The law did penalize something. He was fined for feeding it to his chickens on the premise that had he not grown enough wheat to do that, he would have had to buy it on the open market, which affects interstate commerce.
IOW, the federal government can control the tomato plant that you planted and that you eat, because that bite out of that tomato would have otherwise been a bite out of a tomato bought on the open market, affecting interstate commerce. Even if you would have bought the tomato from a local farm, that farm produced tomatoes sold on the open market. Even if that farm didn’t sell outside the state, any farm in the state producing that tomato meant one tomato that didn’t have to be imported from out of state, thus affecting interstate commerce.
This is a legal absurdity. A person must be insane, stupid, devious or all of the above to think that the Founders though the federal government could control individual actions with such granularity.
Yeah, but not feeding unthreshed grain to on-premises livestock.
From Wickard v. Filburn, 317 US 111 (1942)
Thus the penalty was contingent upon an act which appellee committed not before but after the enactment of the statute, and had he chosen to cut his excess and cure it or feed it as hay, or to reap and feed it with the head and straw together, no penalty would have been demanded. Such manner of consumption is not uncommon. Only when he threshed and thereby made it a part of the bulk of wheat overhanging the market did he become subject to penalty.
Yes. Extending the argument even more ad absurdum, I'm surprised the Feds don't just use the "Interstate Commerce" clause to regulate every atom in existence -- right down to the air we breathe. After all, the atmosphere crosses state lines constantly, and I'm sure that a few molecules of O2 in my lungs right now must have come from, say, New Jersey.
Heh, heh. He said "granularity"! (Other than that, I agree completely)