'Demon drug' propaganda doesn't cut it anymore

The Providence Journal ^ | May 10, 2006 | Froma Harrop

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Gee, who to believe?

Surely not your lying eyes ;-)

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

It's all about to come down when you get some more "original intent" justices who will throw out Wickard. That is because it is the same thinking that brought you Roe, Kelo, bussing and on and on. You get all or nothing. If you are working to overturn any of those then you are working to overturn the drug laws as much as anyone. I suggest you should switch allegiances to DU and support judicial activism if the status quo on drugs is more important to you than its other effects.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Why, the heck with it, we might as well scrap each and every one of these regulations as un-Constitutional (well, at least at a Federal level they are). In fact a whole butt-load of the U.S. Code in general could be just plain scrapped.

Uh... I thought that is what conservatism and Free Republic was about? I thought the supporters of all that at the federal level were down the hall at Democratic Underground?

I think all of you guys that are arguing for the legalization of drugs haven't seen or experienced first hand the tradgedy caused by them. Haven't experienced first hand abusive alcoholic parents, haven't been personally affected by somebody close to you O.D'g or absolutely wrecking their life (and everybody around them). You haven't seen first hand the what crank/crack does to people...

Arguing from emotion to promote an invalid conclusion is pure liberalism. The federal government is not the place to do this. The price of uniformity is the power to control all things, not just your pet issue. There are two valid solutions that do not lead to tyranny: state level control in which you can choose among 50 solutions, or a Constitutional Amendment to separate the effect of federal power on this issue from all others, such as abortion or emminent domain. As it is you are working against yourself if you oppose the status quo on any of those issues.

[raygun]

The reference to stare decisis was not originally intended to specificly be relevent concerning the overarching topic of the history of federal drug legislation except regarding to federal law in general (as it was specifically stated in the cited Wiki article).

Much to my suprise upon further investigation of the whole topic of the history of drug regulation, according to the Wiki's entry on the Controlled Substances Act:

In 2003, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled the Controlled Substances Act illegal as it applied to the use of medical marijuana in the case Raich v. Ashcroft, 352 F.3d 1222 (9th Cir. 2003). However, the case was appealed to the Supreme Court by the federal government, and in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government.

Of course its not entirely suprising that it was the liberal 9th Cir. court that was overturned (don't they have some sort of record going on in that regard?).

With respect to Roe v. Wade, stare decisis would definitely apply. Whether my opinion regarding that case lies with the majority (or not) is irrelevent; 5-4 is a majority ruling by the high court.

The fact of the matter is that in our legal system, whenever the higher court rules on some specific issue, the lower courts are bound to adhere to that opinion in all subsequent rulings of cases before them (and may even in fact affect all previous decisions), e.g., previous convictions could be overturned.

However, I'm intrigued by one aspect of what Wiki says concerning stare decisis: evasion and binding precedent protest rulings. The Wiki says:

And while lower courts are bound in theory by higher court precedent, in practice judges may sometimes attempt to evade precedents, by distinguishing them on spurious grounds. The appeal of a decision that does not follow precedent might not occur, however, as the expense of an appeal may prevent the losing party from doing so. Thus the lower court decision may stand even though it does not follow the higher court decision, as the only way a decision can enter the appeal process is by application of one of the parties bound by it.

Occasionally, the application of prior case law results in court decisions which the judge explicitly states personal disagreement with the judgment he or she has rendered, but that he or she is required to do so by binding precedent that is, the issue at hand was already decided by a higher court. Note that is thus distinct from stare decisis, which are decisions from lateral courts, lower courts, or the same court, and affords deviation based upon "compelling justification" (see Hilton v.s. Carolina Pub. Rys. Cmsn., 502 U.S. 197, 202, 112 S. Ct. 560, 565 (1991).)

In the common law tradition case law regulates, via precedents, how laws are to be understood, based on how prior cases have been decided. Case law governs the impact court decisions have on future cases. Unlike most civil law systems, common law systems follow the doctrine of stare decisis in which lower courts usually make decisions consistent with previous decisions of higher courts.

