SHAME ON VIRGINIA
Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Marijuana and the Feds

Posted

Newsweek wonders what the federal government can do about about California’s Proposition 19. The proper answer, if you care what the U.S. Constitution has to say, is nothing. Prop. 19 is a referendum being presented to the people of California in November that would, essentially, legalize the recreational use of marijuana in the state. California is one of a few states that already allow the medicinal use of cannabis, despite its being prohibited under federal law, and several other states are currently considering loosening their pot laws as well.

I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but the U.S. Constitution enumerates certain powers that fall in the federal purview and explicitly states that everything else is state or individual business (see the Tenth Amendment). The federal government has the authority to regulate or prohibit interstate or international trade in marijuana, since interstate and international commerce matters rightly fall under their authority, but it has no authority whatsoever to outlaw the drug’s use (or, for that matter, the use of any other drug). I don’t see ‘regulate the recreational use of drugs’ on the list of enumerated powers.

The states have the sole authority to regulate the use of drugs, and the states have the sole authority to regulate the production of drugs within their borders. Federal authority only comes in when the drugs are crossing state or international lines. If the people of California wish to legalize cannabis for recreational purposes, that is completely their choice to make. Drugs produced, distributed, and consumed within the state’s borders never fall under federal jurisdiction. The federal government has no right whatsoever to raid marijuana production facilities in states where their existence is legal, as long as those facilities are not intentionally shipping their product outside of the state in violation of [legitimate] federal law. Period.

I’m indifferent on the California proposition itself. I am not convinced that cannabis is any more or less dangerous than alcohol, and I see no sufficient justification for its prohibition. Harder drugs (cocaine, heroin, LSD, meth, etc.) are a different issue. In either case, federal drug laws are largely unconstitutional and these matters are properly left to the states.

The 2010 ‘Midterm’ Elections (With Predictions)

Posted

Overview

I hate to say “I told you so,” but, well, I told you so. On November 5, 2008, immediately after the American voters elected then Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) to the presidency and gave the Democratic Party strong majorities in the House and Senate, I warned them to “not characterize this Democratic blowout as a stinging rebuke of conservative principles,” and to “refrain from interpreting his comfortable win as a mandate for big-government spending programs or liberal social principles.”

You see, the 2008 election was a reflection of an electorate angry with the mad deficit spending and misguided economic policies in the waning days of George W. Bush’s (R) presidency. The last thing they wanted was an acceleration of the bailouts and spending, but that’s what they got. The last thing they wanted was more government intrusion in their personal economic decisions, but that’s what they got. The last thing they wanted in the middle of a recession was a six-month debate on how to inject the destabilizing hand of the federal government into our health care system, but that’s what they got.

The Democratic Party leadership did exactly what I (and many other political observers) helpfully tried to warn them not to do with their new-found executive and legislative juggernaut, and by January 2010—after only one full year in power—it was painfully clear that they had made a terrible political miscalculation. In record time, the Democrats had squandered the huge political capital they had earned in the 2008 election. In the off-year 2009 general elections and special elections around the country, Republicans made surprising gains by taking the governors’ offices in Virginia and New Jersey, and even the U.S. Senate seat held for decades by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

Read more . . .

On ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

Posted

Let me be perfectly clear: governments, in general, have no right to police private morality. There are certain exceptions—most notably that governments have a clear and valid responsibility to protect the lives and liberty of all human beings, including the unborn (who have unique human DNA just like you and me). But outside of protecting the basic rights of others, government must stay out of people’s private moral decisions.

I am a conservative Christian (Catholic, specifically). There are things I consider morally reprehensible, but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily any business of the government. I believe that extra-marital sexual relations are immoral, and people who engage in such acts should repent and get right with God, but consensual sex between adults should never be treated as a criminal act in a free society. Morally wrong? Yes. Criminal? No.

Many of my fellow conservatives have problems with this because they lack important perspective. In a ‘majority rules’ democratic republic where the government is granted authority over private moral decisions, it’s not hard to imagine a world where our conservative Christian morality is the outlawed minority opinion. Those of us on the ‘right’ who would have the government outlaw extra-marital sex, or homosexual sex, would be inviting a government that would soon feel it had the moral authority to outlaw churches that won’t marry homosexual couples or won’t endorse extra-marital sex or cohabitation. I’m not wishing for a government that enforces morality; I’m deathly afraid of one.

