Wear Your Fucking Seatbelt, Doofus

Mister Bigglesworth likes to not wear his seatbelt. It's his little show of defiance toward the Nanny State. He wears it when he's riding in my car, because it's more comfortable than being attached to my trailer hitch fitting and dragged to our destination, but other than that, he refuses to properly secure himself in moving vehicles.

Governor Bobby, the CEO of My Local State, has ordered My Local State Police not to use night-vision goggles to enforce My Local State's seatbelt laws in the dark of night. Details are here, but I'll just take the facts I want for diatribal purposes, and you'll like it just fine that way, mmkay? I include the link because you are, of course, free to read about this and think your own thoughts and stuff, unless you're Ilse.

We're all about linkage here at YAMM (that is to say, when we're not all about you), and this puppy is intimately linked with the red herring that starred in yesterday's farcical furore du jour, that being that yesterday, as you probably know if you can read or turn on your radio, the Supreme Court of My Local Nation issued a key decision on federalism and the Commerce Clause, and everyone decided to think it was about smoking dope.

Now, people get pretty jacked about their vices; I sure get jacked about mine, and for the 15 years that ended about 15 years ago, smoking dope at a pretty constant clip was one of them. Please trust that I understand the importance to you of being able to smoke dope, regardless of the reasons why you or someone you love does so. I further understand that some people have perfectly heartrending reasons for wanting to smoke marijuana.

So Toots and I were discussing the Supreme Court decision over dinner last night. Actually, it was after dinner, while we were standing under the canopy of the restaurant waiting out a line of severe thunderstorms, or tornadoes, or World War II, or a Pride parade gone wrong, or whatever the hell that was, but it doesn't matter, because this sentence is just the sort of thing I throw in for verisimilitude and to remind you that I have dinner with Toots and you don't. Which reminds me, my relationship with Toots has become a hell of a lot less special since all you wannabes crowded in and started addressing her so damned disrespectfully. But I digress.

To be honest, I don't really give a shit whether marijuana is legal. I see some inconsistencies between the laws on marijuana and on tobacco and alcohol, and I can see a rationale for legalizing dope and regulating and taxing the hell out of it. I can also see a rationale for leaving dope illegal and outlawing tobacco and alcohol, although I'm perfectly well aware of the implications of any sort of prohibitionizing, having as I do an actual college degree (from an accredited post-secondary institution) that was very nearly in American history but was, for reasons of convenience, issued in another oeuvre.

I also think that the Feds have better things to do than go around doing police-type stuff that piddles around with people who possess marijuana, and I'm guessing that even the Orwellian idiots who run My Local Nation's Police State will agree, despite their remarkably hypocritical tendency to assert Federal power when they feel like it and claim that Federal power is bad when they feel like it.

Toots and I had a rare disagreement (sort of) about the irrelevant thing. She's down pretty hard on the side of legalization, and that's cool. We did wholeheartedly agree that yesterday's decision wasn't really about legalization or marijuana or anything of the sort, and you should, too. It was about Federalism. And Federalism is a very, very good thing, despite what Your Local Executive Branch tells you out of the other side of its mouth.

Federalism is what ensures that you have the right to choose how to exercise your reproductive freedom, and that you have the right to choose meat that didn't come from an Upton Sinclair novel even when you're eating it at Clarence Thomas' church picnic, and that you have the right to enter Utah, although Lord knows why you'd want to. Federalism is what makes each state, in the broad sense, a McDonald's; you know, fundamentally, what you're getting, except possibly in Louisiana, which still hasn't quite come to grips with being sold off by the French. Federalism is what makes us My Local Nation, rather than a bunch of vaguely geographically affiliated yokels whose territorial names end in "stan."

That first is why Your Local Executive Branch hates Federalism. That and the fact that it has to distribute money to the 'Stans in some formula that reeks of enough equitability so that it will pass the de Tocqueville test (216 years and still bribing ourselves, Alex, you effing Commie).

The War on Terror is, of course, why Your Local Executive Branch loves Federalism.

Hey, let's play a quick game called Liberals and Fascists look at the Constitution! I'll pick a sentence totally at random, okay?

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So, M. Fascist Person, what's that sentence say?

"The States have rights."

Bzzzzt! Sorry, you're reading that selectively, you fucktard. Go roll around in John C. Calhoun's grave and thank your lucky stars that literacy tests were abolished.

So, M. Liberal Person, what's that sentence say?

"The Federal government, embodying as it does by definition in this Constitution 'the people', i.e., this Constitution's transparent and oft-invoked euphemism for the House of Representatives, can do whatever the hell it wants, except for things this Constitution specifically prohibits by delegating to the states."

Dingdingdingdingding!!!!

Thank you for playing. Please feel free to sneer into the late Senator Calhoun's rather crowded grave.

Okay, now it's time for a pop quiz. Historically, what has been the Supreme Court's favorite mechanism for justifying anything it damn well pleases, and rightly so?

Uhm...the Commerce Clause?

Very good. Historically, what has been the Supreme Court's favorite mechanism for righting past wrongs?

Uhm...the Commerce Clause?

You're smokin'. No pun intended. Okay, lastly, what critical phrase in the Constitution has been under unremitting attack by the Rehnquist Supreme Court since the day Richard Nixon sent Admiral Billy over to keep the Chief's seat warm?

Uhm...the...Commerce Clause?

A-freakin-plus, dood. Yesterday's decision was a victory for Federalism, because it reversed a scathing and unbroken trend of assaults on the Commerce Clause by My Local Nation's Supreme Court. It is possible that we are not doomed. Congresses come and go, and one will eventually enact Federal legislation to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana, or at the very least to allow its medical use.

What does all this have to do with Governor Bobby and My Local State Police? Nothing, really. I pretty much lied about that whole intimate linkage thing.

Except this: where Toots and I, when I had dinner with her and you did not, disagreed about cannabis boiled down to her dislike of the Nanny State, which tells you how, and how not, to behave in cases that affect the choices you make about your personal health and safety. I can make myself okay with that. But I'm still going to be just fine with requiring people to wear seat belts and charging them money for not doing so, so how am I going to separate myself from the apes?

Tell me what to think, Toots.