NEW CONFEDERACY

Editor -- I cannot believe my eyes, when I read that Santa Cruz city
officials actually flouted the federal government and the U.S. Constitution
by their deliberate and defiant violations of the Uniform Controlled
Substances Act ("Santa Cruz joint effort hands out medical pot," Sept. 18).

Californians need to accept that they are only one state, that the U.S.
Constitution is precedent over any and all rules and laws that groups of
people, or states, enact upon others. In this nation, we must have
faithfulness to Congress and the federal government. We must abide by laws
and rules set by Congress, and if we don't agree with them the proper
avenue is to use the process to change them. Defiance, for whatever
reasons, is not acceptable.

It was this very same defiance, and lack of piety toward the unity of this
national family, that caused the Civil War and the creation of Confederate
states.

Though Californians aren't violating human rights as with the Civil War,
the attempt to enforce Proposition 215 is no less mutinous to Congress than
was the desire to maintain slaves.

I sincerely hope that our federal judiciary has the courage to arrest and
prosecute these break-away, elected, "criminal" subversives of the Santa
Cruz government. They have crossed the boundaries and broken their oath of
office. Perhaps they would also like to have California renamed the
"California Confederation"?

DANIEL J. LORAN, San Francisco