A lot has now appeared in the press concerning oral argument in Ashcroft v. Raich, including favorable editorials in both The New York Times and Boston Globe. Two particularly insightful analyses appeared today that I thought merited a link. The first, Feds v. Meds, from the Los Angeles City Beat explores the following theme:

The case is a mighty test of states' rights, which this court has previously favored. But the barrage of questions the justices fired at Raich's lawyer, Boston University professor Randy Barnett, revealed more than the possible end of their so-called "federalist revolution." They revealed the interior machinations of a kind of regulatory fever dream in which no government agency will confront the increasingly embarrassing mass of scientific evidence in favor of pot's accepted use as medicine.

In The Supremes Take a Hit, The Austin Chronicle examines the internal contradictions of both ends of the Court:

Indeed, the case will test the court's predictable range of opinion. The more conservative judges - like Rehnquist, who penned the Lopez and Morrison decisions, and Justice Antonin Scalia, who voted with the majority in the recent commerce cases - will be asked to extend their staunch federalist positions to activities they seem predisposed to dislike. Similarly, the court's more liberal justices, like Justice John Paul Stevens, would likely endorse the affirmation of broader federal regulatory authority than his conservative colleagues - but will he do so at the very private cost of the health and well-being of Raich and Monson? On Nov. 29, the contradictions of the court's competing values took center stage, creating a very odd hour of oral arguments.