I’m fine with this. Heck, ‘let the states decide’ is my go-to answer for these issues. We shouldn’t always test stuff in the states before we pass laws on the federal level, but it should be our default strategy.
In an one-on-one interview Saturday with The Denver Post, [Texas senator Ted Cruz] said he opposes legalization but declared that the U.S. Constitution allows “states to experiment.”
“I think on the question of marijuana legalization, we should leave it to the states,” Cruz said before addressing 6,000 GOP activists at the state GOP convention in Colorado Springs.”If it were me personally, voting on it in the state of Texas, I would vote against it.
“The people of Colorado have made a different decision. I respect that decision,” he continued. “And actually, it is an opportunity for the rest of the country to see what happens here in Colorado, what happens in Washington state, see the states implement the policies, and if it works well, other states may choose to follow. If it doesn’t work well other states may choose not to follow.”
By the way, I understand that there is a big argument out there about how safe marijuana is, really. So I’m not going to tell anybody that they’re wrong for opposing CO/WA’s laws. I’m just a guy who defaults to federalism on a lot of stuff.
Moe Lane
[UPDATE]: Must have highlighted/deleted some text. Anyway, H/T: @sahilkapur.
My attitude is that I want the states to want their federalism.
So as President you’d be amazed how many rules I’d slap on their sweet, sweet Federal baksheesh.
Hey, VA, want your highway money? Repeal your radar-detector ban. CA, 34% of the nation’s welfare caseload? You better raise your OWN taxes then. Carpool lanes? Not on Federally-funded roads. Sanctuary cities? Glad you and the county and the state you’re in don’t want a cent of Federal ANYTHING. You’ve got a CO2 tax? Good for you, we’ll just debit your transportation funds by an offsetting amount, plus ten percent because we hate you. School lunch program now feeding entire families two meals a day? Not out of the Federal pocket. Oh, and chromosomes equal gender but one-drop does not equal race so your university admissions and hiring practices and bathroom signs need a little work.
And you’d be amazed how much use my DOJ would make of the fourth amendment on things like civil asset forfeiture and eminent domain and failure to properly manage parolees and repeat offenders.
A year and a half of open warfare with the states, then a new tax code that kills as much of this state transfer funding as I can get away with, lower Federal tax rates, if the states want this crap they can tax themselves.
I can dream…
I would miss carpool lanes: they’re useful when you have two kids and you’re going on a weekday vacation trip.
Here in Atlanta, carpool lanes are the old and busted, and toll lanes are the new hotness. They already took the carpool lanes in Gwinnett County and turned them into toll lanes, and they’re building a whole separate set of toll lanes in Cobb County. The carpool lanes inside the Perimeter have survived for now.
The problem with them is that every city I’ve been in when they were implemented, they made traffic worse for everyone else, in the name of social engineering.
MD carpool lanes are active on the weekends? Everyplace I’ve lived that had HOV lanes, they were only active during rush hour periods and were open to all otherwise…
We tend to take Fridays off for our mini-vacations.
I wonder if Ted Cruz could be convinced as President to move marijuana out of Schedule I and into Schedule II or III. As is, having marijuana in Schedule I is contradictory to the government actually providing medical marijuana via the Compassionate Investigational New Drug program that’s been going on since the 1970s.
If my state voted on marijuana legalization, I would vote against it, I think. But I have no problem with Colorado and Washington legalizing it…
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Except for the federal government’s existing stance. And I would hope that a President Cruz would enforce that law, no matter how much he may disagree with its obliteration of federalism, for two reasons. First, the job of a president is to faithfully enforce the laws — not just the ones he likes. Second, and more importantly, the best way to ensure that a bad law is repealed is generally to enforce it without exception. Let the discontent build.