Vulture wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Vulture wrote:
It seems to me that historically "state's rights" have been a strong ally to conservative obstructionists looking to slow or stop the demand to treat groups of human beings like human beings. So screw state's rights.
Well then why is it Colorado passed amendment 64 trying to legalize marijuana...to get rid of people being treated as criminals for smoking marijuana. It was passed on the best interest of all the citizens of the state. But the feds want to trample it down and continue prosecuting people for something that shouldn't even be a crime. Its the feds who want to trample various groups of human beings, not the states......well maybe some states behave that way but then they are just taking after the federal government.
I did say historically. I'm aware that there are few absolutes and that sometimes things change.
This.
Indeed thats what makes this case interesting.
Historically in the USA "states rights" has been an excuse for the local and state governments to trample individual rights (ie enforce slavery and segregation). Not to protect individual rights.
In short- "states rights" just means ONLY the states can be tyrants!
This is the rare case that "state rights" actually protects individual rights FROM federally "tryanny" ( or some think of it as tyranny).
There maybe a legal end run around the feds though.
The whole reason the federal government was able to intervene in the southern civil rights movement was because of a wide ranging interpretation of one line in the US Constitution.
That line was "congress has the right to make laws regulating commerce between the states".
If this Colorado law stipulates that you have to grow your own- and still forbids pot as a retail commodity-then- maybe it could be claimed that this reform 'does not effect interstate commerce'. And thus the Feds would have no juristication the way they did in the civil rights movement.
Its a slender hope, but worth a try.