They're Not Racists; They're Traitors Defending Slavery

Because opposition to the federal government has always been about protecting and preserving slavery, and nothing else.

We still haven't defeated the Confederacy, and we won't until its latest incarnation in the post-Goldwater GOP is exposed and eliminated.

Charles Pierce explains:

This view of things was litigated at the Constitutional Convention. It failed. It was litigated over the tariff. It failed. It was litigated at Cemetery Ridge. It failed. It was litigated prior to the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. It failed. It was litigated at Central High in Little Rock. It failed. It was litigated on the campus at Ole Miss in 1962. It failed. It was litigated at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It failed. It is the connective tissue that binds modern conservativism inextricably to the remnants of American apartheid because this view of the nature of the nation always was the expression of threat that the slaveholder felt about his way of life. It camouflaged itself in a number of ways involving a number of different issues, but always it was about the fear that, sooner or later, the federal government was going to come and take away the chattel from which you derived your personal economy, and so even what might be beneficial to the nation as a whole must be resisted on the pretext of sovereign states. As the Heidlers point out in their exemplary biography of Henry Clay, even roads and canals were considered to be dangerous encroachments by the central goverrnment on the peculiar institution:

SNIP

States rights always was the constitutional camouflage for white supremacy, be that during the time of slavery or the time of Jim Crow. It has been the single greatest impediment to the intellectual and political progress of the American nation almost since that nation's founding, and it always has been the last refuge of the truly retrograde.

 Thanks to Pierce also for this:  from now on, we are calling it The War of Southern Secession.

And Ed Kilgore has the video of Rachel Maddow's terrific segment on Posse Comitatus, which is directly on point. 

States vs. Feds on Pot

Now that voters in Colorado and Washington have legalized possession of small amounts of pot by adults, the other 48 states are scrambling to get in on this bonanza before all their residents pick up stakes and head for Denver and Seattle.

No, of course not. Now Colorado and Washington officials are scrambling to figure out how they can possibly get legal pot to their very impatient citizens without bringing the full wrath of the federal government down on their heads permanently.

Or maybe not. Maybe the feds will take one look and decide it's too much trouble to try to arrest however many million people will soon be living in Colorado and Washington, so we'll just pretend nothing's going on there and keep arresting all the pathetic half-ounce-of-weed users in states happy to lock 'em for life.

That would actually be the worst decision for every citizen in every state, not just the pot users. 
 

I'm all in favor of legalizing marijuana and all drugs. Tax the fuck out of 'em and use the money to fund 10 million treatment beds.

 

Here's the problem: Once you allow states to nullify stupid, wasteful federal laws (and gay marriage does not nullify federal law; all DOMA does is deny federal benefits to same-sex couples), you allow states to nullify smart, essential federal laws.

 

Like anti-pollution laws that ensure clean air and water.  Like food-safety laws that ensure food won't kill us.  Like anti-discrimination laws that ensure minorities can patronize restaurants and hotels.

 

You think Texas wouldn't leap to nullify every single business regulation on the books? Kentucky wouldn't nullify every coal-mining safety law?  Florida wouldn't pave the Everglades?

 

You want to change federal law on marijuana, fine: change federal law on marijuana. But don't just neglect to enforce federal marijuana laws in states that have decriminalized it. Do that, and before you know it, the motherfuckers will be mining coal in my basement.

 

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

It's been over a month since voters in Colorado and the state of Washington approved ballot measures to legalize recreational use and sale of marijuana, despite federal law that reaches a very different conclusion. Yesterday, President Obama addressed the discrepancy for the first time.

President Obama says recreational users of marijuana in states that have legalized the substance should not be a "top priority" of federal law enforcement officials prosecuting the war on drugs.
"We've got bigger fish to fry," Obama said of pot users in Colorado and Washington during an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters.

"It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it's legal," he said, invoking the same approach taken toward users of medicinal marijuana in 18 states where it's legal.

The president added that this is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law." He told ABC, "I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, how do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?"

SNIP
Congressional intervention is needed and practically inevitable. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee is planning a hearing early next year to examine the legal ambiguities and consider legislative options.

States' Rights on Health Care Reform

Among the many criminally wrong lies teabaggers tell about health care reform is that it usurps states rights (although they say that about everything good this country has done since electing Abraham Lincoln.)

In fact, the Affordable Care Act specifically empowers states to establish their own health care reform. Anything goes - as long as it covers as many people as the federal system does.

At least two states - Vermont and Connecticut - are reality-based enough to see the huge advantages of establishing a statewide single-payer system.

Jon Walker has details on Connecticut's plan:

Connecticut is poised to be on the leading progressive edge of what is possible under the new federal health care law by providing a rather robust state-based public option. If the state adopts the proposed SustiNet health plan (PDF) it would integrate the many different group insurance plans the state currently provides into a unified self-insured program, provide quality automatic coverage to everyone under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level, and eventually offer a commercial “publicly-administered health plan” open to all individuals and business in the state, under the management of a quasi-government agency. Its designed to save the state roughly $300 million a year and hopefully reduce health care spending over the long-term.

SNIP

In a few days, Vermont’s health care advisory board is expected to present three proposals for reforming their health care system, which I will be looking at very closely. So far, though, this is the best proposal to deal implementing the new health care law I have seen in any state. While not prefect, if Connecticut and other states adopt this model, it will be a good step at the state level toward making decent reform out of what was frankly a pretty bad new federal law.

Read the whole thing.

States desperate to save money, desperate to stop health care costs from hemhorraging state budgets, are going to take one look at how single-payer is saving money, lives and political futures in Vermont and Connecticut, and tell the teabaggers to fuck off and die.