The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)
I think much more likely is that it will just be made legal federally sometime in the next decade. Marijuana legalization has majorities across ideologies (https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...) and even though the inability to create federal law on something so popular seems like a good case study on how the US system doesn't always do a good job representing it's actual people, it seems to be at a critical mass where it can't be ignored for much longer. Even my parents' friends who are conservative have started doing weed.
I think the issue is this isn't seen by politicians as a motivating vote driver. It is, however, a motivation for someone to go out and vote against a politician.
That's ultimately what keeps things like MJ illegal. There are just far too many people that will get upset about it if it were made federally legal.
My state, Idaho, has one such politician that is constantly bringing up and trying to find ways to keep the wacky tabacy out of the state. Including trying to amend the state constitution for it. He does this because he's mormon and the mormons are scared of the devil's lettuce.
I personally would be okay with having it legal if smoking could still be banned in multifamily complexes. I don't care if my neighbors are using edibles, but since I know that legalized weed means more smoke coming from my neighbors' balconies, I will always vote "No" when marijuana legalization is on the ballot in my location.
You’re probably right, though I dread the possibility. I cannot stand the smell, and one of the best things about moving from California to Texas was avoiding that pervasive smell being everywhere. Negative externalities of personal behavior really need to be handled better in our society. If you want pot to be legal, fine, but only inside your own personal enclosed house.
Even as a daily weed smoker myself though, it's hard not to acknowledge that a more liberal marijuana stance in a geographic location does lead to that smell being more commonly encountered when in public and out and about.
Personally I don't mind, almost the opposite, but for people who don't like the smell, obviously they feel differently. Good thing we can have different policies in different places, and people can generally, one way or another, move themselves to other places. Could be easier, but could also be way worse.
> but only inside your own personal enclosed house.
Isn't it usually illegal to smoke things like cigarettes inside rented homes, legality aside? And don't most people rent? That seems like a whole can to deal with.
Oh no, the thought of catching a whiff! No one must smoke in texas, since you know, everyone follows the law. Smoking weed only started in general with legalization. It was mythical beforehand.
A farmer was told he could only grow X acres of feed on his own land; feed that he had no intention of selling and was being fed entirely to his own livestock on the same land.
This seems to overturn that in part, but until Wickard is overturned, and the interstate commerce clause reigned in, there will be weird side effects of it like this.
Circuit courts may not overrule Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, this decision purports to rest on the “Necessary and Proper” clause, avoiding Wickard (decided on commerce clause grounds)
You have identified a root perversion. Roscoe Filburn’s wheat did not leave Ohio or even his farm. He didn’t offer it for sale; the wheat was for his own use. It was deemed to “affect interstate commerce” and thus within the scope of the interstate commerce clause. With that, a provision intended to remove power of states to tax each other’s goods and services and promote a free trade zone instead became a mechanism to nitpick and micromanage every last little detail, ossify existing practice, protect large players, give loopholes to the politically connected, and enable mass regulatory capture. It cannot be overturned quickly enough.
That would also invalidate the civil rights act, as the (similar) 19th century CRA was already struck down because the 14th amendment binds against discrimination by public not private actors. The reason why the modern CRAs weren't also struck is because they rested on the laurels of Wickard v Filburn declaring the CRA (this time) is about regulating "interstate" commerce.
That would be an improvement in the same spirit, as the modern CRAs are also unconstitutionally limiting over what one chooses to do with their own property. The scope should be limited to government-involved services and facilities, as those must serve all possible taxpayers. We live in a more connected, option-saturated information age where even bigots more often than not understand the utility of at least doing business politely and making nuanced exceptions. Egregious offenses are corrected by social pressure and business competition. The current regime of ambulance-chasing liabilities inserted into every organizational, contracting, and hiring process harms far more people of every race and sex than it helps.
fixing the interstate commerce clause is one of those things that needs to be done eventually, but will likely never be done - even if just to "fix" it so everything remains the same but is based on simpler allocation of powers than through a "loophole".
If they reversed Gonzales v. Raich they'd be under a lot of pressure to reverse Wickard v. Fulburn, which would have such wide ramifications I just don't see the court doing it no matter how warranted.
The word "interstate" does not exist in the text of the Constitution.
There's arguably some merit to your position, but the argument that some case law is invalid because it doesn't meet the definition of a term defined in other case law is circular and incoherent.
A lot of stuff does have interstate implications. Especially now that most corporations operate in an interstate fashion.
That said, I agree that it's overused. I personally think that the 9th amendment should be used in a lot of cases, like civil rights, instead of the interstate commerce law.
The supreme court, however, has basically decided that the 9th amendment doesn't really exist.
