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.
