I certainly think from a purely constitutional perspective that the ruling was completely wrong. I agree with the conservatives on this one (they were actually being traditional conservatives)... In fact, I appreciate O'Connor's emphasis on the concept of experimentation. I've thought this for some time. States should be allowed to have very different dynamics internally. But now we have an overarching federal scheme that essentially makes states very, very similar.
Now, my point in this post is to "reverse-engineer" the issue... The conservative case is that Congress has no authority to regulate intrastate medical marijuana, due to the fact that there is no interstate commerce involved. And especially in this case, where the patient(s?) was/were growing it their selves, without going through any distribution channel... There is fucking no commerce involved at all.
So, I thought about what it would mean if the court HAD voted the conservative way, and that Congress has no right to ban intrastate growing and consumption of marijuana. They don't say, of course, that the States don't have the right. The individual states could still ban it in whatever way they see fit (so long as they don't infringe upon constitutional rights)... Now, though, if this were the ruling, the federal court would in effect say that with regards to federal law, there is no legal way for them to prevent you from growing marijuana yourself and using it. Wrap that around your head... If the strict constitutionalists would have been the majority, you would have every right as a citizen of the United States, to grow your own weed. That doesn't mean you necessarily have that right at the state level, but there wouldn't be a damn thing the government could do to stop you if your State DID allow you to grow it and smoke it.
This is just one example of the reason I'm for a limited federalism. By this I mean a confederation of states, with limited national unity, to serve for common purposes, but not much else. I don't like the way it's called the "Federal Government", because to me, it's more of a "national government". In theory it's a federation of loosely regulated states, but in actuality, it's not the case.
bah. anyways.