With respect to drug law, you can bet your booty that the government isn't going to be hamstrung by evasion due to distinguishment based on spurious grounds. It would appear that stare decisis opinions are not necessarily etched in stone (not even SCOTUS' own rulings by SCOTUS itself). See 132 Wn.2d 1, STATE v. VALENTINE [No. 62274-4. En Banc.]:

[summary of case]"The doctrine of stare decisis does not prevent the Supreme Court from reconsidering its prior holdings; a prior holding may be overruled if the theoretical footing of the holding has eroded with the passage of time and the holding is no longer relevant in contemporary society. [Dictum.]"

Moreover, "Common Law - Alteration - Change in Conditions. A rule of law announced by an appellate court should be adaptable to the society it governs. [Dictum.]"

[Opinion of dissenting minority]...Justice Douglas's metaphor that "As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." - Letter to Young Lawyers Section of the Washington State Bar Association (Sept. 10, 1976), in THE DOUGLAS LETTERS: SELECTIONS FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF JUSTICE WILLIAM Ct. DOUGLAS, 162 (Melvin I. Urofsky ed., 1987).

Absent legislative intervention "[t]he doctrine [of stare decisis] requires a clear showing that an established rule is incorrect and harmful before it is abandoned." In re Stranger Creek, 77 Wn.2d 649, 653, 466 P.2d 508 (1970).

The obligation to follow precedent begins with necessity, and a contrary necessity marks its outer limit. With Cardozo, we recognize that no judicial system could do society's work if it eyed each issue afresh in every case that raised it. See B. Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Process 149 (1921). Indeed, the very concept of the rule of law underlying our own Constitution requires such continuity over time that a respect for precedent is, by definition, indispensable. See Powell, Stare Decisis and Judicial Restraint, 1991 Journal of Supreme Court History 13, 16. At the other extreme, a different necessity would make itself felt if a prior judicial ruling should come to be seen so clearly as error that its enforcement was for that very reason doomed. The right to rely upon fixed standards to determine one's future course of conduct is, of course, an important consideration supporting the rule. Although I doubt Mr. Valentine spent the evening preceding this incident searching out precedents in his local law library, it is equally apparent that the majority in Casey followed the doctrine in the abortion context more out of a respect for precedent than any illusion that pronouncements of the court would realistically affect the incidence of future pregnancies. Nor do I believe, by the same token, that this court's pronouncements about settling matters in the courtrooms rather than the streets will have the slightest effect other than making criminals out of otherwise innocent men.

Beyond that, Casey clarifies the very heart of stare decisis as a bar to "reexamining the prior law with any justification beyond a present doctrinal disposition to come out differently . . . ." Casey, 505 U.S. at 864. I see no grounds advanced by the majority today to overrule Rousseau for any reason new or unique to our time. Neither human nature nor the essential aspects of coercive state power have changed much over the centuries, much less over the past 40 years.

Beyond that I would assert the clearly incorrect rule is the one created by the majority today. It does not even examine the true principled basis of the common-law rule, much less reasonably, or persuasively, disprove it. At most it misapplies a policy argument made in State v. Westlund, 13 Wn. App. 460, 467, 536 P.2d 20, 77 A.L.R.3d 270, review denied, 85 Wn.2d 1014 (1975), that resisting lawful arrest is disfavored and the courts are the best place to vindicate one's rights. While that is a widely held and commendable view, it has nothing to do with the issue here. Westlund itself suggests that the policy reasons against forcibly resisting lawful arrests are inapplicable to unlawful ones.

Moreover, the rule adopted by the majority is inconsistent with the lawful entitlement to use force to protect one's person and property, or, to put it another way, protect one's property in his person and his estate. It is well established that determinations as to when force may be used in self-defense are not made (as the majority suggests) on the basis of where the right can best be vindicated. Indeed, in this state the citizen has the right to use force to defend property against trespass and invasion. RCW 9A.16.020(3); Coffel v. Clallam County, 58 Wn. App. 517, 524, 794 P.2d 513 (1990).

