THE FEDS VERSUS ED

LIBERALS GENERALLY have a sneering interpretation of states' rights. Two
months ago, Sen. Trent Lott was twisting in the wind, with a decades-old
campaign for the principle of states' rights as a noose around his neck.
Today, Californians are enraged by the criminal conviction of Oakland's
medical marijuana deputy Ed Rosenthal. California had its sovereign butt
kicked in Rosenthal's rumble with the feds, where our Proposition 215 was
the legal equivalent of a knife at a gunfight. States' rights, anyone?
Sadly, the phrase seems to remain forbidden.

Long before the concept of states' rights became synonymous with Jim Crow
laws and the lingering racist agenda of elderly Southern politicians, our
country's founders hallowed the idea precisely because no citizen of this
republic should end up in Ed Rosenthal's situation.

Over time, we've dismissed the fierce American notion that government power
should originate close to home. All over the land, but especially in
California, we no longer keep the feds at arm's length. So here they are,
shoving Ed Rosenthal toward the prison gates while the California voters
who sanctioned Rosenthal's occupation are impotent. There's not a thing you
or I or Bill Lockyer, the state attorney general who has more than once
gone out on a limb to defend Prop. 215, can do.

If this angers you, wake up and smell the hemp flowers. We are in the habit
now of regularly inviting the federal government to bring its lawyers, guns
and money right through the front door of our state for a variety of
special purposes. Only problem is, when the party's over they won't leave.
Like a drunken frat boy, the federal government doesn't listen when we
change our minds and insist that no means no. We opened the door, after all.

Real repudiation of oppressive drug policy would require consistency in our
relationship with the feds. We can't "just say no" to the drug war when we
just say yes, yes, yes to federal drug enforcement money to augment our
police departments and to bundles of federal cash for other state programs.

California received $50 billion in federal assistance for the fiscal year
ending June 2001, according to the Bureau of State Audits. You want the
federal sugar daddy? You're gonna live under Daddy's roof and by Daddy's rules.

Which is probably one reason Ed Rosenthal got little support from the
state. Rosenthal attorney Bill Simpich says he asked a number of state and
local politicians to file a motion to intervene on Rosenthal's behalf. Such
intervention is rare, and likely would have proven futile because federal
law trumps state law. Of course, that's not the point. The point is that we
elect our leaders to uphold our laws.

"Nobody wanted to get in front of the train," Simpich said last week.

Can you say "duh?" What sane and sober politician wants to play tough with
the feds one day and beg Daddy for money to fill budget holes the next?

A lifestyle of dependence on the federal government comes with a high
price. The price is Rosenthal's liberty and the liberty of honest citizens
who end up in court fighting all kinds of ludicrous federal charges because
their fellow citizens -- we the people -- have permitted a watery boundary
between ourselves and the federal government. Where there was once a sacred
concern for supremacy of local priorities, there is now selective use of
federal funds and federal force to achieve an illusive and ill-defined
greater good.

This shouldn't have political overtones. But it does. You'd be hard pressed
to find a dozen people crying foul at Rosenthal's plight who wouldn't be
cheering instead if he were a farmer being torn apart by federal
environmental law. Most who reject federal interference with state drug
policy are happy to embrace federal intrusion into education, urban
planning, local commerce and virtually every other arena of California life.

The cost of this inconsistency is Rosenthal's freedom, because once they've
got you in the golden handcuffs, the feds don't distinguish between left
and right or contemplate the nuances of this region or that. The feds just win.