While I would characterize my personal moral beliefs as ‘conservative,’ my political views are generally more ‘libertarian.’ I think, more often than not, government should keep it’s grubby paws off everything. The libertarian mindset is one that eschews government interference in the economy, and also eschews government interference in people’s private lives. I think homosexual activity (like other extra-marital sexual activity) is a mortal sin, which requires repentance and penance (that’s all a discussion for another day), but I would reject any government effort to outlaw it. Government does not belong in people’s bedrooms legislating the relations between consenting adults. Period. If government has the authority to legislate this kind of private morality, it’s only a matter of time before they’re legislating the wrong morality at our expense.

Read more . . .

Morning in Washington (Photos)

Posted

Had a nice day today. We got up early to meet a friend of ours in Washington, D.C. to see the Nuremberg Laws at the National Archives. The laws were among the first anti-Semitic acts passed by the Nazis in Germany and, after the war, an original copy (with signatures of Adolf Hitler and other Nazi officials) was taken out of the country (illegally) by General George S. Patton. It was a little spooky to see them, given that they were among the first steps toward the senseless murder of six million people.

Unfortunately photography of Archive exhibits is prohibited, but I actually remembered to bring my Canon this time and took some photos before and after of the area around the Archives (including the Sculpture Garden). So, in return for you slogging through my terrible cell-phone pictures from Baltimore, here are some real photos of Washington, D.C.

Read more . . .

Ben Bernanke: Malice or Stupidity?

Posted

There is an old saying that I have long appreciated (popularized by one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein): ‘Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.’

The more I observe the tenure of Ben Bernanke as Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the more this saying pops into my head. It’s an unfortunate truth that we can no longer describe Bernanke in anything but these terms, if we are being honest. He’s either trying to maliciously undermine the U.S. economy, or he is an idiot who has absolutely no idea whatsoever what he is doing. I’m beginning to suspect the latter, although neither would surprise me at this point.

Once again, the economic mess we find ourselves in has been foisted upon us by leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties, so this is a bipartisan slam. Bernanke is perhaps unique in that he, in his central banking role, has been there throughout the entire thing. He’s been part of every bailout, every big-government spending plan, every ‘investment’ of your tax dollars in private industry, every ‘stimulus’ and ‘recovery’ plan, etc. President George W. Bush (R) appointed Bernanke to his position in 2006 and then, in a stunning example of ‘change we can believe in,’ President Barack Obama (D) reappointed him earlier this year. I guess Obama really did like Bush’s economic policies, since most of Obama’s economic team are holdovers from the Bush era.

If it isn’t evident yet, let me put this in plain English: Bernanke is part of the problem and, thus, is unlikely to be part of the solution. For example, the Washington Post reported this morning that Bernanke is gearing up for another Federal Reserve intervention in our economy (since it’s been working so well so far). This would be another ‘print billions of dollars out of thin air’ kind of exercise, since Bernanke and others still insist that our inflation rate is too low. Of course, the inflation rate they use to make these determinations conveniently excludes things like food and fuel and, as such, aren’t an accurate reflection of actual consumer prices or changes in the cost of living. In fact, consumer prices for food and fuel are seeing significant inflation right now (ask anybody who drives, heats their home, or eats).

Each Federal Reserve injection of money into the economy—euphemistically called ‘quantitative easing’—has been counterproductive. These injections, like an illegal drug, seem to have short-term positive effects but ultimately harm their recipient. They serve to further depress our economy and stave off a real recovery by introducing unnecessary uncertainty into the market, discouraging private investment and saving, and calling into question the stability of the dollar. We are already seeing inflation, cleverly masked by selective exclusion of certain products from the averages, and this will accelerate with any additional ‘quantitative easing’ until we find ourselves in the midst of a new crisis of inflation and, quite possibly, hyperinflation.

So the question is this: is Bernanke so dumb he doesn’t see it, or is he so evil that he doesn’t care? Either way, should he be the man in charge of our national monetary policy?

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.