Didn't he also undergo a medical procedure? :evil:

Thomas isn't my favorite justice, but I loved this bit from his dissenting opinion:

"If the majority is to be taken seriously, the Federal Government may now regulate quilting bees, clothes drives, and potluck suppers throughout the 50 states."

You know what really sucks? I can't even get all over Scaeagles for worrying about the loss of States rights when the conserves have trampled all over individual rights, because he has been fairly consistent in his criticism of these things as well.

Lol, Scrooge!

That was freakin' hillarious. Laughed quite hard. Would send mojo, but can't due to mojo rules.

Actually, the LOWER ESOPHAGEAL SPHINCTER (capitalized for emphasis and clarification) was completely eliminated, not stretched. Things are great. Haven't felt this good in about 1.5 years. Can eat and drink with no problems whatsoever, but do have some other annoying - though completely managable - symptoms of my disease achalasia that I have to deal with.

Thanks for asking.

I'm so glad.

You know I did wonder if the procedure might lead to some reflux problems down the road. Is that what's bothering you?

Actually, no reflux issues at all. It is standard practice when performing the surgery I required to also perform an anti-reflux procedure called a "toupet fundoplication", which involves some sort of manipulation of the junction of the esophagus and the stomach to prevent that. I guess around 80% of people needed it later, so they just automatically include it rather than having to do another surgery later on.

There are two problems I experience - I must take a drink of water after every bite or two of food to wash the food down, as the nerves are dead in the esophagus and it doesn't move food down. Took a while to adjust to that as habit, but the pain involved if I didn't made it something quick to catch on to. The other is a that I get some pretty severe spasms in my esophagus. Some are debilitating, others just an annoyance, but I'm used to them enough by now that they are only a problem if they happen at night and keep me awake.

As much as I might want to jump on the sphincter joke bandwagon, I'll just keep my comments on topic. I pretty much agree with everything scaeagles has said as well. Not the first time, and I'm sure not the last.

My personal theory is that during his surgery, they pumped a little liberal blood in him. :)

Thank you for respecting the dignity of all of my sphincters.

I would rather you make a sphincter joke.

Even though this court has done more than any other in the last 60 years to curtail the Congress's gross misuse of the interstate commerce clause, it hasn't actually done much to rationalize it.

So I'm not surprised that when the liberal tool (using the insterstate clause to limit states rights, notice that all the liberal justices are in on the majority opinion) aligns with a conservative social issue (zero tolerance for certain drugs) that a couple of the federalist justices could be swayed.

I'm surprised that it was Scalia and not O'Connor that flipped, but the ruling itself isn't a surprise.


And if you really want to cast blame for this decision, it all goes back to FDR and his big government policies. During the Depression the Department of Agriculture set limits on various crop sizes. One farmer grew more corn than the limit. The entire excess crop was for his own personal consumption and was never put on the market, local or interstate.

The Supreme Court upheld the fine against him on the grounds that the Congress had the authority to regulate interstate commerce and that this qualified not because it was directly interstate commerce but because it could have secondary effects on interstate commerce (since he grew his own corn, he would not buy corn at the supermarket, therefore affecting the interstate marketplace).

For the next 40 years the Congress had pretty much free reign to regulate whatever it wanted, because a secondary commerce affect could always be found.

This changed a bit in 1996 when the Court finally found an issue on which it was not willing to allow the interstate commerce claim. A 1990 federal gun law tried to make it a federal crime to possess firearms within 1,000 feet of a public school and used interstate commerce justifications to claim jurisdiction.

It is because of this case that court watchers thought this court would side with the states on medical marijuana, but I view it as more of an anomoly than a precedent.