I view you. So horridly afraid of the majority, and the mess, which is a democratic Constitutional Republic in action, that you readily want to turn 300 million lives over to five people who's whims become the Constitution. Would that still hold if I picked five of the judges?
Do you work for the federal government?
While those police are chasing people smoking pot in their own house they are distracted from catching car thieves, rapist, muderers etc.
If you have ever dealt with the police then you must know they are pretty worthless. They do a good job of chasing people to give out traffic tickets, but let some property crime happen to you and they will be the first to tell you flat out that they won't be able to find the person.
I am sick of government and the Police departments waste as much money as any other goverment department with their silly swat teams, helicopters, sat phones, camoflage etc.
I rather cut out the pot laws and give the police a real job to do or get rid of them too.
Heck put them on the border.
Jon
Romans 9:32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone;
Please keep posting nothing.
The only group I have found that will consistently and virulently oppose any attempt to limit the power of Congress are the federal bureaucrats who share their power by proxy. They don't want to see any limits imposed on Congress because those limits are also their limits.
Did you already forget what confirmation requires?
What are you smoking?
Do you think trying to get conservative "original intent" justices appointed to the Court is a waste of time? It may not be perfect, but the USSC is there for a reason. If you want a system where Congress can simply pass any law that seems popular at the time, and leave it to the electorate to decide if it was right you might as well the the Constition and scratch out any reference to making Amendments - we won't need to stinking Amendments.
As we've seen, sampleman & crowd do indeed want a system where Congress [and States/cities] can simply pass any law that seems popular at the time, and leave it to the electorate to decide if it was 'right'.
-- Unable to rationally debate the constitutionality of this specific issue, they simply ignore any mention of it..
"--how about an answer? You haven't bothered to have one of those in the last dozen or so posts. Running away from the issue isn't a good sign for your argument's strength. --- How about being brave and making one? --"
Wouldn't that be nice. And when has that ever happened measuring from the time that they first started making themselves the Constitution in the 1930's. I have a better plan. Make them gods, embodied with no personal agendas or bias and able to pass perfect judgment. I'll take nine. Now back to reality.
The USSC was intended and created as a check against the power of Congress.
Were they asleep for the first 140 years? There is nothing in the Constitution about the Court being "more equal" than the other branches, and nothing about being final arbiter of the Constitution. The Constitution created the SC to be the ultimate arbiter of criminal and civil law, and to serve as a higher authority when states were in legal disagreement.
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party;--to controversies between two or more states;--between a state and citizens of another state;--between citizens of different states;--between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.
That is authority to rule on cases of law, not to create, rewrite, or nullify the law. Again, if I'm wrong, why did the SC fail to act for 140 years?
We can explicitly make anything constitutional they rule is unconstitutional. It's not particularly easy, and it isn't supposed to be.
Like all the amendments on partial birth abortion that keep getting overturned? The supreme court has already shown that if an amendment goes against how they have define the Constitution, they will just ignore it, or strike it down before it can be ratified.
Without any independent review of the constitutionality of Congressional legislation, you're left with a pure representative democracy, not a constitutional republic.
So we weren't a constitutional republic from founding until FDR? The House is independent of the Senate and the Senate likewise, as is the Executive. All told they are 537 individuals that are just as likely to be constitutionally minded, as the 9 on the SC. Probably more so, as they have to answer for their votes, and signatures.
A nomination, lack of a clear record (unless liberal), and 51 Senators, then no limitations until death. That sound about right?
Reading Romans 9 in its entirety makes you look like a fool. Perhaps you should read more than just the text that comes up on your search engine, when you're pretending to be John the Baptist. Or are you Jesus Christ today?
Only one weekend a month. Do you work for an appointed Politburo?
Gonna do Congress while you're at it, or are Hillary and Teddy already perfect as far as your concerned?
Section 2. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States
That includes any laws passed by Congress.
That is authority to rule on cases of law, not to create, rewrite, or nullify the law.
If the constitutionality of federal law is not within their pervue, there is no point in them being Constitutional scholars or studying Constitutional Law. All that's left is to rule on propriety of the process.
Again, if I'm wrong, why did the SC fail to act for 140 years?
Fail to act on what? Marbury v Madison was in 1803. You seem to be interested in revising more than the Constitution.
Like all the amendments on partial birth abortion that keep getting overturned? The supreme court has already shown that if an amendment goes against how they have define the Constitution, they will just ignore it, or strike it down before it can be ratified.
What amendments on partial birth abortion? When has Congress drafted such an amendment and submitted it to the States for ratification?
Not one single day, ever.
Again, nothing but insults and empty accusations.
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