But on the actual Marijuana bit, I think I should make it clear that I’m totally against marijuana for non-medicinal purposes, and only for it on medicinal purposes because, well, look at the Caulkin case. Two of the drugs he was abusing was legal, anyway, just presciption. It won’t really make any difference if its made a precription last-chance drug. Rather sad….it gets abused either way. I also have a close friend who has an aunt who is one of those that requires marijuana for medical use. *Shrugs*. I personally don’t condone it, but I can see its use.

On the subject of pathos and such (Now those two Rhetoric classes that I took can really pay off!): Yeah, it can be a gimmick sometimes. When you have nothing substantial to back up your opinions, you can always use emotional arguments. But you can also inject a bit of humanity into an already logically sound argument.

Drug use is one of those touchy subjects where one side or the other will almost always fall back to an emotional argument. It’s hard to appeal to logos/logic if the other side wants to play by other rules. Thus we have cases focusing on terminally ill medical marijuana users, and our televisions are filled with public service announcements about how some guy smoked pot and crashed his car into someone (or something like that).

So the drug debate will always turn into one focusing on morality rather than logic. You can run through a laundry list of facts detailing how alcohol or tobacco is more dangerous than marijuana, but if your audience is filled with people who are dead set against pot, you’ll get nowhere. But maybe showing them terminally ill patients who have no other alternative might change a couple of minds here and there. This approach seems to be working, as almost 80% of the American public supports legalizing the use of medical marijuana.

BTW, this case was less about medical marijuana and more about what is the extent of federal government power. That is why Justice O’Connor ruled in favor of the medical marijuana side, though she made it clear that she does not approve of it. And some of the liberal judges ruled against it in order to retain as much power for the federal government as they could, though they personally support medical marijuana.

I dislike articles like this, because it takes the focus away from the debate about marajuana use and focuses on pathos. Debates where feelings are concerned usually go nowhere and people get angry etc. I can’t really comment on the judicial part because I’m pretty sketchy there, so I’ll leave that to you all.

Now when a leftist retires, the Democrats are going to want to maintain the status quo by calling for another leftist to replace the retiring one. So it will be very hard for Republicans to change the balance of power. The Dems will grudgingly confirm to replace the conservatives with conservatives. But the real confirmation battles will be if/when Republicans try to replace a lefty with a righty. What we have seen with judicial blocking will be nothing in comparison to what we’ll face.

When I refer to medical purposes, I refer primarily to the pain relief that it brings. How does it do this? It mimics the brains own chemicals that provide pain relief and, as a side effect, give you a high (like dopamine is a natural high for a human being). Thats all any drug (in the literal sense) does…it tries to mimic what your body already does. I don’t like the idea of its abuse any more than anyone here–but the fact is, its effects on the brain are undeniable. Morals vs. Pragmatism? I rely heavily on my morals in my everday life, and believe very strongly in a number of things. But, somtimes, what I believe has to fall prey to the facts of life.

Truth is Thomas is just a cheap Scalia knock off. It is nice that he can actually vote independent of Scalia; maybe he has finally earned his wings. Whatever the case, Scalia goes by original intent, even if you don’t agree with him on this case. This case concerns state actions that can go directly against federal aims. This decison does not strike down state law. The Federal government has the right to enforce this law because the federal government cannot be sure that states can actually enforce their own laws. Scalia has the quote from McCulloh for his evidence, to show just how old that argument is.