Apparently, the Supreme Court has ruled that the feds can continue to prosecute medical marijuana users:

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

Well, that’s very generous of him.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activity so long as it involves “interstate commerce” that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

Stevens said there are other legal options for patients, “but perhaps even more important than these legal avenues is the democratic process, in which the voices of voters allied with these respondents may one day be heard in the halls of Congress.”

Yes, to hell with the rights of the states. How in the world can they justify this under the Commerce Clause? It seems to me that if they can justify this, they can justify anything, and federalism is truly dead.

Apparently we need to rein in the Commerce Clause, with an amendment, though I’m not sure what it could say that would be more clear than the clause itself, other than to explicitly say that it must deal with interstate activities. And in today’s political climate, how much support would there be for it, anyway?

I’ll be interested in seeing the opinion, and who was in the minority.

This is quite depressing.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more, from SCOTUSblog:

The Court relied, as the Justice Department had urged in its appeal, upon the Court’s sweeping endorsement of federal Commerce Clause power in the 1942 case of Wickard v. Filburn.

“The case,” Stevens wrote, “comes down to the claim that a locally cultivated product that is used domestically rather than sold on the open market is not subject to federal regulation. Given the Act’s findings and the undisputed magnitude of the commercial market for marijuana, Wickard and its progency foreclose that claim.” The decision came in the case of Gonzalez v. Raich (03-1454).

Wickard v. Filburn was a truly disastrous case for the cause of federalism and liberty. It’s too bad that the court considers precedent so sanctified. There are some decisions that are simply wrong. I can’t imagine that the Founders would have ever conceived the clause being used as an excuse for a nationwide ban on high-octane hemp. Is this precedent the reason why we had to have a constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol nationwide, but that now Congress can federally and enforceably ban natural substances by simply passing a law?

[Update at 10:50]

Justice O’Connor wrote the dissent:

Justice Sandra Day O

For those who can’t get enough of Lileks’ screeds, he has a new feature:

Three and a half years ago, a guard kicked a Qur

Keith Thompson writes eloquently about his journey to, and from, the modern left:

I

If this story is true, John Kerry is about to make a bigger ass of himself than one would have previously thought possible (even by someone who remembers last year’s campaign), by feeding the fantasy of some in the Democrat Party that George Bush can be impeached and removed.

Obviously, to some degree, this is payback for the strange perception that Bill Clinton was unjustly impugned, but really–one would almost think that the Senator imagines that if Bush were removed from office, that somehow he’ll become president.

The reality, of course, is that if by some miracle, a Republican House would impeach the president, and a Republican Senate would muster a two-thirds majority to remove him, Dick Cheney would become president. Is that what they want?

Perhaps they continue to indulge their wet dream to the point of imagining that they’d both be impeached and removed simultaneously. Well, that would result in a President Hastert. And if they imagine that it would be first Bush, then Cheney, then Cheney would first appoint a new (unelected) veep, who would have to be approved by the Congress (still Republican controlled, remember), who would then become president after Cheney’s removal (as Gerald Ford did when Nixon resigned). Do they imagine that Mr. Cheney would select, and Congress approve, a Democrat?

This is parallel with the same delusions that they demonstrated during the Clinton impeachment, when they talked about it as a “coup,” as though Bob Dole would become president if Clinton was removed, instead of Al Gore. In fact, to me that was always the strongest argument for the case–if it were merely political, why would the Republicans who favored removal want to put the squeaky-clean Al Gore into the Oval Office, from which he’d almost certainly win reelection in 2000 as an incumbent? The only reasonable explanation is that they sincerely thought that we had a corrupt and criminal president (which we in fact did).

Similarly, the Dems were foolish to oppose it, because it would have probably cemented their hold on the White House for at least another five years, while removing the taint of Clinton from their party. I know that I’d be much more inclined to vote for them now if they’d demonstrated the slightest shred of outrage (let alone integrity) over the indecent and corrupt behavior of the Clintons on a wide range of fronts, from Travelgate to Chinagate, to the harassment of women. By their actions they’ve forfeited support from me, probably for a lifetime.

The Democrats seem to have totally lost sight of the purpose of impeachment, which is to remove a president who is a danger to the office and the country, not to provide a shift in political power from one party to another.

In any event, get real, folks. Only two presidents have been impeached in the nation’s history (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton), and only one seriously threatened with it (Nixon, who resigned before the vote was taken).

In all three cases the Congress was of a different party than the president (Johnson, though he ran with Lincoln, was a member of the National Union Party, which had little in common with the Radical Republicans who took over after Lincoln’s assassination, other than a desire to keep the union together). Democrat Clinton was impeached by a Republican Congress. Republican Nixon, had he not resigned, likely would have been impeached, by a Democrat Congress.

Who in their right mind thinks that Republican (at least in name) George Bush is going to be impeached by a Republican (again, at least in name) Congress? Key words in the previous sentence are, of course, “in their right mind…”

[Update at 4 PM EDT]

You can’t imagine how shocked I am to read that Al Jazeera is all over this story. We’ll see how much (and how credulously) it’s covered by the MSM.