There you have a synopsis of what purpose stare decisis serves and how it can be circumvented, not only by the lower courts (both trial and appelate), but by the supreme court itself (notwithstanding legislative intervention).

[bvw]

The Federal drug prohibitions are unconstitutional the same way the alchohol prohition LAW was. Not the amendment, the Federal laws just prior to. It was, iirc, legislators with a greater respect for the constitution than many seem to have, especially wrt/ this topic, that went for an amendment to prohobit alchohol, rather than an overreaching law that ruined the constitution. I don't know why they left the narcotic laws stand, probably only so much one can do.

What was the source of the political outcry for prohibitions on both? For alchohol it was widespread abuse. Wife beating, child abuse, broken families, violence -- all the fruits of too much intoxication, easy availibilty of distilled spirits.

But for las drugas, drugs -- marijuana, heroin, cocaine -- it was not such rampant abuse. There was abuse, there always is to some extent -- for example, today, prescription drugs are widely abused -- Kennedy's Ambien nightmare just a timely historic marker for that. In the early 1900's -- the age of the KKK -- what drove the Federal drug laws was racism. Fear of the marijuana toking negro or Mexican bandito.

[bvw]

There are other sources besides Wiki. They are no better than an informed, but suspect, opinion.

[tacticalogic]

As I've indicated previously, if the General Welfare to society as a whole intent of the Constitution is invisible we can just go back to pre-1906 (Upton Sinclair) days, and forget about meat inspection, food inspection, and prohibition of sale of patent medicines. Guarenteed sanitary and sterile items and objects? Reckless endangerment? Clean water? Electrical (building/equipment) codes, fire codes? Building codes? Restaurant hygiene/cleanliness codes? Motor vehicle standards and regulations? Motor carrier safetyAnti-pollution laws? Clean-air standards? OSHA? Boating safety regulations? Office of pipeline safety? Why, the heck with it, we might as well scrap each and every one of these regulations as un-Constitutional (well, at least at a Federal level they are). In fact a whole butt-load of the U.S. Code in general could be just plain scrapped.

Most of the things you've listed are the pervue of the States.

From George Washington's Farewell Address:

"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield."

Can you get it through your head that it isn't so much about the ends as it is about the means?

[tacticalogic]

It would appear that stare decisis opinions are not necessarily etched in stone (not even SCOTUS' own rulings by SCOTUS itself).

No doubt. Do you have any idea how many precednts the New Deal court had to overturn to keep up with Congress' quest to expand federal power?

[tacticalogic]

[summary of case]"The doctrine of stare decisis does not prevent the Supreme Court from reconsidering its prior holdings; a prior holding may be overruled if the theoretical footing of the holding has eroded with the passage of time and the holding is no longer relevant in contemporary society. [Dictum.]"

Isn't that the "Living Document" theory of Constitutional interpretion, in a nutshell?

[tpaine]

The raygun/wiki position:

Providing for the general safety of the public (through regulation of commerce of potentially societally harmful substances is entirely Constitutional).

Nothing in the Constitution supports this theory. -- The opposite is supported, -- an individual person is not to be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
-- Fiat prohibitions on supposedly 'unsafe' items of commerce infringe on those rights both in the enactment of such 'laws', -- and in their enforcement.

I guess what's being argued is just what is the purpose of the enumerated powers of the Constitution.

You "guess" because you can't refute the clear words of the 9th & 14th Amendments.

If the General Welfare clause and the Commerce clause are blank checks,

Obviously, they are not. Both clause's are restrained by due process of law considerations.

why all the gibberish of the various enumerated powers?

You term the concept of delegated powers "gibberish"?

--- the Preamble to the Constitution sets the stage for the purpose of the implicitely enumerated powers that follow; they being delegated to Congress by the People for the People. It would be inconceivable in my mind to interprete any sort of Constitutional mandate for the regulation of the purity of anything if Congress has no authority to regulate the consumption of useless, deleterious or otherwise noxious substances, especially those that cause addiction, the burden it causes upon the individuals, their associates and society as an aggregate.

