Posted on 05/12/2008 4:43:29 AM PDT by Aristotelian
Ever since California voters became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the state has faced unyielding opposition from the federal government, which insists it has the power to prohibit a drug it considers useless and dangerous.
That could all change with the next presidential election.
As the candidates prepare for a May 20 primary in Oregon, one of 12 states with a California-style law, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana.
His Democratic rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is less explicit, recently softening a pledge she made early in the campaign to halt federal raids in states with medical marijuana laws. But she has expressed none of the hostility that marked the response of her husband's administration to California's initiative, Proposition 215.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee-in-waiting, has gone back and forth on the issue - promising a medical marijuana patient at one campaign stop that seriously ill patients would never face arrest under a McCain administration, but ultimately endorsing the Bush administration's policy of federal raids and prosecutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Bush was for it after he was against it.
But somewhere, sometime, a gust of air crossed a state border, thus invoking the interstate commerce clause for all eternity and all issues.
Even if you live in California, buy marijuana that’s grown in California, and consume it in California, interstate commerce is affected because you didn’t buy it in another state. Therefore it’s a federal issue under the interstate commerce clause.
I’m not joking. This is exactly the rationale the Court takes on this and a number of other issues.
All fine and noble if one is willing at the same time to settle for an open borders, pro-global warming agenda-pusher.
I've swallowed my revulsion multiple times since it's become clear McCain will be nominated and tried to convince myself I'd put all those issues you mention ahead of my ABSOLUTE DISGUST for this man. Predictably, he's done little to earn my vote and quite a lot to lose it.
But since he's slapped me twice again in the past 24 hours, I'm having more serious doubts than ever before. And I've voted every presidential election since I turned voting age.
McCain and La Raza/The Race: A “serious lapse of judgment”
Yeah, maybe the "stay-at-homes' are fooling themselves, they probably are. But maybe they sleep at night.
Which was just prior to Jimmy Carter I meant to add.
Willingness has nothing to do with it. We're all gonna settle for it whether we like it or not. It's not a choice.
But since he's slapped me twice again in the past 24 hours, I'm having more serious doubts than ever before. And I've voted every presidential election since I turned voting age.
One of the two will be president. It's that simple. It's not a question of whether or not you like the guy. It's just a question if one is better than the other, and one definitely is.
But maybe they sleep at night.
Maybe. Personally, I sleep fine regardless. I make what I think to be the best decision at the time, and then I move on. It's not that big a deal. You press a button. Again, one will be president. I don't take it as an endorsement to vote for one of them. I take it for what it is: a choice.
Marijuana is already decriminalized in California -- possession is a misdemeanor with a small fine. When's the last time you've read about a marijuana user in California being arrested? Medical marijuana doesn't free up any more cops to "focus on real crime".
Oh, and how's that working out -- crime down in California with all these cops with all this free time?
"Finally at the end of the list of conditions listed in prop 215 that can be treated with pot....stress."
Uh-huh. When Proposition 215 was being sold to the public, however, I remember hearing things like "cancer" and "nausea" and "glaucoma" -- stress was nowhere on the radar.
It would be one heck of a president who could look at a baggie of marijuana and prove that.
It is a success if the goal is to legally sell marijuana to everyone.
Not anarchy.
While that is true, that wasn't the reason given by the U.S. Supreme Court in the controlling case, Gonzales v Raich. Marijuana is fungible.
"Given the enforcement difficulties that attend distinguishing between marijuana cultivated locally and marijuana grown elsewhere, and concerns about diversion into illicit channels, the Court has no difficulty concluding that Congress had a rational basis for believing that failure to regulate the intrastate manufacture and possession of marijuana would leave a gaping hole in the CSA."
You are blaming God for the failings and sins of His creatures here on Earth.
For human creatures to ignore growing and manifest evils, such as the two you note along with murderous Islamic radicalism, is hardly a rationale for placing blame on God.
And you are not thanking God for our blessings and for the triumphs over evil.
yes.. the law was changed through the ballot box. you just dont like the result.
It's about state sovereignty. The Commerce Clause was about commerce between the states, but after FDR's New Socialism the clause was drastically expanded to any commerce even within a state, and the 10th Amendment was dismissed. The only dent in this federal meddling in state issues has been United States v. Lopez.
I want a president who follows the Constitution and will do his best to reverse FDR's damage. A consequence of following constitutional principle is that pot heads in California get their dope legally, but that's California's problem.
I didn’ blame 6od for anything.. I simply said don’t count on him to save you..on earth anyway.
You do realize where the justification for Gonzales v. Raich came from, right? New Deal communist-model price and production controls on wheat.
The federal government set a certain acreage and production that a farmer could do on his own land. He planted that, plus more for his own consumption. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court ruled that had he not produced more for his own consumption he would have had to buy it on the market, thus he affected the interstate market for wheat.
Fool for Liberty is right.
Placing oneself in God’s hands and seeking His direction is the only way to be saved on Earth.
It is not from seeking direction from the various idols available to us, including our own vain selves.
Millions of believers have died or lived through hell on Earth. To say "don't worry about the country, God will save us" is thus not a very good idea.
That is correct. But it also included commerce within a state that affected other states. 100 years before FDR.
The followig quote is from Chirf Justice (and Founding Father) John Marshall in the landmark case, Gibbons v Ogden (1824):
"It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States."
Meaning that if it does extend to OR AFFECT other states, it may be regulated. What made you think it couldn't?
Meaning that if it does extend to OR AFFECT other states, it may be regulated. What made you think it couldn't?
It means that if it doesn't cross state lines, then the commerce clause is blind to it. The wheat that Filburn was growing for his own use never left his farm.
Can you give me a single, concrete example of "commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States" under the New Deal "substantial effects" doctrine?
Your argument doesn't seek to clarify the limits of federal authority under the Commerce Clause, but to destroy them, and needs to be pounded into to dust as many times as it takes to keep it there.
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