You could just as easily stuff most of those things under the "general welfare" clause if you do the same rigamarole of years and years of precedent hand-waving. We live in a post constitutional state. The constitution is just something worked to backwards so the guys who function as our priests/gods point to the document because that's the only way to feign some sort of legitimacy to our government.
Ultimately none of us signed the constitution and all of those people that did are dead. It is a religious artifact used by the whig
-god people to argue they are right. Not something followed with faith to the historical context nor literal contract.
(edit: to below trying to compare bad-faith ICC to good-faith general welfare, you must apply similar levels of creativity and bad faith. Ban things through high or impossible to pay taxation. "Tax" behavior to force people to do something in a certain way, make very heavy penalties for not paying the tax, and also make it extremely difficult to buy the tax stamps (this is how they did drug control until they decided to use the new fraud of "interstate" commerce).
I agree, from the other side of the aisle. The Constitution is merely a well-guarded piece of toilet paper now. Culture matters way more than legal documents in preserving a nation, and our culture has waned too significantly. I believe we've entered the "Byzantine" phase of America.
For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars … But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!
I wouldn't be surprised if this one unironically goes given that Uber/Lyft are fully doing "women only" ride shares now.
Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.
> Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.
This does not meet up with my experience with them at all.
Just quick check, what percentage of onlyfans creators are Gen Z / Alpha vs other nonsense year demographics?
I looked at the actual decision [1] and didn't see Filburn mentioned once. I find that odd. Filburn [2] was a controversial and far-reaching decision that said that the Federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce extended to people growing wheat on their own property for their own use. The rationale was that by growing wheat you weren't participating in the interstate wheat market. That seems like a wild interpretation to me but it's Supreme Court precedent at this point.
So I found this footnote:
> The government does not challenge the district court’s Commerce Clause
analysis on appeal. Accordingly, any such argument is forfeited, and we do not address it.
That's interesting. Here's a legal analysis that does bring up the Commerce Clause and Filburn [3]. I really wonder why the government didn't raise this issue.
I knew just from the headline this was going to be a 5th Circuit decision, and it was. This is the same circuit that is perfectly fine to override "state's rights" for other issues.
It's possible that the government thought that if they did try to challenge the Commerce Clause analysis, then the Supreme Court could have struck down Filburn. They'd much rather lose narrowly on this specific case than have Filburn reversed entirely.
SCOTUS did a pretty hilarious soft "strike down" of Wickard where they basically determined the gun free school zone act (GFSZA) violated interstate commerce clause. So congress just added "in interstate commerce" to the GFSZA and now it does the exact same thing even if there was no interstate commerce involved, and nothing involved ever crossed state lines or actually entered interstate commerce.
So SCOTUS basically solved this by saying the law had to say "in interstate commerce" but it is basically just there as a talisman to ward away challenges, a distinction without any difference as it becomes a tautology.
That seems like a pretty over-reaching interpretation. It makes sense in the context (needing to support federal economic control during WW2). But in some sense the economy is a dynamic system that touches and is touched by almost every decision we make. I made a pot of coffee this morning, should the federal government have the ability to decide whether or not I’m damaging the cafe market by not supporting my local cafe?
The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.
On one hand you should have a right to buy whatever you want at 21( which should be the minimum enlistment age), but I’d be concerned about Billy selling homemade GPLs or whatever.
> The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.
No, that's not what's being said. If you grow your own plant for personal use, there's no need for the federal government to be involved. If you grow that plant and then try to sell it, then there's some commerce which does fall under some regulation (we'll leave the interstate nuances aside). Having the fed being allowed to say you cannot grow in your house is one step away from saying you are only allowed to perform missionary position (no other positions are allowed) between the hours of 7-8pm, but not at all on Sunday.
Okay. So if you decide to visit a friends house does him sharing still count as personal use ?
In many communities you have a guy who cooks plates of food and sells them. While technically this is illegal with out a permit, it’s usually tolerated.
I’m all for the legalization of everything for adults, but it’s a very complex issue. Education is the way here, not punishment
No one argues these things are not able to be regulated. Instead, per the 10th amendment, it must be left to state law since Congress does not have unlimited power and may only legislate where power has been granted to them by the constitution.
There are specific prohibitions on certain categories of state laws, like granting titles of nobility, creating non-gold/silver currencies, etc. The federal government cannot constitutionally regulate sex positions, because anything not explicitly covered in the Constitution is reserved to the states, or the people. In that broad grant, however, the states individually can make or avoid making law on any topic.
As others have mentioned, the Supreme Court has frequently worked around the Constitution for reasons that made sense to them at the time, including the original ruling that this one overturns.
I believe the original idea of the Constitution was that most things would be regulated at the state level.
