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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (2339)	3/16/2007 3:33:35 AM
From: John Carragher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25737

my wife had a pituitary brain tumor. never was the weed uggested as a miracle drug that would save her. I have never heard of such nonsense. How can the courts denie it, if what you say is true this would have gone to supreme court and medical profession would be behind it. instead some nut post it cures tumors? don't you think if it cured tumors companies would be suppling this stuff asap. I guess these same people vote too.

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (2339)	3/16/2007 11:42:43 AM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

why will she die if she doesn't get Mary Jane ??

To: Gersh Avery who wrote (2339)	3/17/2007 6:23:15 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

The Gonzalez v. Raich decision was about a lot more than one poor woman who wants to smoke a plant. Raich did for the Commerce Clause what Kelo did for takings. If anyone thinks we still have Federalism, they're dreaming. Clarence Thomas wrote in dissent: "Raich use[s] marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything – and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers." Here's what the WSJ wrote at the time High on the Commerce Clause The unfortunate implications of the medical marijuana ruling. Wednesday, June 8, 2005 12:01 a.m. We've never supported drug legalization, even in its "medical marijuana" drag. Still, we can't help but feel uneasy about the Supreme Court's 6-3 decision Monday in Gonzales v. Raich, which held that the federal government can trump state laws permitting the possession and cultivation of small quantities of cannabis for purely personal use. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissent: "If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything, and the federal government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers." By "enumerated powers," Justice Thomas means the idea that the federal government can undertake only such activities as the Constitution explicitly permits. Hence the 10th Amendment, which reserves those powers not listed--such as criminal law enforcement--to the states. President James Madison, the Constitution's primary author, famously vetoed a highway bill in 1817: "The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers . . ." How things have changed--largely as a result of New Deal-era jurisprudence holding that the federal government's Constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce could be used to justify all sorts of previously unimagined powers. This can be a good thing, when what we are truly talking about is interstate commerce. But by the 1990s federal law making had grown so unhinged from any plausible Commerce Clause justification that it provoked a minor Supreme Court backlash. In 1995 in United States v. Lopez, the Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act on the grounds that gun possession near a school was not an economic activity. And in United States v. Morrison, the Court struck down portions of the Violence Against Women Act on similar grounds. Raich would appear to end the Lopez line of reasoning, since the two decisions don't seem reconcilable. If, as Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his majority concurrence, non-economic activities can be regulated so long as they are part of a "comprehensive scheme of regulation," there would appear to be no federal power the Commerce Clause couldn't theoretically justify. And let no one be deluded that the democratic preference of America's largest state isn't being trampled here. We didn't support the California medical marijuana ballot initiative at issue in Raich. But a clear majority of Californians did. Just because an issue is "important" doesn't mean it should be a matter for federal law. Almost all homicide is regulated at the state level, and contentious issues like abortion rights are best handled not by judicial fiat but by democratic compromises in the 50 states. Who knows what further intrusions into the rights of local polities the Raich decision may one day be used to justify? Such stakes explain why many conservative legal scholars such as former Reagan Assistant Attorney General Douglas Kmiec and former Bush Solicitor General Charles Fried urged the court to recognize that federal powers shouldn't extend this far. But Justices Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, who voted to limit federal powers in Lopez and Morrison, appear to have retreated from putting any restraint on Commerce Clause-based regulation. This was not a good decision for anyone who believes there are Constitutional limits on the federal leviathan. opinionjournal.com