[U]nion thugs join together in creating a pigsty -- and we know that they create pigsties, especially compared to Tea Party rallies. You look at any public grounds where these people have been: The trash is littered everywhere, trash cans are overturned, beer cans, bong pipes. Hell, it's all over there. The Tea Party people, you don't find anything. Not even a discarded tissue....
The Democrats and the media want you to think it's just a bunch of average, hardworking out of working, valiant teachers, firefighters and so forth, and it's a bunch of slobs. Maggot-infested, dope-smoking, damn it, hell, longhaired, the whole nine yards. You got longhaired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking FM rock 'n' roller types, exactly who they are. Bong pipes, you name it.
Now, that's just ridiculous. I've lived in Madison, Wisconsin for 25 years — and I've gone over to the protests nearly every day — and I've never seen a used Kotex anywhere. I put up a post showing trash on one of the first days of protest, but ever since then, I've been impressed that they are picking up trash. They care about the impression they leave and are making a big effort about that. They are putting up signs, taping them up and sticking them in little snowmen outdoors. And there are piles of belongings, such as bedding that are piled up in a way that isn't aesthetically pleasing. But that's not trash. And I haven't seen any beer drinking or beer cans or pot smoking or pot paraphernalia anywhere. The last time I was in the building, I didn't think it smelled, but Meade was there more recently (for the Governor's Budget Address), and he says it smelled. People are living in there, the human body is what it is.
Folk singer Peter Yarrow -- of "Peter, Paul and Mary" fame -- played some politically themed tunes such as "If I Had A Hammer," "Which Side Are You On," "Blowin' In The Wind" and more, and spoke of his hopes that the current crisis in Madison would reawaken in people the urge to achieve social justice that animated people during the civil rights movement. And like his audience, Yarrow often worked "Kill The Bill" and other slogans into the lyrics. (Nostalgia for my childhood made me wish for "Puff The Magic Dragon," but I suppose it wasn't germane.)
Oh, yeah, it's so sweet that he entertained children with his magic dragon. If you know what I mean. And I think you do. As Meade wrote over there in the comments:
Imagine the outcry in major media and the lefty blogosphere if the Tea Party invited to sing at one of their rallies someone who had committed and was convicted of [making sexual advances toward] a 14 year-old and got a light sentence of 3 months because he had friends in high places who used their influence on his behalf.
I wanted to dig up the old NYT report of Jimmy Clinton's Carter's beneficence toward the entertainer of children, and I stumbled across this interesting bit from a review of Robert Shrum's "Concessions of a Serial Campaigner":
Shrum relates the campaign's collective sigh of relief when the networks declined to show footage of Kerry at an Iowa party jokingly miming a toke while Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary sang ''Puff the Magic Dragon''....
How nice — how typical — of the reporters to help the Democratic candidate. Here's something about Yarrow. Anyway, why wasn't there someone more impressive who wanted to be seen at yesterday's rally? Why Yarrow? And why not some better celebrities from the entertainment and political worlds?
Yarrow followed 13-year-old Sam Frederick of Wauwatosa, who wrote an anti-Walker protest song for the occasion and led the crowd in singing it. In between, organizers shoveled snow off the outdoor stage.
The "not official UW Marching Band" — tuba and trumpet blaring — played standards like "If You Want to Be a Badger" and the chicken song...
Man, that's small time! And look at how lame it was. Meade recorded this half a block from the stage:
In another part of the recording, when I first hear it, I say: "Is Cat Stevens here? This guy needs to project a little more."
Why weren't there better celebrities? Perhaps there are inside polls on how this protest is playing out around the country and people don't want their names dragged into it.
Here's the text of Judge Vinson's opinion in Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. It's 78 pages long but quite clearly written, and much of it summarizes the Supreme Court case law. If you don't know the cases, I think you'll find that part readable. If you do know the cases, I think you'll find that part easily skimmable. The meat of the opinion begins at the bottom of page 37, and it follows arguments that should be familiar if you've been reading about the litigation.