This is pretty much already the case with marijuana, where it's illegal at the federal level, but in practice if it's legal in your state then it's legal.
> [Judge Edith Jones] also said that under the government’s logic, Congress could criminalize virtually any in-home activity
Well, yeah. This is essentially the holding in Wickard v. Filburn, which seems to be in tension with this decision (overturning that would be great but it’s not the role of the circuit courts of appeal to do preemptively)
Also, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".
This is the question I'd love to see asked to people running for President. Name something you think the States can do that the Federal government is prohibited from doing.
Missed in the previous discussion: methanol is irrelevant. Grain based ferments have essentially zero methanol.(And methanol risk is a function of its concentration relative to ethanol — the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!) even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol, and it’s not all that well concentrated in a distillation due to azeotropes (which also says that throwing out the heads doesn’t help that much).
Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol. The biggest risk in home distilling is fire.
> the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!
My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps every night and called it his medicine. I thought it was a euphemism but apparently he was actually taking an antidote prophylactically. You can't be too careful. He never once got methanol poisoning.
> Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol
Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it, but then they hurt a bunch of people and never faced any consequences...
As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.
As I said, this happens when someone tries to sell illegally produced trash created not by brewing but with sugar, chemical essence, and whatever they've mistaken for ethanol. The tax on alcohol creates a black market and some people taking part in it are either dumb or lazy and those are the cases you hear about.
Was it missed or intentionally downplayed/ignored because people came into the discussion with priors that they were eager to maintain?
Seems like these sorts of "yes it could be unsafe in theory but the reality of physics and incentives make this mostly irrelevant" type things get missed far too often certain parts of the internet to be coincidence.
That said, the fact that it dropped on a weekend did it no favors the first time around.
Speaking as a brewer, I can tell you that tons of people who should know better actually believe the methanol thing and will even quote some sciency words to make their argument. I think its a case of bad information coming from black market distilling being propagated uncritically. People who know better (licensed distillers) have no incentive to argue against it.
Bought and rigged up a 'hand sanitizer plant' about five months into COVID. Populated the thing with thermocouples, load cells and automation with nodered on raspberry pi and a bunch of esp32s flashed with tasmota doing sensing and control. Everything talked over mqtt. Great little architecture and having it highly automated allowed me to focus on the parts that were less easily controlled for.
It's been way too long since I've taken a political science course, but does this mean that the ban is struck down for the entire country, or just the area that the 5th Court of Appeals covers?
The ruling only has binding precedent in the 5th Circuit, other circuits aren't bound to follow it. Formerly this kind of ruling would come with a nationwide injunction to force the issue but now that those are severely curtailed by the Supreme Court it's only binding to the courts under the jurisdiction of the 5th circuit.
Decisions in other circuits can be very persuasive to other circuits but they're not required to agree the same way a Supreme Court ruling is binding. Circuit splits are moderately common and usually trigger a review by the supreme court if an appeal wasn't filed for the earlier decisions.
Only the 5th court of appeals. However if you get caught elsewhere your lawyer will have a good appeal grounds just because your area will need to decide if they agree. If all areas eventually agree it probably never will get to the supreme court. Once several different courts hear this and make a decision if they disagree the supreme court jumps in reading all the logic of everyone below them to try to find a real answer. (It doesn't always work this way, that is the textbook ideal way, but the real world is often different).
Note that unless you think nothing of spending 20 million dollars on lawyers this is probably not something that you want to fight.
Prior to this year, the entire country. Today, thanks to SCOTUS shenanigans, it likely only applies to the states involved in the lawsuit, LA. But who knows, hard to keep up with the game of calvinball the SCOTUS is playing.
Probably though the old pattern was that the plaintiffs would request and the Circuit would issue a nationwide injunction with the ruling when finding that a law in full unconstitutional.
Now we have the weird situation where the constitution is more patchwork because you have to get rulings in all the Circuits or wait for one case to make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
I am not really a fan of liquor, but I do like the idea of having skills which are universally valuable.
If you air dropped me into a random village in Africa I doubt I could 'code for cassava' but I could almost certainly make a living if I knew how to set up a basic pot still and safely create booze.
You could sanitize and disinfect with that alcohol! You could also make extracts of any plants nearby that were useful. Whiskey and vanilla beans are sufficient to make vanilla extract!
Sub saharan africa already has a very large informal distilling network (especially of bananas), a niche largely reserved for women in many regions (not sure for what the reason is for that exactly).
TLDL: During prohibition, US government required adding 5% methanol to industrial alcohol, hoping that this would stop bootleggers from selling it as liquor. It was sold anyway, resulting in many deaths.
It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly. That being said, so long as it's for private or non-profit use, I don't really see the harm here.
