I was going to write a post praising Clarence Thomas for his reasonable decision in
Gonzalez v. Raich
today, but Radley Balko already did it, with all of the good quotes, here. I’ll just quote part of the opening paragraph of Thomas’ dissent:

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

Thomas insists on interpreting the Constitution as limiting federal power. Others seem to see it as allowing federal power limited only by whether or not they happen to like the particular policy.

I hope Bush has the opportunity to appoint several more Justices like Clarence Thomas. Unfortunately, I’m sure that someone like that would trigger the “extraordinary circumstances” loophole to the filibuster compromise.

I can’t say that I’m surprised by the decision. I expected the left-liberals on the Court to side with virtually unlimited federal power. I was curious which way Scalia and Kennedy would go, and the anti-drug-user weasels showed their colors. So, I guess the case is valuable to show us where they stand.

I’d also like to mention that I think Randy Barnett did a great job of arguing the case, and his work really seemed to connect with Thomas’ thinking as Thomas quoted him three times in the dissenting opinion.