Hard Drugs

It is rich, but Raich has come back to haunt those hoping for a legal answer to Obama Care. Just as I predicted in Letter to a Friend.

Reason Magazine has the news.

According to a federal judge in Virginia, ObamaCare's individual mandate to purchase health insurance is constitutional under the Commerce Clause because, under precedents set by previous cases, "Congress has broad power to regulate purely local matters that have substantial economic effects, even where the regulated individuals claim not to participate in interstate commerce." The ruling, which was released yesterday, dismissed an argument by Liberty University, a Christian school based in the state, that the law should be invalidated because, among other reasons, it unconstitutionally requires individuals to purchase health insurance.

The section of the decision dealing with the mandate leans heavily on the Supreme Court's ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, a case in which the Court decided that, under the Commerce Clause, Congress could criminalize growing marijuana at home for personal use because failure to do so would upend a legitimate regulatory activity. Yesterday's ruling by Judge Norman K. Moon quotes Raich to argue that Congress may regulate "purely intrastate activity that is not itself 'commercial'...if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity."

With the previous understanding the government was merely leasing the taxpayers. It now owns them. But you have to admit the dopers got what was coming to them. And now the rest of us are going to get it. Good and hard.

The Raich case was about pot. So maybe Marijuana is a hard drug after all. Evidently in aggregate it will be hardest on those who don't use it. A very peculiar drug to be sure.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 12.02.10 at 01:18 PM





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Wickard was on the way to being overturned (Lopez - gun free school zones case) and then Scalia let his social conservatism overcome his reason.


Not for the first time, you are letting your idiotic anti-conservative bias blind you to reality. The five member majority in Raich was Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Souter. That's what is known as a "fact". You might want to make at least a casual acquaintanceship with facts.

The "fact" (there's that word again) is that Raich was decided as it was ENTIRELY because of the sort of social liberal judges you approve of. You live by left-wing judges making up the Constitution as they please, you die by it. When you approve of judges who can whip out a constitutional right to sodomy out of thin air, you don't get to act shocked! that these same judges treat the constitution like play-doh on other matters where you disagree with them.

flenser   ·  December 2, 2010 09:19 PM

Flenser: You sound like an attorney, and that is not meant as a compliment. You are all for the conservative, strict constructionist judges on the court like Scalia. Fine.
Had the progression of our society been left up to such, we would still have slavery.
That one libertarian inclined justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, not voted to legalize sodomy, I suppose you would be happy.
Well, FUCK YOU.

Frank   ·  December 2, 2010 11:16 PM

Raich was decided as it was ENTIRELY because of the sort of social liberal judges you approve of

M. Simon approves of them?

Who knew?

Eric Scheie   ·  December 3, 2010 12:37 AM

Eric,

Thanks!

Flenser,

The court is full of poseurs like Scalia who will when necessary write an opinion to support his prejudices. He wrote to affirm Raich.

The court is short 8 Thomases. And you know what? From my reading it seems that neither social conservatives nor liberals like him.

M. Simon   ·  December 3, 2010 09:26 AM

You are all for the conservative, strict constructionist judges on the court like Scalia. Fine.
Had the progression of our society been left up to such, we would still have slavery.


It was not, is not, and never will be the role of judges to decide whether we "have slavery" or not. And that's something Scalia would agree with. He understands the proper role of the judiciary. You do not. You think the judiciary exists to enforce your policy preferences.

flenser   ·  December 3, 2010 05:57 PM

M. Simon approves of them?

Who knew?

It's news to you that M Simon approves of socially liberal judges?

It's news to you that when M Simon writes about court cases such as Raich he attributes the outcome he does not agree with to people like Scalia rather than on people like Grinsburg?

Well, consider yourself enlightened.

flenser   ·  December 3, 2010 06:02 PM

The court is short 8 Thomases. And you know what? From my reading it seems that neither social conservatives nor liberals like him.

The fact that you're a bigoted half-wit might be impeding your reading.

flenser   ·  December 3, 2010 06:04 PM

Flenser said:

It was not, is not, and never will be the role of judges to decide whether we "have slavery" or not. And that's something Scalia would agree with. He understands the proper role of the judiciary. You do not.

Read Dread Scott and try to tell me that it did not rule favorably on the issue of Slavery. So in your warped view, and having tunnel vision in place of a brain, the judiciary must be little more than a rubber stamp for the literal interpretation of that sacred document, The Constitution. Never mind that justice in the wider sense would never be served.

It is impossible to argue with people like you, because like Christian Fundamentalists, and for that matter Muslims, we must take the literal word no matter how unreasonable or unjust, and no matter down what dark alley it leads. Isn't a judge supposed to rule on conflicts in the law? Are they not supposed to over-rule and negate law that is at odds with the fundamental purpose of the document itself, which is to secure freedom?

You remind me so much of a judge who issues Jury Instructions after a drug trial. Rule only on the factual basis of the evidence, and disregard the fact that the evidence was seized without a warrant, the defendant was never read his rights, had his dog shot, his bank account seized so that he can't hire a good lawyer, his children kidnapped by the government and placed in custody without his consent and hidden away from him, his car impounded, and appears in court bandaged and in a cast from an "accident" while "resisting" arrest. And when a jury of his peers rules to acquit, the judge throws out the verdict because he believes it was the result of a jury exercising its fully informed rights to not just pass on the facts as presented but also on the merits of the law and the totalitarian nature of the entire process from arrest to incarceration.

Are the courts just a vehicle for statism? That is what they are in a Flenser world. Like mid-evil Bishops of the Catholic Church who ruled on the proper interpretation of another sacred document, while they sent transgressors to the rack.

There is no arguing with the narrow minded and myopic. For all their strict interpretation and fundamentalism, what they lack is fundamental logic, common sense, and basic human decency.

Frank   ·  December 3, 2010 08:51 PM

To say that M. Simon approves of the socially liberal judges who wrote Raich because he criticized Scalia's concurring opinion in Raich is a preposterous claim. Scalia sided with the liberal majority, and it was quite clear that Simon disagreed with them all, but was especially disappointed in Scalia. How on earth does that constitute approval of the liberal majority?

Oh, I forgot. Simon is a "bigoted half-wit."

How very persuasive.

Eric Scheie   ·  December 5, 2010 12:30 AM

I think under the circumstances "bigoted half-wit" is an appellation I gratefully accept.

And Eric knows me well enough. I dislike the concurring opinions on Raich. But I despise Scalia.

When it comes to Constitutional fundamentalism I like Thomas. When the history of this era is written Thomas will go down as one of the very best in at least 100 years. And what he has going for him is something the other Justices are unable to get. Simplicity.

M. Simon   ·  December 5, 2010 01:38 AM

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