>It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly.
If you're into home brewing or distilling, the first and only comment people completely unfamiliar with the process say is something about going blind because of methanol. It's disappointing because the process is so rich with history and really interesting problems to solve but the zeitgeist is completely poisoned by prohibition-era propaganda.
Unless they try to make booze from woodchips, they'll be fine. Using fruit or grains or potatoes makes it really hard to end up with enough methanol to be dangerous.
Not explosive, but still a potential fire hazard, especially if a still gets way too hot (coolant system fails) and alcohol vapors escape. The risk becomes extremely minimal when using an electric still.
I would say: not explosive. I've seen a decent number of setups, and I can think of three areas where you could be concerned with safety (not necessarily where you should be):
1. Most use propane burners (the exact thing you'd use for homebrewing which is already legal and safe, and also similar to what some large turkey fryers use) which can be risky, but some are electric (120v or 240v).
2. Stills are an open system insofar as there is a way for pressure to escape - if you're goofing things up, you might vaporize and not recondense your ethanol (eg, because you have the heat way too high and/or aren't doing a good job of cooling down the vapors), and it's possible for that vapor to start on fire. I've seen it happen, and it's certainly a spectacle but wasn't particularly dangerous.
3. The distillate itself (ie, ethanol) is usually pretty potent, especially the foreshots and heads. Let's say 70%+. Especially as it's coming out, it's still prone to evaporation, and you could have a combustible/explosive risk here, but I've never seen this to be an actual problem.
they're really not. they're generally not a pressure vessel, and even when I've had leaks of ethanol, the fire went out immediately after being removed from heat.
today's home stills are usually plug-in resistance heated chambers with a still head, and are very high quality. my flame-out was from a pot still that was sealed with flour and water, not a modern still.
Do this one next:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
The Supreme Court somehow held that the feds can regulate what you do in your own home (in this case, growing marijuana for personal use) because it could have a butterfly effect on the interstate price. (Constitutionally, the feds can only regulate _interstate_ commerce.)
I think much more likely is that it will just be made legal federally sometime in the next decade. Marijuana legalization has majorities across ideologies (https://news.gallup.com/poll/514007/grassroots-support-legal...) and even though the inability to create federal law on something so popular seems like a good case study on how the US system doesn't always do a good job representing it's actual people, it seems to be at a critical mass where it can't be ignored for much longer. Even my parents' friends who are conservative have started doing weed.
I think the issue is this isn't seen by politicians as a motivating vote driver. It is, however, a motivation for someone to go out and vote against a politician.
That's ultimately what keeps things like MJ illegal. There are just far too many people that will get upset about it if it were made federally legal.
My state, Idaho, has one such politician that is constantly bringing up and trying to find ways to keep the wacky tabacy out of the state. Including trying to amend the state constitution for it. He does this because he's mormon and the mormons are scared of the devil's lettuce.
I personally would be okay with having it legal if smoking could still be banned in multifamily complexes. I don't care if my neighbors are using edibles, but since I know that legalized weed means more smoke coming from my neighbors' balconies, I will always vote "No" when marijuana legalization is on the ballot in my location.
Can smoking tobacco be banned in multifamily complexes currently? I'd think the policy would be the same.
HOAs tend to manage this kind of thing
I don't even smoke - it just offends me deeply to see the Supreme Court rule in a direction that's so blatantly against the Constitution.
That's been going on for a long, long time.
You’re probably right, though I dread the possibility. I cannot stand the smell, and one of the best things about moving from California to Texas was avoiding that pervasive smell being everywhere. Negative externalities of personal behavior really need to be handled better in our society. If you want pot to be legal, fine, but only inside your own personal enclosed house.
That's only one of many ways to consume it, many people vape, have edibles or drinks and you just don't notice.
Even as a daily weed smoker myself though, it's hard not to acknowledge that a more liberal marijuana stance in a geographic location does lead to that smell being more commonly encountered when in public and out and about.
Personally I don't mind, almost the opposite, but for people who don't like the smell, obviously they feel differently. Good thing we can have different policies in different places, and people can generally, one way or another, move themselves to other places. Could be easier, but could also be way worse.
Some people say the same about the smell or noise of babies. It's not a very strong argument for getting ones way in controlling others.
Are you ok with ciggarete smoke then if you are ok with marijuana smoke?
THC is perfectly legal here (Quebec, Canada) and believe me, there is no smell on the streets!
What is actually disgusting and happens often in the streets is the smell of ordinary cigarette smoke.
This might be controversial, but smelling either in public makes me happy! Now the stale smell of tobacco-infused clothing, that is awful.
> but only inside your own personal enclosed house.