So? To your mind its "inconceivable"; -- your mind conflicts with our Constitution, as written.
Your recourse is to amend the Constitution, as per the 18th, not to ignore it in order to prohibit "noxious" items by fiat 'law'.

As I've indicated previously, if the General Welfare to society as a whole intent of the Constitution is invisible we can just go back to pre-1906 (Upton Sinclair) days, and forget about meat inspection, food inspection, and prohibition of sale of patent medicines.

You're repeating the 'snake oil' bit; -- it's hype.
We have pure booze for sale everywhere in the USA, -- there is no reason we can't have pure recreational drugs for sale on the same 'reasonable regulations' basis.

Guarenteed sanitary and sterile items and objects? Reckless endangerment? Clean water? Electrical (building/equipment) codes, fire codes? Building codes? Restaurant hygiene/cleanliness codes? Motor vehicle standards and regulations? Motor carrier safetyAnti-pollution laws? Clean-air standards? OSHA? Boating safety regulations? Office of pipeline safety? Why, the heck with it, we might as well scrap each and every one of these regulations as un-Constitutional (well, at least at a Federal level they are). In fact a whole butt-load of the U.S. Code in general could be just plain scrapped.

More baby/bath oil hype. State & local legislation can 'reasonably regulate' all of those items without infringing on our rights to life, liberty or property.

I think all of you guys that are arguing for the legalization of drugs haven't seen or experienced first hand the tradgedy caused by them. Haven't experienced first hand abusive alcoholic parents, haven't been personally affected by somebody close to you O.D'g or absolutely wrecking their life (and everybody around them). You haven't seen first hand the what crank/crack does to people. You personally haven't had to care for crack/crank/smack/fill-in-the-blank babies. Or havn't seen the permanent physical impairments that can be caused by drug abuse (Parkinsons, dementia, paralysis, memory loss, suicide, etc.). You people are so myopically focused on your seemingly innocuous drug (Mary Jane - hey its in all the books), that you're blinded to reality around you. You people are akin to those that are resistant to immunizations for their children (prefering instead to rely on the protection of herd immunity). I once challenged somebody about that, and was given a reply that there's risk of adverse affect. Adverse affect? Adverse affect? You haven't actually seen one of your own children (OR ANYBODY YOU MAY CARE ABOUT) actually die from whooping cough HAVE you? Because if you DID, you'd be singing a different tune.

Good grief. - Your emotional 'save the children' rant is duly noted. Spare us oh Hillary.

Frankly, I'm remiss in understanding this obsession with this obsession for intoxication anyways.

Frankly, I'm remiss in understanding this obsession with prohibiting human behavior -- this obsession against intoxication. Why this compulsion to control your peers?

Why this compulsion for alter states of perception? What in the world is wrong with reality, and feeling the way one does. Is feeling sad on occasion bad? Is feeling happy not good enough, that one has to artificially coerce the emotion? Gee, I guess it is a Brave New World isn't it? Everybody pop their Soma now, y'hear?

Funny how it's you prohibitionists that would lead us into the "brave new world" of controlled reality. All we have to do is give up our liberty.

[Ken H]

The reference to stare decisis was not originally intended to specificly be relevent concerning the overarching topic of the history of federal drug legislation except regarding to federal law in general (as it was specifically stated in the cited Wiki article).

So what was your point in including the separate article on stare decisis with the articles on federal drug regulation?

Do you think SCOTUS should adhere to stare decisis with regard to Roe v Wade?

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

They lost all the arguments many posts ago. They want all-powerful courts just like big-government Democrats because it conserves the status quo they like on this issue.

But their focus on getting universally the outcome they want on one issue has blinded them to general principles or their effect in other areas. So, like Democrats, they want to cast aside principles in pursuit of shortcut answers.

[Heyworth]

Well ain't you just the most sanctimonious thing ever?

