Both Silberman and Sutton cited Scalia’s opinion in 2005 upholding strict federal regulation of marijuana in the case of Angel Raich, a Californian who used home-grown marijuana to relieve her pain. “If Congress could regulate Angel Raich when she grew marijuana on her property for self-consumption,” Sutton wrote, “it is difficult to say Congress may not regulate the 50 million Americans who self-finance their medical care.”
http://mobile.latimes.com/p.p?a=rp&m=b&postId=1165037.
Two appeals court justices, both friends of Scalia, cited his opinion in Raich to uphold Obamacare:
But the Raich ruling did not enable congress to RULE the American public.Will this matter to Scalia? We sure better HOPE so.
“’If Congress could regulate Angel Raich when she grew marijuana on her property for self-consumption,’ Sutton wrote, ‘it is difficult to say Congress may not regulate the 50 million Americans who self-finance their medical care.’”
Pure legerdemain. To compel individuals to purchase insurance is not to “regulate” their out of pocket spending. The two have nothing to do with eachother. As wrongheaded as was the Raich decision, at least regulating the harvesting and smoking of marijuana is a regulation of commerce. That is, so long as you assume home growth and personal consumption is interstate commerce, which it isn’t.
Point is, you must regulate the thing that is commerce for it to be regulation of interstate commerce. Mandating people buy insurance cannot be regulation of paying for a minute clinic visit with cash. They are completely seperate. It would be as if the feds presumed the commerce clause empowered on the basis of pot growing to order Raich to become a professional circus clown.
There may be a connection between clowning and pot use; I’m not familiar enough with clown culture to say. I am sure either way the compulsion wouldn’t be regulation of commerce and wouldn’t be constitutional.