Isn't it usually illegal to smoke things like cigarettes inside rented homes, legality aside? And don't most people rent? That seems like a whole can to deal with.
Oh no, the thought of catching a whiff! No one must smoke in texas, since you know, everyone follows the law. Smoking weed only started in general with legalization. It was mythical beforehand.
I mean, there are plenty of neighborhoods in CA that don't have that smell...
There just no smell like this in any neighborhood outside of college campuses and area close to those.
You might get a whiff here and there, but you're going to encounter a lot of smells you don't like here and there.
The controlling case is Wickard v Filburn (1942).
A farmer was told he could only grow X acres of feed on his own land; feed that he had no intention of selling and was being fed entirely to his own livestock on the same land.
This seems to overturn that in part, but until Wickard is overturned, and the interstate commerce clause reigned in, there will be weird side effects of it like this.
Circuit courts may not overrule Supreme Court precedent. Accordingly, this decision purports to rest on the “Necessary and Proper” clause, avoiding Wickard (decided on commerce clause grounds)
I'd imagine one wants to litigate Wickard v. Filburn in its entirety, rather than just the downstream Gonzales v. Raich
You have identified a root perversion. Roscoe Filburn’s wheat did not leave Ohio or even his farm. He didn’t offer it for sale; the wheat was for his own use. It was deemed to “affect interstate commerce” and thus within the scope of the interstate commerce clause. With that, a provision intended to remove power of states to tax each other’s goods and services and promote a free trade zone instead became a mechanism to nitpick and micromanage every last little detail, ossify existing practice, protect large players, give loopholes to the politically connected, and enable mass regulatory capture. It cannot be overturned quickly enough.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/317/111/
I don't see SCOTUS ever overturning Wickard, sadly. Too many federal programs and regulations would lose their legal basis if that happened.
That would also invalidate the civil rights act, as the (similar) 19th century CRA was already struck down because the 14th amendment binds against discrimination by public not private actors. The reason why the modern CRAs weren't also struck is because they rested on the laurels of Wickard v Filburn declaring the CRA (this time) is about regulating "interstate" commerce.
That would be an improvement in the same spirit, as the modern CRAs are also unconstitutionally limiting over what one chooses to do with their own property. The scope should be limited to government-involved services and facilities, as those must serve all possible taxpayers. We live in a more connected, option-saturated information age where even bigots more often than not understand the utility of at least doing business politely and making nuanced exceptions. Egregious offenses are corrected by social pressure and business competition. The current regime of ambulance-chasing liabilities inserted into every organizational, contracting, and hiring process harms far more people of every race and sex than it helps.
fixing the interstate commerce clause is one of those things that needs to be done eventually, but will likely never be done - even if just to "fix" it so everything remains the same but is based on simpler allocation of powers than through a "loophole".
John Roberts will find a way to screw it up.
In Wickard v. Filburn, back in 1942, they said the same thing for wheat.
If they reversed Gonzales v. Raich they'd be under a lot of pressure to reverse Wickard v. Fulburn, which would have such wide ramifications I just don't see the court doing it no matter how warranted.
The word "interstate" does not exist in the text of the Constitution.
There's arguably some merit to your position, but the argument that some case law is invalid because it doesn't meet the definition of a term defined in other case law is circular and incoherent.
It uses the phrase “regulate commerce between the states” which effectively has the same meaning.
Another case based on interstate commerce: the US ban on racial segregation. The example given, iirc, was restaurant competition across state lines.
The interstate commerce clause is just craziness. It touches everything and gives justification to regulate nearly anything.
A lot of stuff does have interstate implications. Especially now that most corporations operate in an interstate fashion.
That said, I agree that it's overused. I personally think that the 9th amendment should be used in a lot of cases, like civil rights, instead of the interstate commerce law.
The supreme court, however, has basically decided that the 9th amendment doesn't really exist.
You could just as easily stuff most of those things under the "general welfare" clause if you do the same rigamarole of years and years of precedent hand-waving. We live in a post constitutional state. The constitution is just something worked to backwards so the guys who function as our priests/gods point to the document because that's the only way to feign some sort of legitimacy to our government.
Ultimately none of us signed the constitution and all of those people that did are dead. It is a religious artifact used by the whig -god people to argue they are right. Not something followed with faith to the historical context nor literal contract.
(edit: to below trying to compare bad-faith ICC to good-faith general welfare, you must apply similar levels of creativity and bad faith. Ban things through high or impossible to pay taxation. "Tax" behavior to force people to do something in a certain way, make very heavy penalties for not paying the tax, and also make it extremely difficult to buy the tax stamps (this is how they did drug control until they decided to use the new fraud of "interstate" commerce).
