Daily Blague

If you believe that there is any aspect of the Supreme Court's assertion of federal authority in the regulation of medical marijuana - a story reported on the front page of todays Times - I'll start again. If you think that there is anything about this story more important than the names of the six justices who supported the majority opinion, which asserted that the Federal Government has the power to overrule state legislation authorizing medical marijuana, then hie yourself to 43rd Street and get a job: you're just as in-the-know and out-of-touch as the folks who run the paper.

There are nine paragraphs about this decision on today's front page. Justices Scalia and Kennedy are named, as is Justice Stevens, but in order to find out who the other three were, you have to open the paper to page A21. No need to wade through all those paragraphs, though, because there's a handy sidebar with everybody's picture. The three dissenters were Justices O'Connor, Thomas, and Rehnquist. That's why Justices Scalia and Kennedy were identified on the front page: you were supposed to be clever enough to see that in this humanitarianism-vs-federalism fight, these two jurists were more appalled by the tolerance of weed than they were worried about their pet peeve, the encroachment of states' rights. You felt really stupid when you opened the paper to page A21 and figured that out, didn't you.

Shame on the justices for whom I usually root: Ginsburg, Stevens, and Breyer. Shame on Linda Greenhouse, too. The Times is supposed to be a fount of information, not East Lynne.