Applying the case law to the facts, Vinson focuses on the problem that the individual mandate to buy health insurance reaches individuals who are not engaged in any economic activity. The Supreme Court case law doesn't answer the question whether Congress can require action of those whose inactivity can be characterized — when you take all the inactive people in the aggregate — as having a substantial effect on interstate commerce. I think when the case reaches the Supreme Court (assuming it does), there will and should be more creative arguments about fine-tuning the doctrine, but the district judge has no option other than to apply the case law to the new situation: "I am required to interpret this law as the Supreme Court presently defines it."
Vinson decides that Congress cannot reach inactivity, basically making the simple and straightforward point that we have a system of enumerated powers, and if Congress could reach inactivity because of its economic effect, then it would seem that Congress could regulate everything. There has to be some limit, so the line should be here. I don't think the line does need to be there, since one could stress the extreme degree of the effect on interstate commerce and the great value of designing a coherent system of paying for health care by taking account of the entire, interrelated system of health care services, including the potential future demands on it that everyone represents, even if they happen to be nonconsumers right now. Why not say that is within Congress's power, yet other things remain beyond its power? That too would preserve the structure of enumerated powers. I don't think, in the end, the Supreme Court will be at a loss to articulate a line that includes regulation of the entire enterprise of paying for health care, including health care for people who resist buying it, hoping for continued good health, enough savings to cover future expenses, or free care financed by the rest of us. Distinguish other kinds of inactivity, and it would preserve the idea that something must be outside of Congress's power.
Vinson does engage with this idea, but he's limited by the need to abide by the Supreme Court's case law. Under that constraint, he talks about whether the "uniqueness" of the health care market somehow transforms inactivity into activity. (This discussion begins at page 45.) He refutes uniqueness by coming up with additional examples of markets the individual can't choose to opt out of — housing and food. But housing and food aren't much like health care. They do depend on our all having bodies, but we always need housing and food. Health care is the one thing that you're tempted to think you can get by without, but you might get hit with a huge expense that you can't possibly cover. If you don't buy insurance, you're gaming the system, and some of the people who game the system will take advantage of the rest of us who participated. It really is different from housing and food. You've got constant pressure on you to provide for those things.
Finally, there's the Necessary and Proper Clause, which was key to Justice Scalia's joining the liberal members of the Court in approving of Congress's power to ban possession of marijuana (even in the home-grown, state-approved-medical-use situation). And there's the issue of severability. I'm going to save those topics for separate posts.
My point here is that Judge Vinson has produced a workmanlike application of the Supreme Court case law devoid of flights of creativity, as befits a district court judge. Politicos who froth about what an extreme activist he is are trying to cow the judiciary into approving of the law because it's a big fucking deal.
Andrew Sullivan sets up a poll for what he (a bit inaptly) calls the "Shut Up and Sing" award. You can't really shut up and sing. He's just looking for bad lyrics of a particular sort.
I only know 4 of the 10 songs on his list, and they don't really bother me. I mean, it's fun to knock Sting, but other than that, who cares what Madonna was actually saying in "American Life"? And if Stevie Wonder wants to sing with Paul McCartney about racial harmony using a piano keyboard metaphor, that's too sweet to get upset about. As for "Okie From Muskogee," that song has aged fabulously well. I was around in the 1960s when we hippies loved hating Merle Haggard for the things he said in that song, but it's nuts to take it the way we did back then:
"Okie From Muskogee," 1969's apparent political statement, was actually written as an abjectly humorous character portrait. Haggard called the song a "documentation of the uneducated that lived in America at the time."... "I wrote it when I recently got out of the joint. I knew what it was like to lose my freedom, and I was getting really mad at these protesters. They didn't know anything more about the war in Vietnam than I did. I thought how my dad, who was from Oklahoma, would have felt. I felt I knew how those boys fighting in Vietnam felt."
That text is from Wikipedia. "Abjectly humorous character portrait"? Somebody doesn't know the meaning of "abjectly." But I'm inclined to say that Andrew Sullivan is abjectly humorless... at least when it comes to marijuana....
"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee..."
Smug? Pretentious? Absurd!
You know what deserves to win the award Sullivan defines. It's damned obvious and it's not on the list. Imagine all the peeepull....
Really, this award is no fun if you take shots at lightweights like The Partridge Family and the New Kids on the Block — as Sullivan does. Get the guys who've been taken seriously, like Bob Dylan. ("He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled...") Pick a worthy target or... as they say... shut up.