So you don't really care about a disastrous economy, as long as your view on the constitutionality of paper money--a view dismissed by the USSC over a hundred years ago--is followed. Let them barter cake, huh?

the conversation was not about economics, but the Constitutionality of paper money

Indeed, but in this world they're intertwined. Perhaps in your abstract world of Jeffersonian small farmers bartering for goods, forming a militia to repel invaders and all the rest of that 18th Century notion of what society would look like on this continent. money and the economy are separated. In the post-industrial 21st Century US, they're not.

you are incorrect on your assumption of economics. The scarcity of specie is what makes it more valuable, not less.

And that is the very definition of deflation. Sellers drop prices to catch the limited pool of money. Everything but gold becomes less valuable. Productivity is killed--what's the point of making more goods to chase the same amount of dollars? Counterfeiting is encouraged--it was a huge problem in the Federal and Jacksonian eras. Buying is discouraged--why buy one thing today when you might get two for the same money next week? Deflation.

Please do not post to me again, as I do not consort with liars.

You keep saying goodbye, but you never leave.

[raygun]

I know, but Wiki was convienient.

[raygun]

Oh, that's rich! Regulate interstate commerce at a local level, by forcing the local person to purchase on the open market rather than be self-sufficient. The government is regulating commerce where it creates/defines the market for buyer and seller. And this is actually cited as jurisprudence constante in Lopez. Where the Mary Jane farmer, growing hemp on personal property for personal use only on personal property was guilty of interstate commerce violation in that Mary Jane would've been subject to interstate commerce enforcement if but for the farmer growing his own, he would've bought the contraband on the open market, ergo, farmer guilty of interstate commerce violation.

The sad history of that can found here: http://sheridan_conlaw.typepad.com/sheridan_conlaw/circle_of_confusion_wickard_raich/

I take my previsous statement back, we're not living in merely a political Orwellian nighmare, reality itself is quite Orwellian and its psychoticly schizoid.

[raygun]

So it would seem.

Do you understand what that case is about? Its a fascinating read. The dissenting justice's argument in favor of stare decisis was based on previous case law supporting the use of force in resisting un-lawfull arrest (hence his citing that Justice Douglas quote).

[tacticalogic]

From a quick read it seems to be a claim of precedent based on an old English common law. Apparently it was considered justified to forcibly resist an unlawful arrest because English prison conditions at the time were so abysmal. Simply being held awaiting appearance was potentially life-threatening, so resisting an unlawful arrest could reasonably be considered self defense.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Your Constitution on drugs.

[raygun]

James Madison stated that the general welfare clause was not intended to give Congress an open hand "to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare." If by the "general welfare," the Founding Fathers had meant any and all social, economic, or educational programs Congress wanted to create, there would have been no reason to list specific powers of Congress such as establishing courts and maintaining the armed forces. Those powers would simply have been included in one all-encompassing phrase, to "promote the general welfare." To whit, my tongue-in-cheek commentary about the gibberish following the preamble. Writing about the general welfare clause in 1791, Thomas Jefferson saw the danger of misinterpreting the Constitution. The danger in the hands of Senators and Congressmen was "that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. - Thomas Jefferson

Thanks in great deal to the efforts of Justice Marshal (and his protege Justice Story), the tiller of the ship of state was already turned a scant 50 years after the war for independence was fought. Within 20 years of Justice Story's COMMENTARIES, a bloody war would be fought concerning the very issue of state's rights (and the states lost).

Madison has some intersting things to say on the topic in Federalist 41:

It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. ...

But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter. it is for error to escape its own condemnation!

However, it is clear that there's a perceived Madisonian contradiction. To whit:

From the CATO Institute Volume 16 Article 1:

Leonard R. Sorenson, a professor of politics at Assumption College in Massachusetts, has undertaken to rescue us from our rescuer. According to Crosskey, Madison was duplicitous: Publicly, Madison proclaimed that the General Welfare Clause is merely a synonym for the enumerated powers considered collectively, not an independent source of power. But privately, Madison believed that the General Welfare Clause delegates to the Congress plenary legislative power; that the enumeration of specific powers served simply to allocate and assign governmental functions, establish certain procedural limitations, and illustrate some of the powers deemed to be necessary and proper. This alleged difference between Madison’s public and private persona is at the root of the so-called Madisonian contradiction.

