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Comment by matthewbauer | Hacker News Reader

It will be interesting whether they will respect "states rights" in this case.

States rights is a ruse. The heart decides, and the head justifies. People use states rights when it is convenient, and toss it aside when it contradicts their other beliefs.

Rights are a ruse. The heart decides, and the head justifies. People use rights when it is convenient, and toss them aside when it contradicts their other beliefs.

Especially because some of the "states' rights" issues involve state legislatures overruling more local jurisdiction--case in point, transgender bathroom law.

This is an unpopular position of I support, but this is exactly why I support repealing the 17th amendment and returning to indirect elections of Senators via state legislatures to bring power back to the states.

"States rights" is widely viewed as a racist dog-whistle [1]. States rights doesn't have to be racist, although it is very often linked that way [2].

The war on drugs was instituted as a racist policy [3]. It's quite likely that the main motivation here is using drug laws to punish people of color.

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_less...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/03/getting...

[3] http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...

States can't choose which Federal laws are obeyed inside their borders or not.

If the federal govt. has to enforce federal law in a state, that needs to happen, and the state needs to cooperate to the extent laid out by statute & legal precedent. No more, no less.

The right answer is to have legislation that squares the federal & state policies at the top. "States Rights" never extended to nullification of Federal law, there was a substantial dispute over this in the 1860s.

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