Expanding Government Power

In the last few days the government has expanded its power in ways that may affect the average person. Two of these were through Supreme Court rulings and the third through Congressional action.

In the first of the court cases, the Supremes ruled against medical marijuana. I don't think much of the movement to legalize pot. Many of the people pushing it are also anti-tobacco. Considering that pot has more untested substances in it than cigarettes, this seems backwards.

But the California law was on strong constitutional grounds. The pot could only be grown in the state and it had to be donated. By any reasonable standard this should not have been covered by the commerce clause in the Constitution. Somehow the justices made it fit, anyway. This establishes a president for federal law superseding state law on virtually anything. The liberal justices voted to strike down a law pushed by liberals but they did this in order to give government more power - a liberal goal (except when Bush asks for it).

The second case was about eminent domain. While it is easy to argue that government should have the right to force you to sell your land for a road, it is hard to justify the government forcing you to sell your land to a private developer. Abuses of this power have been going on for years and this ruling will only accelerate it. Except for the very rich, no one else's land is safe any longer. A developer can always bulldoze a neighborhood and put up classier houses or a mall or an industrial center. As long as this increases the tax base, local government can justify it.

Again, the liberals were for this and the conservatives were against it. I miss the days when liberals stood up for the rights of the common man against rich developers.

Finally we have the proposed flag burning amendment. One of the things that makes our country great is that we allow dissent. If you don't like the way the government is going you can say so. Burning the flag is an internationally accepted way of protesting against a government. This is a tradition that goes back decades or more.

The First Amendment is all about political speech. Now we want to add a footnote to it. This is a bad thing.