Replies

Thomas: "What have we here? Why, it's two harmless middle-aged women trying to cope with their lumbago and gout, growing a little pot in a window sill box. I ask you, how can that possibly affect interstate commerce?"

Scalia:"Let's ask the 3,500,000 hippies, dope dealers, and Bay Area-educated physicians camped out in the backyard who are anxiously waiting for a go-ahead so they can shove 1,000,000 tons of legal marijuana through that loophole."

Thomas: "Aw, nothing like that will ever happen. The California Assembly promises it won't. Pot will only be used for serious illnesses like backaches. Not even a leaf or single seed of it will leave California and enter the surrounding states, and citizens of surrounding states will not come to California to be prescribed bales of marijuana they can take home in their car trunks. They know they would be in BIG TROUBLE if they did, so I'm sure they won't do that."

Scalia: "You probably believe there will be no money changing hands either, no graymarket let alone a blackmarket for the stuff."

Thomas: "My faith in tormented, suffering, pot-smoking mankind and in the good intentions of the California Assembly is unbounded."

Scalia: "The elected representatives of all the people, including the people who live in states surrounding California, had a different opinion about that when they passed a law to keep that loophole closed, and I cannot conclude theirs is an unreasonable opinion."

Thomas: "Aw, lighten up. It's just two middle-aged ladies growing a little pot in a window sill box. What harm can it cause? I want to judicially legislate an exception just for them. It's the compassionate thing to do."

"Let's ask the 3,500,000 hippies, dope dealers, and Bay Area-educated physicians camped out in the backyard who are anxiously waiting for a go-ahead so they can shove 1,000,000 tons of legal marijuana through that loophole."

What loophole?

"The elected representatives of all the people, including the people who live in states surrounding California, had a different opinion about that when they passed a law to keep that loophole closed, and I cannot conclude theirs is an unreasonable opinion."

Rather odd view of state sovereignty. Are you suggesting a new test for federal preemption? -- to wit, if the feds and a certain percentage of contiguous states enact legislation, the surrounded state must on that basis concur and comply?