January 17, 2006
Right to Die
The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law today in an 6-3 ruling. The actuall issue at hand is the conflict between the State law, which allows physician-assisted suicide and the Bush administration's DEA which was using Federal drug laws to block physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. For those of you keeping score at home the three dissenters in the case were Thomas, Scalia and the shiny new Roberts. This case is different in that it turns everybody on their head. Conservatives make a big noise over State's Rights and favoring the States over the Federal Government. But in this case we had the conservative Bush administration pulling some rather questionable moves in order to stomp all over a State law and the most conservative Justices backing their play. Which goes to show you that State's rights only seem to apply to conservative States
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Actually, I think it's a bit more accurate to say that those who support State's Rights support only those rights which match their own conservative views. California is by no means a conservative state, but I'd bet a shiny quarter that Bush would want to hold up Prop. 22 despite the full faith and credit clause in the constitution. Technically, California shouldn't be able to say that gay marriages made in Massachussets are void here, and yet the state does. The state law should be overridden by the federal constitution, but because it's one of those things that the conservatives want, I don't hear them bitching about states rights. I wonder what would happen if someon argued that point in front of the Supreme Court. Not that all states should have laws that allow gay marriages, but rather that all states have to acknowledge marriages made in other states? That would make some interesting reading. Hearing those conservative judges trip on their own words as they say state's rights don't apply here would be interesting.
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