"It's pretty basic, actually. This is a core freedom for human beings and requires an insane apparatus of state control and police power to prevent it from occurring. All you have to do is burn a plant and inhale the smoke. If humans are not free to do this in the natural world in which they were born, what on earth are they free to do?"
... I just don't know if I think marijuana should be legalized at all. Maybe it's that I'm getting into my 40s. And maybe I'm a hypocrite.... But [my Dad] had this very contradictory and hard to rationalize position which was that he was fine with people smoking pot but keeping it at least nominally illegal kept public usage in some check. Again, how to rationalize that in traditional civic terms? Not really sure. But frankly, I think I kind of agree.
So, for Marshall, it all comes down to who's skittish or formal about law? This is a pleasure that is open to everyone except those who adhere to the law. Everyone else can go ahead, but — perhaps as a sop to the rule-followers — they'll have to feel uneasy about it.
Prop 19 failed. In yesterday's Bloggingheads — the "Non-Obsolete Edition" — Matt Welch and I talked about the effort to legalize the so-called "recreational" use of marijuana, which is far less popular than the "medical" use. You can watch the whole segment here, but — I know these Bloggingheads things are long — I don't want you to miss the part where I connect the favoring of medical legalization to left-wing values that I despise. It's only 80 seconds:
Note that the "medicinal" use of alcohol — "self-medicating" — is considered especially bad. The good alcohol use is for personal pleasure — one might say the pursuit of happiness — and most certainly not out of a physical need. Isn't it odd that it's the other way around for marijuana?
***
If you watch the whole segment — 16+ minutes long, sorry — there's a lot of discussion of the way the federalism problem would work out if the state stopped criminalizing marijuana. It's a misnomer to say that would "legalize" marijuana, because the federal crimes still apply. It would still be a crime to possess, grow, or distribute marijuana. The federal government can't force state officials to carry out the enforcement of the federal law. (It can lure them into that role with conditions on spending, but it can't commandeer the state law enforcement personnel. That's Printz.)
As Matt notes, Eric Holder announced a few weeks ago, that if Prop 19 passed, federal drug agents would "vigorously enforce" the federal law in California. California's a huge state, and that would be damned hard to do. I suggest that Holder may have only said that to try to influence California voters to reject Prop 19, and Matt seems certain that was the reason. And that seemed to work.
It would have been quite chaotic if Prop 19 had gone the other way. In the 16+ minute clip, you can see that Matt loves the idea of the chaos that would destabilize everything with, perhaps, the ultimate result that the federal government would give up on its marijuana crimes. I, on the other side, resist the chaos. I don't think it would work well to have something appear to be legal and at the same time be a very real federal crime. Much as I like decentralized law and the benefits of federalism, where there is valid federal law, it supersedes state and local law. That is the constitutional structure.
Many Americans of a certain age will remember that in the 1970s, seedy homegrown pot was reviled for its raw, throat-burning quality. Now dope-smoking locavores steer clear of cheap, low- and mid-grade weed in favor of organically grown boutique strains. They speak of "presentation" and varieties so agreeably complex that "you inhale one flavor and exhale another." Just as in the vineyards of the Napa Valley a few miles to the north, complexities come from the soil, from the fruits of labor, from careful breeding. Suddenly, pot has terroir....
[Ed Rosenthal, a horticultural instructor at Oaksterdam University] says the cannabis world is now seeing a fourth breeding wave whose intent is to produce plants that are "tweaked to produce connoisseur highs."
At Harborside, Ramsay hands me a list of all of the clones he has received in recent months. The list runs to 222, and includes such choice varieties as Casey Jones... a sativa-rich hybrid that is "up, trippy"; Blue Cheese, indica-dominant and "highly euphoric" but "very functional"; and the sativa-heavy Purps, "giggly, blissful."...
Experts such as Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, say the high potency has transformed marijuana for many users into a drug that can induce psychosis and paranoia and increase addiction....
Does this transformation of marijuana make you think more highly of legalization — now that you can be a connoisseur? Or are you worried, because you don't know what it is anymore?