I agree, from the other side of the aisle. The Constitution is merely a well-guarded piece of toilet paper now. Culture matters way more than legal documents in preserving a nation, and our culture has waned too significantly. I believe we've entered the "Byzantine" phase of America.
General Welfare Clause only applies to taxing and spending, though, not just general regulation (e.g., making drugs illegal or banning segregation).
For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars … But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!
Federalist No. 41 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed41.asp
I wouldn't be surprised if this one unironically goes given that Uber/Lyft are fully doing "women only" ride shares now.
Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.
> Gen Z / Alpha have embraced X-"realism" and fully accept essentialism/reject "intersectionality". They're far more conservative/prudish than millennials, even at their young age.
This does not meet up with my experience with them at all.
Just quick check, what percentage of onlyfans creators are Gen Z / Alpha vs other nonsense year demographics?
I think there's a selection effect there that makes it an unrepresentative sample.
I looked at the actual decision [1] and didn't see Filburn mentioned once. I find that odd. Filburn [2] was a controversial and far-reaching decision that said that the Federal government's ability to regulate interstate commerce extended to people growing wheat on their own property for their own use. The rationale was that by growing wheat you weren't participating in the interstate wheat market. That seems like a wild interpretation to me but it's Supreme Court precedent at this point.
So I found this footnote:
> The government does not challenge the district court’s Commerce Clause analysis on appeal. Accordingly, any such argument is forfeited, and we do not address it.
That's interesting. Here's a legal analysis that does bring up the Commerce Clause and Filburn [3]. I really wonder why the government didn't raise this issue.
I knew just from the headline this was going to be a 5th Circuit decision, and it was. This is the same circuit that is perfectly fine to override "state's rights" for other issues.
[1]:https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/24/24-10760-CV0.pd...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
[3]: https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/reviving-the-commerce-clause-one...
It's possible that the government thought that if they did try to challenge the Commerce Clause analysis, then the Supreme Court could have struck down Filburn. They'd much rather lose narrowly on this specific case than have Filburn reversed entirely.
SCOTUS did a pretty hilarious soft "strike down" of Wickard where they basically determined the gun free school zone act (GFSZA) violated interstate commerce clause. So congress just added "in interstate commerce" to the GFSZA and now it does the exact same thing even if there was no interstate commerce involved, and nothing involved ever crossed state lines or actually entered interstate commerce.
So SCOTUS basically solved this by saying the law had to say "in interstate commerce" but it is basically just there as a talisman to ward away challenges, a distinction without any difference as it becomes a tautology.
That seems like a pretty over-reaching interpretation. It makes sense in the context (needing to support federal economic control during WW2). But in some sense the economy is a dynamic system that touches and is touched by almost every decision we make. I made a pot of coffee this morning, should the federal government have the ability to decide whether or not I’m damaging the cafe market by not supporting my local cafe?
The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.
On one hand you should have a right to buy whatever you want at 21( which should be the minimum enlistment age), but I’d be concerned about Billy selling homemade GPLs or whatever.
> The problem is if you say the government can’t regulate MJ, then all drug regulations fall apart.
No, that's not what's being said. If you grow your own plant for personal use, there's no need for the federal government to be involved. If you grow that plant and then try to sell it, then there's some commerce which does fall under some regulation (we'll leave the interstate nuances aside). Having the fed being allowed to say you cannot grow in your house is one step away from saying you are only allowed to perform missionary position (no other positions are allowed) between the hours of 7-8pm, but not at all on Sunday.
Okay. So if you decide to visit a friends house does him sharing still count as personal use ?
In many communities you have a guy who cooks plates of food and sells them. While technically this is illegal with out a permit, it’s usually tolerated.
I’m all for the legalization of everything for adults, but it’s a very complex issue. Education is the way here, not punishment
No one argues these things are not able to be regulated. Instead, per the 10th amendment, it must be left to state law since Congress does not have unlimited power and may only legislate where power has been granted to them by the constitution.
And before people say you are being hyperbolic, the government still regulates sex positions. Sodomy is illegal in 12 US states.
Not the federal government, however.
There are specific prohibitions on certain categories of state laws, like granting titles of nobility, creating non-gold/silver currencies, etc. The federal government cannot constitutionally regulate sex positions, because anything not explicitly covered in the Constitution is reserved to the states, or the people. In that broad grant, however, the states individually can make or avoid making law on any topic.
As others have mentioned, the Supreme Court has frequently worked around the Constitution for reasons that made sense to them at the time, including the original ruling that this one overturns.
I believe the original idea of the Constitution was that most things would be regulated at the state level.
This is pretty much already the case with marijuana, where it's illegal at the federal level, but in practice if it's legal in your state then it's legal.
> I’d be concerned about Billy selling homemade GPLs or whatever.
