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 ...
Bogus? Congress, in enacting the Controlled Substances Act, intended to preempt state laws to the contrary. State medical marijuana laws are a violation of the Supremacy Clause and, therefore, unconstitutional.
"The states are not obligated to pass the same laws that the feds do.'
Of course not. Neither are they allowed to pass laws contrary to federal law. California's medical marijuana laws do just that. The fact that they haven't been forced to repeal those laws is a matter of politics, not law.
Do you work for the federal government?
Now, can I ask you a question? Are you a career federal beaurocrat? You think like one.
The subject matter aside, it's an excellent argument for "states rights". Substitute "medical marijuana" for "education" and you have your argument. Compelling, but President Kennedy nevertheless federalized the Alabama National Guard and ordered its units to the university campus.
Gosh, all Alabama did was pass its own laws regarding education -- laws which they thought would best educate the children of their citizens. Right?
Would that make my statements any less true or my opinion any less valid? Why you would ask such a personal question?
Substitute anything you want for "education" and you have the same argument - "to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments".
Because the New Deal interpretation of the Commerce Clause you're pushing is the cause of the explosion of federal government agencies. The only real beneficiaries of the New Deal are the beltway pencil monkeys who think bureaucracy is the measure of civilization.
If you work for a federal agency that was authorized under that interpretation of the Commerce Clause you owe your livlihood to the continued perception that it perfoming a constitutionally valid exercise in regulating commerce. You have a vested self interest in twisting the intent of the Commerce Clause to justify your own job.
You just don’t get it, do you? Wallace was violating Federal Law. Federal Law said that you couldn’t discriminate, Wallace wanted to discriminate. Wallace lost, the Feds triumphed.
Here is what you don’t get, California is not saying pot is legal, and that California is going to protect pot smokers from the feds. California is simply saying that the state of california doesn’t care, and we aren’t going to arrest and prosecute it any more. They don’t have to enforce federal law.
It’s really quite simple.
I wouldn't put it quite like that. Wallace was enforcing Alabama law as passed by the Alabama legislature which allowed segregation. That law was in conflict with federal law which forced integration. Only after the National Guard came in did Alabama change their state law.
How is that any different than Schwarzenegger enforcing California law as passed by the California legislature which allows medical marijuana? That law is in conflict with federal law which says that ALL marijuana is illegal. The National Guard hasn't been called up in California only because of politics, not the law.
"They don’t have to enforce federal law."
I never said they had to. Alabama didn't, right? And what happened in Alabama?
Gosh, you just don't get it, do you?
The federal law in conflict is not based on any constitutional grant of power to the federal government agreed to by the States, and enumerated in the Constitution. It's based on a fraudulent "living document" interpretation of the Constitution made up by FDR's liberal New Deal court.
Man, let’s just end this conversation, you are simply totally unaware of how federalism works. On top of that, you are unwilling to listen when it is explained to you.
Good, this law deserevs to be mocked.
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