A word on the damning quote Glenn Reynolds found yesterday:

SCHUMER: OK. Let me ask you, then, this hypothetical: And that is that it came to our attention, Congress', through a relatively and inexpensive, simple process, individuals were now able to clone certain species of animals, maybe an arroyo toad. Didn't pass over state lines; you could somehow do it without doing any of that. Under the commerce clause, can Congress pass a law banning even noncommercial cloning?

ROBERTS: I appreciate it's a hypothetical, and you will as well, so I don't mean to be giving bindings opinions. But it would seem to me that Congress can make a determination that this is an activity, if allowed to be pursued, that is going to have effects on interstate commerce. Obviously if you were successful in cloning an animal, that's not going to be simply a local phenomenon. That's going to be something people are going to...

SCHUMER: We can leave it at that. That's a good answer, as far as I am concerned.

But I'm at least as unsurprised as Glenn. I mean, if the federal government has the right to tell you what substances you can put into your own body (even if you grow and produce them in your own yard wholly outside of interstate commerce), then I'm hard pressed to see the distinction between that and cloning an arroyo toad. Or for that matter, genetically engineering a better variety of corn.

The Constitution was abrogated long ago. The best we can hope for is that someone with secret dreams of restoring it might slip through under the radar. (I suppose I can fantasize that Roberts might be a closet constitutionalist and is lying to Schumer, but I doubt we'd ever be so lucky.)