And what about all of the resources you spend prosecuting people for recreation drug use? If you want to save money in that arena then Colorado and Washington have a great idea they can tell you about.
Though there is the odiousness of "state's rights" originally being shorthand for "state's rights to allow slavery". It would be nice if people trumpeting the philosophy remembered that it was the justification for a monstrous institution and a war to maintain it.
Libertarian, Green, Reform, and other third parties are nice side shows, and good ways to get alternate ideas heard and stimulate conversation, but if you're serious about actually winning and exercising political power, you need to work inside one of the two big tents.
Libertarianism wants both fiscal and social freedom. Small government compared to the "left" and "right", big government compared to the AnCap folks.
It is all perspective.
I also know that in my parent's case it is their primary evidence that the country is going downhill fast even while I see it as a hopeful sign that the country can move forward. Not surprisingly, that dissonance is being tapped rather effectively at times by the political process. It is strange to see 'change' as the fuel that is used by others to either accelerate or stop further change.
Religious beliefs by age group: http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/compare/re...
Millennials have overtaken Baby Boomers: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/16/this-year-mi...
Shifting Marijuana Beliefs: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/14/6-facts-abou...
Changing attitudes on same sex marriage: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/07/29/graphics-slideshow-changi...
The decline of marriage (somewhat attributable to economic causes IMHO): http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/09/24/record-share-of-am...
Just another day in 'states rights' focused states that aren't adult enough to understand what that means. People voted this in en masse, does NE and OK hate freedom?
Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, DC are all asking the country when we are going to stop funding the black market and cartels.
States continuing to fight a losing and unneeded prohibition battle, will continue to send hundreds of millions and probably billions south to cartels that are quite rich while states budgets are poor. It is time that it ends across the board and quickly. What a waste of time and money prohibition has been.
The moralistic laws from last century making non-violent personal acts into crimes needs to end. It is too costly and the result is a black market with cartels awash in billions and billions.
If one were to establish such a cause of action, it would have major implications around things like differing environmental regulations, firearms laws, labor laws, tax policy, welfare, heck even fireworks sales.
I'm not surprised the SC didn't want to leap into that giant legal cluster headache.
The Obama Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to take the case. "Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here — essentially that one state's laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another state - would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of" of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction.
Personal possession of weed is already completely legal under federal law via the equal protection clause. Once they passed the law saying that it's legal in DC, that means that it's now legal everywhere, even if they haven't yet taken the time to strike the old language from the books.
The only time federal charges are still pursued is if there is a firearm involved.
My uneducated guess is that we will see a lot narrower decisions from the SCOTUS and probably some form of lesser engagement in the next couple of years.
I wish they would have heard the case and explicitly found for Colorado. Under the plaintiff's logic, states would have a veto on anything their neighbors decided to do.
"The motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied."
That's it. No four justices voted to take the case. That decision sets no precedent and they declined to provide any reasoning which could even be persuasive in terms of trying to predict how they will react to future leave-to-file motions.
We can speculate as to why they decided not to take it, but we can't know for sure because they didn't say.
Wrongly, IMO, but that's the ruling.
And people can be excused for that. A political organization should not.
Which isn't an excuse for inconsistent or conflicting behavior. Working to restrict access to family planning under the banner of "pro-life" while cutting food and health benefits to poor children and their families under the banner of "cutting waste" is reprehensible.
Sanders and Hillary both back Obamas official lines including increased wars, creating/arming ISIL/ISIS (yes, that was created by the US, directly. Don't kid yourself. In 30 years it will come out of a declassified document, just like Cointelpro, Bay of Pigs and the 1973 cope in Chile).
In regards to legalization, I don't think the US federal government will take a stance either way, unless Canada gets full legalization passed first. The biggest reason that it simply can't be legal at a federal level involves international treaties (which is why it's not even technically legal in The Netherlands, even though there are laws governing growing, sale and taxation .. even though it's still not legal to sell.. it's just 'tolerated' and taxed ...and regulated).
The only remaining candidate to vote against war is Sanders. The only candidate to support legalization of MJ is Sanders.
... which is why the Republican Party is set to lose an election that should have been an easy lay-up.
>During the Bush years, when the Republicans controlled congress and the presidency, federal spending grew enormously.
That's how we ended up with the budget sequester, which is the only thing that seems to have actually worked since the Gingrich House in the mid '90s. Now that the sequester is gone federal spending will grow in leaps and bounds no matter who is in power. It's built into the system.
Which goes back to the original point: Republicans don't profess that personal freedom and free markets should apply in all circumstances. There are some things that are the proper subject of markets, and some things that are the proper domain of government. Things that are the proper domain of the government's right to regulate morality (e.g. pornography, abortion, drugs), are not within the proper domain of markets.
Stronger: If you believe that abortion is murder. We don't deregulate the market for hit men just because we believe in the free market.
There are zero precedents under the equal protection clause that do anything like what the link suggested. On top of that the equal protection clause by its terms doesn't even apply to the federal government, since it is situated in the fourteenth amendment. It has been reverse incorporated via the fifth amendment due process clause, but again never in any case remotely like what is being suggested. You can't just look at the words "equal protection" and start extrapolating wildly. That's not how these things work.
There are several memorandum from office of the Attorney General that state Justice Department policy as to where efforts should be focused (e.g. https://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/305201382913275685...) and even before that the federal government tended not to exert a lot of effort on small time marijuana users. But it is emphatically not the case that "personal possession ... is completely legal under federal law".
Please do not spread this type of misinformation, it can be have enormous consequences.
http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/02/congress_oks_medical_ma...
This doesn't argue that possession is legal everywhere. It specifically talks about Nebraska, one of the states in the lawsuit: ""In states where voters have not voted on it, for instance Nebraska, of course it's not going to be legal there," Pappas told us. "But patients and medical marijuana centers operating in full compliance with state laws -- through equal protection -- are not going to be subject to federal prohibition.""
This is essentially the current status quo. The author's argument would only apply in the case where a future president acted to enforce federal statues in states where medical marijuna is legal. Then this arguement could be tested in court.
Pot isn't legal in DC. It's still against federal law everywhere in the US.
Not that Congress actually has the power, under the constitution, to make possession illegal. But that boat sailed long ago.
Obama was ALL about transparency & change... until he chose Mr Patriot Act Biden & left Geitner & Gates right where they could continue the banker war on the economy and saving the military complex.