Would it be better with a BSD license?
Been samplin’ a little bit of Grandpa’s attribution clause, have we?
Also, this line is quite funny on its own because while understand what she actually meant, it can be very easily reinterpreted as "only actions committed out-of-home should be crimes; murdered someone in your home? welp, our hands are tied, have a nice day".
I think the point is that murder is handled by the states, not Congress. This is about what the federal government can do, not all government.
This is the question I'd love to see asked to people running for President. Name something you think the States can do that the Federal government is prohibited from doing.
Missed in the previous discussion: methanol is irrelevant. Grain based ferments have essentially zero methanol.(And methanol risk is a function of its concentration relative to ethanol — the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!) even fruit based fermentations with significantly higher pectin concentrations only produce trace methanol, and it’s not all that well concentrated in a distillation due to azeotropes (which also says that throwing out the heads doesn’t help that much).
Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol. The biggest risk in home distilling is fire.
> the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!
My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps every night and called it his medicine. I thought it was a euphemism but apparently he was actually taking an antidote prophylactically. You can't be too careful. He never once got methanol poisoning.
Was his doctor Dr. McGillicuddy?
> Methanol poisoning stories in the news almost exclusively result from people trying to sell denatured or industrial alcohol
Pretty sure this was a relic of prohibition right? The feds would contaminate ethanol with methanol to keep people from drinking it, but then they hurt a bunch of people and never faced any consequences...
> the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!
I looked this up, it is directionally correct but if you are in a hospital setting they have better options https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482121/
As someone living in the Balkans, home brewing is a national passtime for every nation around. When every family has its own recipe for brewing alcohol, killing ourselves would've been achieved many centuries ago if it was a real concern. Methanol is an issue when some dumbshit decides to cell chemically produced trash on industrial scale instead of buying the expensive ingredients.
almost every year there is a news story of some Western tourist visiting another country dying from bootleg methanol alcohol
As I said, this happens when someone tries to sell illegally produced trash created not by brewing but with sugar, chemical essence, and whatever they've mistaken for ethanol. The tax on alcohol creates a black market and some people taking part in it are either dumb or lazy and those are the cases you hear about.
Raised and addressed in an earlier post on an earlier article on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298#47737600
Was it missed or intentionally downplayed/ignored because people came into the discussion with priors that they were eager to maintain?
Seems like these sorts of "yes it could be unsafe in theory but the reality of physics and incentives make this mostly irrelevant" type things get missed far too often certain parts of the internet to be coincidence.
That said, the fact that it dropped on a weekend did it no favors the first time around.
Speaking as a brewer, I can tell you that tons of people who should know better actually believe the methanol thing and will even quote some sciency words to make their argument. I think its a case of bad information coming from black market distilling being propagated uncritically. People who know better (licensed distillers) have no incentive to argue against it.
Bought and rigged up a 'hand sanitizer plant' about five months into COVID. Populated the thing with thermocouples, load cells and automation with nodered on raspberry pi and a bunch of esp32s flashed with tasmota doing sensing and control. Everything talked over mqtt. Great little architecture and having it highly automated allowed me to focus on the parts that were less easily controlled for.
Dashboard: https://imgur.com/a/so7iZJX
Sanitizer run: https://imgur.com/a/iWDlNfb
Quite a lot of fun actually.
It's been way too long since I've taken a political science course, but does this mean that the ban is struck down for the entire country, or just the area that the 5th Court of Appeals covers?
The ruling only has binding precedent in the 5th Circuit, other circuits aren't bound to follow it. Formerly this kind of ruling would come with a nationwide injunction to force the issue but now that those are severely curtailed by the Supreme Court it's only binding to the courts under the jurisdiction of the 5th circuit.
Decisions in other circuits can be very persuasive to other circuits but they're not required to agree the same way a Supreme Court ruling is binding. Circuit splits are moderately common and usually trigger a review by the supreme court if an appeal wasn't filed for the earlier decisions.
Nationwide injunctions are a very recent legal innovation -- as in, extremely rare until the 2000s, and uncommon until the 2010s.
They were not how this situation was handled for nearly all of the existence of the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction
Only the 5th court of appeals. However if you get caught elsewhere your lawyer will have a good appeal grounds just because your area will need to decide if they agree. If all areas eventually agree it probably never will get to the supreme court. Once several different courts hear this and make a decision if they disagree the supreme court jumps in reading all the logic of everyone below them to try to find a real answer. (It doesn't always work this way, that is the textbook ideal way, but the real world is often different).
Note that unless you think nothing of spending 20 million dollars on lawyers this is probably not something that you want to fight.
Appeals court decisions generally only apply to their own jurisdiction. But they obviously hold a lot of weight when cited in others.
