Supreme Court says no to medical marijuana
BUT
AT LEAST CONSERVATIVE JUSTICES ARE CONSISTENT
(Unlike the guy who they gave the Presidency)

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that states should be allowed to set their own rules.

"The states' core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens," said O'Connor, who was joined by two other states' rights advocates: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas.

The legal question presented a dilemma for the court's conservatives, who have pushed to broaden states' rights in recent years. They earlier invalidated federal laws dealing with gun possession near schools and violence against women on the grounds the activity was too local to justify federal intrusion.

O'Connor said she would have opposed California's medical marijuana law if she were a voter or a legislator. But she said the court was overreaching to endorse "making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use."

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This seems weird for a couple of reasons.

First, the so-called liberal justices voted against state approval of medicinal marijuana, and the conservative justices voted for it. This decision seemingly comes down from Bizarro World. Don't liberals love dope and adultry? Don't conservatives hate the "devil weed?" But it's not that strange when one really looks at what this case is about. Instead of being about the right to toke up if you've got cancer or AIDS, it's about the power of individual states versus the power of the federal government: does state drug law trump federal drug law? The answer according to the Supreme Court is no. And the justices sided along traditional lines: the "liberals" tend to allow the feds power beyond the letter of the Constitution; the conservatives tend to restrict the federal government to exactly what's written in the Constitution. So for the conservatives, the issue is about unwarranted federal intrusion into what they believe ought to be California's sole jurisdiction. Their dissent had nothing to do with pot smoking.

The second weird thing about this isn't just about appearances. It is no surprise that conservatives would champion "states' rights." That's been a right-wing mantra since at least the Reagan era. However, the conservative Bush administration seems to be opposed to "states' rights" on this one particular issue--Bush's Justice Department made sure the case made it to the Supreme Court. Clearly, conservatives are a big bunch of hypocrites, again, no surprise there: in practice, conservatives actually mean "states' rights" to do what conservatives want them to do. The weirdness comes into play with the conservative justices not being hypocrites. Apparently, they really believe in "states' rights." (Unless, of course, that state is Florida, and the issue is how to count ballots.) So kudos to Rehnquist, Thomas, and O'Connor for trying to have some integrity and consistency. Of course, I hate them, but I've got to give credit where it's due.

Oh, but not to Scalia, easily the most conservative justice on the Court, who voted with the majority. He's a total bastard. And a fucking hypocrite, too.

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