digamma.net - notes

Progressives & Interstate Commerce

This week, the Supreme Court considered the question of whether the federal government has the authority under the Commerce Clause to prevent a woman in California from smoking marijuana prescribed by her doctor and grown in her own backyard, which is permissible under California law. Neither Eschaton, Daily Kos, TAPped, nor Cursor has, to the best of my knowledge, made any mention of this case whatsoever. (TAPped made a passing mention of the New York Times editorial I wrote about the other day, but did not take a position on the case itself.)

Look, everyone is free to blog about what they want to blog about. But I find that when one political "side" blogs about an issue a lot more than does the other side, the side mentioning it more tends to be on the right side. (Valerie Plame is a good example.) It's possible for one side to talk incorrectly about a pointless issue, but in that case generally an equilibrium is reached in which the other side responds with an equal number of posts pointing out their foes' stupidity and causing said foes to shut up. (Every supposed finding of WMD's in Iraq illustrates this process.)

Progressives are understandably conflicted on this issue. On the one hand, the federal government's treatment of terminally-ill patients who have been prescribed medical marijuana is idiotic at best and cruel at worst. On the other hand, for the Supreme Court to assert that the Commerce Clause means anything other than "All Your Base Are Belong to Us", and that the Tenth Amendment is more than toilet paper, would be part of the dreaded Republican plan to roll back the New Deal in the courts.

So, much as I hate these challenges, I would like to know - what powers does the American left believe Congress has and does not have?