Prior to this year, the entire country. Today, thanks to SCOTUS shenanigans, it likely only applies to the states involved in the lawsuit, LA. But who knows, hard to keep up with the game of calvinball the SCOTUS is playing.
You seem to be confusing precedent-setting decisions with nationwide injunctions.
Probably though the old pattern was that the plaintiffs would request and the Circuit would issue a nationwide injunction with the ruling when finding that a law in full unconstitutional.
Now we have the weird situation where the constitution is more patchwork because you have to get rulings in all the Circuits or wait for one case to make it all the way to the Supreme Court.
No, that was never the old pattern. Nationwide injunctions were unheard of until very recently -- as in, within the past 10-20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationwide_injunction
Your own source says they've been common since 1960
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298
Wasn’t great. Would love a second attempt focused on distilling not individualist v collectivist or immigration.
(Except for relevant connections around sharing your creations with neighbors and/or internationally inspired novel spirits.)
I am not really a fan of liquor, but I do like the idea of having skills which are universally valuable.
If you air dropped me into a random village in Africa I doubt I could 'code for cassava' but I could almost certainly make a living if I knew how to set up a basic pot still and safely create booze.
You could sanitize and disinfect with that alcohol! You could also make extracts of any plants nearby that were useful. Whiskey and vanilla beans are sufficient to make vanilla extract!
Sub saharan africa already has a very large informal distilling network (especially of bananas), a niche largely reserved for women in many regions (not sure for what the reason is for that exactly).
I had no idea this was even a law!!! Where do I turn myself in?
Might as well plug this recent Criminal Podcast episode: https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-358-the-formula-3-27-2026
TLDL: During prohibition, US government required adding 5% methanol to industrial alcohol, hoping that this would stop bootleggers from selling it as liquor. It was sold anyway, resulting in many deaths.
To be fair, we still add 5-10% methanol to industrial alcohol. But also a bunch of bitterants to discourage use.
Are adding it or just distill both because it's cheaper?
Adding. That majority of things we ferment and distill will not produce anywhere close to 5-10% methanol.
To make it poisonous enough that the tax men leave you alone.
So cheaper in a circuitous way.
The post '86 machine gun ban relies on basically the exact principle overturned here.
Yes, it'd be interesting if this gets appealed and the SC gets to take a look at if $0 tax stamps are allowable under the tax and spending clause.
Tally ho!
It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly. That being said, so long as it's for private or non-profit use, I don't really see the harm here.
>It'll be interesting to see how many people get methanol poisoning from trying their hand at it without doing the research properly.
If you're into home brewing or distilling, the first and only comment people completely unfamiliar with the process say is something about going blind because of methanol. It's disappointing because the process is so rich with history and really interesting problems to solve but the zeitgeist is completely poisoned by prohibition-era propaganda.
Unless they try to make booze from woodchips, they'll be fine. Using fruit or grains or potatoes makes it really hard to end up with enough methanol to be dangerous.
Probably none. Unless someone is intentionally adding methanol to it.
I dunno, I tried making some myself when I was quite young and I can still see. Don't know what I did wrong / right...
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736298
how...uh...explosive...are home stills?
Not explosive, but still a potential fire hazard, especially if a still gets way too hot (coolant system fails) and alcohol vapors escape. The risk becomes extremely minimal when using an electric still.
I would say: not explosive. I've seen a decent number of setups, and I can think of three areas where you could be concerned with safety (not necessarily where you should be):
1. Most use propane burners (the exact thing you'd use for homebrewing which is already legal and safe, and also similar to what some large turkey fryers use) which can be risky, but some are electric (120v or 240v).
2. Stills are an open system insofar as there is a way for pressure to escape - if you're goofing things up, you might vaporize and not recondense your ethanol (eg, because you have the heat way too high and/or aren't doing a good job of cooling down the vapors), and it's possible for that vapor to start on fire. I've seen it happen, and it's certainly a spectacle but wasn't particularly dangerous.
3. The distillate itself (ie, ethanol) is usually pretty potent, especially the foreshots and heads. Let's say 70%+. Especially as it's coming out, it's still prone to evaporation, and you could have a combustible/explosive risk here, but I've never seen this to be an actual problem.
they're really not. they're generally not a pressure vessel, and even when I've had leaks of ethanol, the fire went out immediately after being removed from heat.
today's home stills are usually plug-in resistance heated chambers with a still head, and are very high quality. my flame-out was from a pot still that was sealed with flour and water, not a modern still.
less than a meth lab
Big beer head Kavanaugh and Kegseth are probably jumping for joy.
A win against the over-application of the interstate commerce clause that benefits everybody! Quick, how can we make this partisan?