Before I explain the tease of this headline, there have been a couple of very good columns on the Raich v. Ashcroft medical marijuana case:
First off, Jonathan Adlers’s outstanding column at the National Review: High Court High Anxiety: The Supreme Court’s medical-marijuana case could send federalism up in smoke.
Despite its apparent importance to drug warriors, Ashcroft v. Raich is not about medical marijuana or drug prohibition. Nor is it about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of allowing chronically ill individuals to smoke weed for medicinal purposes. Rather, it concerns the limits of federal power under the Constitution. Federalism does not play favorites. It limits the scope of federal power to pursue liberal and conservative ends alike. If a majority of the Court remembers this lesson, Angel Raich will get to keep her medicine. More important, the nation will keep the constitutional limits on federal power.
In a much lighter tone, we have the also outstanding Dude, Where’s My Integrity? Medical marijuana tests the Supreme Court’s true love of federalism. By Dahlia Lithwick at Slate
In the simplest sense this is a states’ rights, or federalism, case. But it’s also a case full of twists and inversions, endless electric guitar solos, tie-dyed mayhem, and strange bedfellows. And that’s not just among the folks camped out on the courthouse steps for oral argument this morning–many of whom were probably later rounded up and forced to pee in small cups outside John Ashcroft’s office.
But what I’m really here to talk about is the most bizarre column of all. You know the kind — written in complete seriousness, but has you rolling in the aisles. It’s Gary Aldrich’s column at TownHall: Medical Pot-heads.
…There is a good chance the medical pot-heads will eventually win this cultural battle.Their victory will be achieved if Conservatives have forgotten how to frame their arguments so as to ensure victory. We also can lose because, like children, Liberals never have learned to respond properly to the word, “No!” And, like so many parents, we get worn down and weary of arguing with people who act like children.
By the way, unlike all of the other columnists I’ve read on Raich, Gary completely ignores the issue of states’ rights, or the power of the centralized federal government over the individual.
This might be a good time to point out that Aldrich is actually President and Founder of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty
Aldrich goes on…
The Liberals or Libertarians argue that pot is not such a bad drug, and they are, in turn, supported by the millions of Americans who tried pot in high school or college and didn’t turn into drug-crazed monsters.
Unable to come up with any specific bad things to say bad about marijuana, Aldrich then proceeds to lump marijuana and cocaine and other unnamed drugs into “drug use by addicts” — a problem he notes was exacerbated because one-quarter of Clinton’s staff was “using” on inauguration day. (The Clinton mention was apparently an obligatory part of his mission with the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty).
To feed their out-of-control drug habit, the addict often turns to a life of crime. After they have begged, borrowed, and stolen money and valuables from their friends and families, their future becomes the life of a serious criminal, and prison cannot be far behind.The looting of family and friends often results in the loss of support from those closest to the addict, thus the user-addict’s only companions end up being fellow users. Very few can break their drug habits, and their lives are irreversibly destroyed.
Ah, yes, the inevitable result of letting a terminally ill patient use medical marijuana that they can grow in their back yard and that has been recommended by their doctor.
At this point, Gary leaves the rational world … the rest of the way.
Pushing to legalize marijuana is the best evidence of the remarkable, deadly selfishness of your average, self-centered Liberal. They know the above facts better than most because many of their close friends have become addicts, and their lives were destroyed.
Yet selfish, self-centered Liberals don’t care about any of that – they just want their marijuana, cocaine, or whatever designer drug is in fashion. What they won’t admit is that many cannot enjoy their sexual activities without using the drugs – this is the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about. The effects of marijuana and cocaine are often more powerful than Viagra. The Liberal guy pushes drug use because everyone knows drugs sweep away a woman’s natural reluctance to behave like a barnyard goat.
Barnyard goat, you say? And your knowledge of how a barnyard goat behaves comes from….?
Hmmm… That Viagra spokesperson must have been one of them Liberals. You remember — that liberal with the fruity name who ran for President and lost?
Aldrich concludes with a display of alternative math, particularly since the federal government notes that 46.04% of the U.S. population have used an illicit drug in their lifetime:
Will the Supreme Court say “yes” to the use of marijuana in medical circumstances? If so, will the Liberals be satisfied? Will the 80% of us who never used illegal drugs and never will, be allowed to continue to enforce laws that were created to maintain a civil, decent society?
It must be really annoying that 80% of those who live in Aldrich’s dream world have to be confronted by people who think Individual Freedom is for them, too.
Remember, that’s Gary Aldrich, founder and president of the Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty. (I suddenly hear Inigo Montoya’s voice: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”)