Darth J wrote:How about legalizing marijuana? Are Washington and Colorado not subject to the Supremacy clause on this point? - are they not in fact committing acts of secession?
Yes, they are, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal narcotics laws preempt state laws purporting to legalize substances that are illegal under federal law.
x1134x wrote:No, they are not. They are not making a law that says "marijuana is LEGAL, regardless of what the feds say". THAT would be unconstitutional for them to do. What they are doing is saying "There will be no STATE penalty for possessing marijuana". That's it.
Neither the Washington nor the Colorado initiatives say anything remotely like "there will be no state penalty for possessing marijuana." That characterization is ridiculously uninformed. Each state's iniative purports to decriminalize adults possessing up to one ounce of marijuana for recreational use. The use, possession, and sale of recreational marijuana under each initiative is highly regulated, and possessing more than one ounce of marijuana, or using it/distributing it outside of the statutory framework, still carries substantial criminal penalties in each state.
http://sos.Washington.gov/_assets/elections/ini ... s/i502.pdf
http://www.leg.state.co.us/LCS/Initiati ... ijuana.pdf
It doesn't make the federal law any less applicable.
Since under the Supremacy Clause, federal law preempts state law in matters the federal government has chosen to regulate, the Controlled Substances Act preempts both the Washington and Colorado initiatives. Under current Supremacy Clause jurisprudence, Washington and Colorado do not get to legalize marijuana for recreational or medical use, because Congress has made it illegal nationwide. You are completely wrong; the U.S. Supreme Court has already invalidated California's attempt to regulate medical marijuana, because any such state law is preempted by federal law. Gonzalez v. Reich
There's no requirement that all states make and enforce laws that mirror federal laws. The federal government must enforce its own laws, the states are under no obligation to do so.
Perhaps you would like to identify someone in this thread who has suggested otherwise.
This is how alcohol prohibition ended, once the states realized they didn't have the resources to enforce the (unenforceable) law, the feds found they weren't even CLOSE to having the resources to enforce the law.
You know, what I like to do is actually read the thread before I start commenting on it. But I can see that's not for everyone. This thread is about South Carolina legislators proposing a bill that purports to exempt the state from the Bill of Rights, as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment, and any federal court decisions applying the First Amendment to the states. This bill is obviously in direct conflict with the Supremacy Clause and has no chance of surviving if it actually becomes law. The reason the Washington and Colorado marijuana thing came up is because Subgenius, who demonstrably doesn't have the slightest idea what he's talking about, thinks he's asking me a trick question because he thinks I'm going to pick and choose what the Constitution means depending on where I stand on an issue, the same way he does.
Whether any given policy is desirable (like criminalizing marijuana) is a political question. Whether the government has the authority to enact any given policy is a legal question, which is what this thread is about (notwithstanding Subgenius and Droopy thinking that this thread is about how the Constitution is a religious document to be interpreted according to Mormon dogma, instead of a legal document to be interpreted as such).