{"id":1440,"date":"2009-10-19T17:35:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-19T21:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2009-10-19T19:11:46","modified_gmt":"2009-10-19T23:11:46","slug":"meet-barack-obamas-attorney-general-john-calhoun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/1440\/meet-barack-obamas-attorney-general-john-calhoun\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Barack Obama&#8217;s Attorney General &#8212; John Calhoun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Regardless of how you feel about its policy aspects, the legal components of the Obama Administration&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/10\/18\/AR2009101802756_2.html?hpid=topnews\">decision to essentially halt prosecution for users of medical marijuana <\/a>in states where it is legal\u00a0is curious.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that\u00a0the Controlled Substances Act has prohibited marijuana as a matter of federal law since the 1970s.\u00a0 And in 2005, the Supreme Court&#8217;s\u00a0decision in <em>Gonzales v. Raich <\/em>clarified that this federal power supercedes the states&#8217; ability to legalize pot for medicinal purposes.\u00a0 Yet despite the fact that there has been no change in federal law, the Justice Department is now essentially allowing the states to nullify the statute by telegraphing that DOJ won&#8217;t bring prosecutions.<\/p>\n<p>In fairness, you can make a good case that the medical marijuana laws really are an instance of federal excess (Clarence Thomas does it very well in his <em>Gonzales<\/em> dissent).\u00a0 But that&#8217;s an argument about what should be, not what is.\u00a0 And in a nation of laws, that&#8217;s not enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Regardless of how you feel about its policy aspects, the legal components of the Obama Administration&#8217;s decision to essentially halt prosecution for users of medical marijuana in states where it is legal\u00a0is curious. The problem is that\u00a0the Controlled Substances Act has prohibited marijuana as a matter of federal law since the 1970s.\u00a0 And in 2005, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[316,315,24],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-justice-department","tag-medical-marijuana","tag-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1444,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions\/1444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}