crapping rainbows in your brain

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/politics/23wire-scotus.html?incamp=article_popular_4
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In a bitter dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the majority had created an ominous precedent. "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," she wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private property, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

"As for the victims," Justice O'Connor went on, "the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."
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Recently, I believe I posted about the ruling of the Supreme Court as regards medical marijuana that occurred on 6/6/05.

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.

For once I agree with the conservatives...
"Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas dissented."

This regards a case brought by two sick women who sued for their right to not have interference from the Feds in their medical marijuana useage. Those 3 conservatives were the only ones who said the Feds had no right. The rest (most of them liberal, mind you) voted FOR the big gov't crackdown.

Even though it's fucking argued that there was no interstate commerce because the weed was grown in their own home. Thus, by all rights, it is NOT a federal issue.

*sigh*

I fucking hate America.