“That’s the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break.”
“But you would have to be an idiot to believe that,” Scalia said. “The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn’t say other things.”
So remind me again, Justice Scalia, how putting people in jail for the noncommercial cultivation and use of marijuana in California by California residents for medical purposes as allowed by California law comes within Congress’s power to “regulate commerce … among the several states.” Unless you were an advocate of the “argument of flexibility” and the idea that the Constitution “has to change with society like a living organism,” you would have to be an idiot to believe that the Necessary and Proper Clause somehow allows Congress to also regulate noncommercial intrastate activity with no substantial effect on interstate commerce, no?