MJ Dispensaries and State's Rights

As most of you know by now, the kinder and gentler Obama Administration has set its sights on California's medical marijuana dispensaries. Without getting into the pros or cons of medical marijuana, I hope at least some on The Left will take another look at their disdain for state's rights.

This is what happens when you have centralized federal control of things. Regardless of how Californian's have chose to deal with medical marijuana, the feds have said they don't care and, in fairness to the Obamatons, this same sort of thing would have likely happened under a Republican administration. In fact, I'm sure it has, although I'm not going to look up specifics.

The issue of federal control vs. state's rights certainly has two sides. I'm not sure anyone would want to dissolve the entire Bill of Rights and hope states came up with their own. As it is, states are allowed some latitude how the Bill of Rights is applied, though, and that's probably as it should be.

I'd really like to see this attack on the states be a rallying point between otherwise opposing sides. I won't be holding my breath as partisan concerns nearly always trump any common ground that the sides otherwise might find.

As an aside, if you haven't yet heard, there's more movement afoot at the federal level to expand U.S. drug laws outside the country with a proposal having been introduced to make even talking about drugs outside the country illegal under U.S. law. Radley Balko gives us a heads up on that development.