Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting on ALBERTO R. GONZALES, ATTORNEY GENERAL, et al., PETITIONERS v. ANGEL McCLARY RAICH et al.
Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
Justice Thomas is entirely correct, Congress has been using the Commerce Clause in exactly this “Central Planning” way for decades.
Entire dissent here.
This is the guy Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid says can’t write, implies is stupid and insinuates is an Uncle Tom.
I’d say it’s the Senator who needs remedial reading instruction and a repeat of Elementary Logic 001.
The Commerce Clause would seemingly have little application to this issue, unless interstate is expanded to include the state of agony that the grossly unfortunate experience via cancer. Regardless of one’s support or abhorrence for government intervention, and regardless of the concern for the slippable, if not slippery slope this issue presents, compassion would seemingly say that the need and benefit to the individuals mandates a solution that gives the terminally ill access to an available relief.
While I agree with jpm’s conclusion, I think the method of getting to it pays scant attention to the Constitutional context.The Constitution does not speak about compassion. It speaks about limiting the power of the Federal Government. In this case, the compassion of some States has been stifled, but even that is not the issue.This problem, as well as the enormous waste of resources known as the “War on Drugs”, can be solved by Congress this week. They can just change the law. Compassion, or simple wisdom: it need never involve the Supreme Court. This does make one’s attitude about government intervention germane, because it is government intervention that is the problem in the first place.