That's just one person over at the "Rally to Restore Sanity" Facebook page. I don't know how much of a trend it reflects. But there's something a bit strange and unpredictable about drawing out the people who are supposed to be the sane ones. Who are the people who get into the idea that they are sane and other people are crazy? It will be interesting to see what kinds of signs these characters come up with. "Feed Your Head" indeed.
"The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade—and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity. Some claim that they would only move into other illicit enterprises, but they are more likely to be weakened by being deprived of the easy profits they can earn with marijuana."
I love the way the paragraph I took that quote from has one hot link — you know those links the NYT throws in that take you to other NYT articles? — and the link is on the word "marijuana." I know and you know what marijuana is, but what about Marfa? Eh. You either get the joke or you get that it is a joke... and move on.
Move on to the odd news about what would otherwise not be news — that you can make a lot of money growing and selling marijuana. But look! There's art in there. And pretty people. And it's medical marijuana...
At a going wholesale rate of $200 or more an ounce in the Bay Area for high-quality medical marijuana, it’s a lot simpler than raising money the traditional way, the project’s organizers point out. And — except for the nagging fact that selling marijuana remains a crime under federal law — it even feels more honest to the people behind Life Is Art. They see it as a way of supporting the cause with physical labor and the fruits of the land instead of the wheedling of donors, an especially appealing prospect in an economy where raising money has become more difficult than ever.
The nagging fact that selling marijuana remains a crime under federal law... which is so unenforced that pretty people pose in the New York Times with their pitchforks in American Gothic japery in the company of their big, sunlit marijuana plant. Tell me, how will it ever be possible to enforce those laws again? And if they are not going to be enforced, how can we accept the continual degradation of respect for the idea that it means something for an activity to be a crime?
It's one of my least favorite Beatles songs, but Ringo's a good guy, and it's one that he managed to write. He says:
I wrote Octopus's Garden in Sardinia.
(And he wrote "Sardine's Garden" in Octopussia.)
Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day... I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden. I thought this was fabulous, because at the time I just wanted to be under the sea too. A couple of tokes later with the guitar - and we had Octopus's Garden!
Ah! Peter Sellers. I was just watching a Peter Seller's movie last night: "The World of Henry Orient." Recommended. Do a triple feature of movies in which 2 girls get together and things get crazy and show it along with "Ghost World" and "Heavenly Creatures." Or make a double feature with another Peter Seller's movie from the same era, "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas" (especially if you disapprove of Ringo's toking):
The team conducted three busts before the one at Colorado Collective, making a half-dozen arrests, seizing $7,265 in cash and 43 pounds of marijuana at Kush Korner II in Wilmington, Nirvana Pharmacy in Westwood and Kind for Cures in a former Kentucky Fried Chicken store in Palms.
In Colorado, where a constitutional amendment legalizing medical marijuana was passed in 2000, hundreds of dispensaries popped up and a startling number of residents turned out to be in “severe pain,” the most popular of eight conditions that can be treated legally with the once-demonized weed.
More than 80,000 people here now have medical marijuana certificates, which are essentially prescriptions, and for months new enrollees have signed up at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day.
Oh! The pain! The intractable pain! Who knew the excruciating suffering that tortured Coloradans for so long?
The linked article also details the pesky government regulation that comes with legalization. What did you expect? One longs for the day when the stuff was illegal, there was no regulation to protect anybody from their suppliers, and if you wanted it, your only option was to break the law. Back then there was one kind of dishonesty, the manly dishonesty of breaking the law...
... and not this other weasely form of dishonesty, lying about headaches.
"I have seen the countries of Asia and the Middle East, portions of Latin America, and I have seen what drugs have done to those countries. Everybody knows what it's done to the Chinese, the Indians are hopeless anyway, the Burmese. . . . they've all gone down....
"Why the hell are those Communists so hard on drugs? Well why they're so hard on drugs is because, uh, they love to booze. I mean, the Russians, they drink pretty good. . . . but they don't allow any drugs."
"And look at the north countries... The Swedes drink too much, the Finns drink too much, the British have always been heavy boozers and all the rest, but uh, and the Irish of course the most, uh, but uh, on the other hand, they survive as strong races."
Nixon concludes that "drug societies... inevitably come apart." Linkletter agrees: "They lose motivation. No discipline." Nixon reaffirms the superiority of the American way of life: "At least with liquor, I don't lose motivation.”