Sorenson’s thesis, based primarily on Federalist No. 41, is that Madison regarded the enumeration as defining the objects entailed within the general welfare and the other general clauses that make up the Preamble (i.e., justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, and liberty). But those objects are the broad ends or purposes of the Constitution, not just means or powers. Therefore, states Sorenson, Madison understood the general terms of the Preamble to enlarge the dominion of government beyond the enumeration itself, although not to confer plenary power. Madison’s public position, ascribed to him by Crosskey, was that substantive powers are defined by specifying their number, kind, and application. On the contrary, Sorenson’s explanation is that (1) Madison perceived the Preamble of the Constitution as prescribing a limited number of limited ends; (2) the enumeration defines those ends more precisely; (3) the general welfare and other clauses that make up the Preamble vest particular powers beyond the enumeration, but only to accomplish the limited ends; and (4) the particular powers thus vested can be identified only through an examination of the enumerated powers themselves, in their relation to the authorized ends. - the foregoing sourced from post#93 of the following thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3aa699b23882.htm

ThJ1800's post#111 in the above thread expounds upon the foregoing quite eloquently. I intuitively perceived the general welfare clause in accordance to the second defninition of the word "welfare" as presented below from the 1828 edition of Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language:

It is clear that Article 1, Section 8 refers to general welfare of the United States as a whole, and not individuals in particular. Moreover, Article 4, Section 4, is clearly refering to the States, and so it only seems natural for the application being to society as a whole. Sadly I see now that this interpretation belies the intent of the Founders. It is clear to me now that the present liberal carte blanche check view of the welfare clause was being elucidated by Justice Joseph Story (in the first sentance cited). In that the enumerated powers don't actually delegate anything, but "expound the nature and extent and application of the powers actually conferred by the Constitution". Nevertheless, there's still a vast difference between either Madison's public or private opinions and Story's interpretation. My view lay with Madison's private opinion concerning the matter. Blood of Tyrant's post #25 (from the above referenced thread) nails the origin of the status quo exquisitely:

Franklin Roosevelt's Supreme Court, eager to expand federal power, declared (in United States vs. Darby,1941) that the 10th "states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered." In other words, the states and the people were entitled only to powers the federal government hadn't claimed. The court substituted the telling word "surrendered" for the Constitution's word, "delegated." You "delegate" power to an inferior; you "surrender" power to a superior. This ruling, by draining the 10th of any force, inverted the whole federal structure, reducing the states to vassals of the federal government.

The fact of the matter remains, that if but for the welfare state as we know it today, unfettered recreational drug usage would be scourge on this country (far more devastating than what is being experienced at present). And as BVW has previously mentioned, the impetus to pass Prohibition Ammendment was directly related to the horrors caused by alcohol abuse. And that's my argument against legalized recreational drug use in this day, at this time. The reality of the matter is that no politician would stand a snow-ball's chance in hell standing on a platform of rolling back Social Security (let alone eliminate it), rolling back Senior Citizen drug program (let alone eliminate it), rolling back public education (let alone eliminate it), curtailing building of infrastructure (roads, etc), let alone eliminate it. Cut welfare/medicare/medicaide? Will never happen. The ship of state has turned so much since 1833, the people having discovered how to vote themselves largess out of the public treasure it would be political suicide for any politician to attempt to place their hand upon the tiller to move the ship of state back upon its original course.

While my argument does constain an emotional element, its not exclusively an appeal from emotion as such, in that I see the victims as being people, and I regard the value and dignity of human life to be something more than merely trash to throw into the dumpster. I wish that things could be different, that people would be responsible enough for their own destiny, however after over 100 years of liberal indoctrination/conditioning, that's absolutely not the case anymore. The whole status quo really is truly an utter travesty.

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