Posted on 01/11/2013 6:41:13 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
We are in the midst of a crisis of federalism and we don’t even know it. In November, the states of Colorado and Washington legalized recreational marijuana use, while 16 other states and Washington, D.C., already permitted the medical use of marijuana. Yet at the same time, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 prohibits the cultivation, sale, and use of marijuana in all its forms. State and federal law are at odds.
The Constitution is plain: Federal law is the “supreme law of the land” (Article VI, section 2). And yet our national history is replete with conflicts between the laws of the states and those of the federal government. We’ve seen this scenario play out before, in episodes that have left deep marks on our history, from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Nullification Crisis of 1832 to the Massive Resistance of Southern states against federal efforts to end segregation. In the modern era, the ordinary course of affairs would see such conflicts resolved by the courts, usually with federal law prevailing.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
A right-wing control freak might say: "You can't smoke that stuff. It's too much fun, and you might get out of control."
A leftwing control freak might say: "Please -- smoke as much as you want! It will make it so much easier to control you and make you dependent upon me."
Guess where Obama fits in this picture?
“Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” - Richard Nixon
Great Pic, Used it on Facebook!
It is not only Obama. In some ways he is just the head of the snake. We see the same thing in the District of Columbia allowing David Gregory to skate for violation of a law that over 100 others were convicted of violating. We see it in Jon Corzine being free despite the fact that his firm lost a lot of customer money.
It is the disease of a government that is so big that so much of its activities touch our lives and from which the government class can escape. When the laws are only for the little people and those who are sufficiently connected get a pass we are no longer the land of the free. We are the land of the arbitrary, the land of the special favors, the land of the bailouts for me and not for thee.
The first party that government gives a pass to is ... wait for it: government! And government has given itself a pass from the laws of rational economics so it can print all the money it needs to function. Government no longer really needs to go to the voters to ask permission because the taxpayers can be forced to pay anyway. That is exactly the power that unlimited money-printing gives government.
So, all you socialists (er, now “progressives) who hated “that illegal war” of “Bush-Chaney”. It was the ability of government to create money out of thin air that enabled Bush-Chaney to go to war even though you strongly objected. They could go to war and make you pay for it be putting you and your children in debt serfdom! Well, and the rest of us too!
The sword cuts both ways. If you can have your social spending by printing money, some future president can wage a war you hate and it is made possible no matter how you object.
Pot smoking as you put it here is a bad example. Are you supposing that the left will provide you with the pot and cover the medical & otherwise experiences that result?
If so then the left’s case to uses pot as a tool of control is a legitimate case.
PS: The Author of this article was concerned about combustive feat. Specifically Obama will do nothing against States ignoring Federal Drug law while at the same time he will aggressively attack States ignoring Federal healthcare law.
This is anther way of saying elect me and Ill turn the government into nothing more than a weapon against our ideological rivals, rather than an institution of compromise & law. This is the jifts of the Authors problem.
My problem is that both Federal laws mentioned in the article are no where to be found provided for by the 11 page Federal Constitution. That make them NULL and VOID regardless of what the hand picked Federal Employees in black robes have said. I therefore find the States correct on both the left and the right, and Obama’s inaction justifiable. I agree with the Author that one day a republican will do much the same from the other side, and I must admit to looking forward to that out of being tired of Constitutional boundlessness of Washington.
I even recognize that this behavioral will lead to the eventual breakup & self-destruction of our union. This I am sorry to say I look forward to at this point. I see no other way in which true liberty and rule of law may be reclaimed than to allow the corrupt self-serving Federal Government to fall.
The truth is the only way to stop short of letting it play out in collapse is for both sides to suddenly find a religious conviction for following the laws both favorable and unfavorable. I don’t see that happening because Congress has over the last 200 years passed soo many horrible and constitutionally baseless laws, there is little to no will to stick to them, and even less room for agreement with the the other side.
So we drift toward rule by feot and eventually revolution. Peaceful separation if were lucky, Bloody civil war if were not. It all depends upon how we setup the board between now and then.
Obama's hero! Abraham Lincoln and his most admired quotes.
About habeas corpus:
Defending his position on habeas corpus Lincoln asked concerning a writ of habeas corpus: should everything fail because that one law "made in such extreme tenderness of the citizens' liberty that practically it relieves more of the guilty than of the innocent [cannot] to a very limited extent be violated?" You want "the government itself go to pieces?"
"'Such extreme tenderness of the citizens' liberty', that is right," said President Obama. "We do way too much to accommodate the masses. It's like Bill Clinton said, there is too much freedom for them."
< /mockery>
In theory we could avoid the conflict and/or separation by simply disarming the political weapon that has been made out of the Federal Government, so that nether side was able to uses it against the other.
But of course that is the heart of the problem isn’t it? We can’t get congress to give up power on any particular issue, how can we passably get them to surrender power on all issues?
The truth is we probably can’t, but if it could be done it would be done for our lack of ability to agree(ever) to say pass a budget funding everything.
Therefore forcing the Federal Government to operate on that faction of money which the American people can actually produce.
Of course for that to even work the first thing cut into impudence would have to be the Federal Enforcement agency’s on all matters, including at the end of that far too long list much of the Federal military. After their gun, All that Washington has demanded of us on paper will matter very little, that is all of it which is not enforced by each other.
UGH! I am SO sick of the bastardization of the Supremacy clause!
This clause, I apprehend, cannot be construed to enlarge any power before specifically granted; nor to grant any new power, not before specifically enumerated; or granted in some other part of the constitution. On the contrary it seems calculated to restrain the federal government from the exercise of any power, not necessarily an appendage to, and consequence of some power particularly enumerated. Acts of congress to be binding, must be made pursuant to the constitution; otherwise they are not laws, but a mere nullity; or what is worse, acts of usurpation.[62] The people are not only not bound by them, but the several departments and officers of the governments, both federal, and state, are bound by oath to oppose them; for, being bound by oath to support the constitution, they must violate that oath, whenever they give their sanction, by obedience, or otherwise, to any unconstitutional act of any department of the government.
St. George Tucker
Since:
1) there is no authority given to the federal government to regulate 'controlled substances' in the Constitution
2)AND the authority of exclusive legislation of the federal government is LIMITED by Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17
3)AND the 10th Amendment reserves any authority not given to the federal authority to the States and consequently, the People-
There is no legitimate national authority to regulate controlled substances!
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It really doesn't take an in-depth study of history to see the federal government was created more as an arbitrator than an enforcer.
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