I Would Certainly Hope So...
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I'm not sure why this would be a controversial statement:
Stated differently, has the phrase "don't make a federal case out of it" ceased to have the clear colloquial meaning it once did? Note that Scalia did not say, "You can murder anybody in the country and still not violate the law, if you do it right." Or, "You can murder anybody in the country and get away with it, if you do it right." He just highlighted the basic legal truth that not every crime is (or ought be) a federal crime.
Just as there would be, in a properly crafted society, federal public goods that are paid for with federal tax dollars, state public goods paid for with state tax dollars, and local public goods paid for with local tax dollars — with clear and inviolable demarcations among them — so too would an ideal criminal code limit federal crimes to truly federal (i.e., multistate) offenses and leave state/local criminal justice to state/local governments.
The fact that we even need to discuss or reiterate such elementary principles as "not everything is a federal matter" is rather sad.
(Via PolySigh.)
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Also be sure to contrast this (innocuous) Scalia proposition with Ron Paul's (hardly innocuous) brand of anti-libertarian "federalism," which holds not only that "certain things should not be a federal crime" (correct), but also that "anything can be a state or local crime" (i.e., if the local majoritarian mob decrees it as such). Anything — from having gay sex to drinking raw milk — can be properly criminalized in the Paulbearers' utopia — just not by Congress.
The fact that we even need to discuss or reiterate such elementary principles as "Ron Paul is not a libertarian" is even sadder.
"You can murder anybody in the country and still not violate federal law, if you do it right."Thus (allegedly) spake Justice Scalia recently.
Stated differently, has the phrase "don't make a federal case out of it" ceased to have the clear colloquial meaning it once did? Note that Scalia did not say, "You can murder anybody in the country and still not violate the law, if you do it right." Or, "You can murder anybody in the country and get away with it, if you do it right." He just highlighted the basic legal truth that not every crime is (or ought be) a federal crime.
Just as there would be, in a properly crafted society, federal public goods that are paid for with federal tax dollars, state public goods paid for with state tax dollars, and local public goods paid for with local tax dollars — with clear and inviolable demarcations among them — so too would an ideal criminal code limit federal crimes to truly federal (i.e., multistate) offenses and leave state/local criminal justice to state/local governments.
The fact that we even need to discuss or reiterate such elementary principles as "not everything is a federal matter" is rather sad.
(Via PolySigh.)
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Also be sure to contrast this (innocuous) Scalia proposition with Ron Paul's (hardly innocuous) brand of anti-libertarian "federalism," which holds not only that "certain things should not be a federal crime" (correct), but also that "anything can be a state or local crime" (i.e., if the local majoritarian mob decrees it as such). Anything — from having gay sex to drinking raw milk — can be properly criminalized in the Paulbearers' utopia — just not by Congress.
The fact that we even need to discuss or reiterate such elementary principles as "Ron Paul is not a libertarian" is even sadder.
Posted by Kip on
11 April 2008
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