Constitution USA with Peter Sagal

I took the opportunity last week in school to not practice my machine for an hour and watch a recording of the first episode in PBS’s new show, Constitution USA with Peter Sagal. 

Students and even the teacher who had the video fell asleep within the first five minutes.  I don’t know what it says about me that I wasn’t even tired, because this show was fascinating.  In the first five minutes, it examines what is very much a modern issue: the legalization of marijuana.

To this show’s credit, they’re careful not to take a side on this issue.  Rather, they show the conflict that is going on in the power struggle between the state and federal government.  They first go to an apothecary in California where we meet a man who sells medical marijuana in the state.  Now, in the State of California, medical marijuana is legal and he is very careful to adhere to California’s standards, rules, and regulations.  Completely on the level… as far as the state is concerned.

The federal government is another story.  Marijuana is still illegal by the laws of the United States, and at any time, the FBI could come into this apothecary and arrest the man for possession and selling illegal drugs.  Not only that, but he would get the death penalty, because according to the federal government, owning and distributing 60,000 lbs. of marijuana merits death row, and he has easily sold at least a million pounds of weed from his shop.

This situation fascinates me; the State can make a law to legalize a substance, but it is subservient to the federal government, which continues to deem the substance illegal.  And that doesn’t look to change anytime soon.  What a strange situation that our government has created.

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As fun as that was, that was just the teaser.  There were at least four other subjects getting covered, including gun control and toilets, and how the Constitution plays into those.  Yes, you read that right.  The toilet dispute is awesome.

But the revelation for me was the trial case, Wickard v. Filburn.  Never heard of it?  I hadn’t either, but apparently, it gets mentioned in the federal government a lot.  I mean, a lot.  There’s even proof.  They showed several clips of politicians bringing up the case of Wickard v. Filburn, and from all I could see, they were just scratching the surface.

The situation is this: during the Great Depression, the country was not able to make sales from exporting wheat as they had in the past.  Therefore, they were stuck with a surplus that was benefitting no one and was only contributing to the troubles in the economy.  Now, the federal government has a constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce (Article 1, Section 8), and so they exercised that power and made it so farmers were only allowed to grow so much wheat and no more.

This farmer in Ohio, name of Filburn, grew a few acres more of grain than the federal government permitted.  They told him a couple times to comply with the law but Filburn ignored them.  His reasoning was that he was not going to sell those few acres of wheat but he was going to keep the wheat on his own farm, as feed for the animals, as I recall it.  Somebody correct me if I’m wrong on that.

The federal government threw a fit and it got brought all the way to the Supreme Court.  The Supreme found against Filburn.  Their reasoning was that if he was growing rather than buying his chicken feed, he wasn’t putting money into the economy to help them get out of the Depression.  Individually, it wouldn’t be so bad, but what concerned the Court was that if they didn’t make an example of Filburn, more farmers might take a page from his book and grow their own feed instead of buying it, and if enough farmers were not buying their own chicken feed, it would have a deleterious effect on the market, specifically the interstate commerce.  The federal government does have a right to regulate the interstate commerce, so the Court stuck it to Filburn.

We’re still feeling the effects of Wickard v. Filburn.  This case is what gave the federal government the largest influence it ever had over the economy and that influence continues today.

For being such an important legal landmark in our nation’s history, I’m pissed that I never heard about it until last week.  I could do another rant on how terrible my American education has been, but I’ll refrain, because at least I finally found out about it—from television.  (Those who say TV rots your brain needs a reality check.)

What I am going to say is that this was an awesome episode, PBS is running this series every Tuesday night for the next I-don’t-know-how-many-weeks, and you should watch it because it is awesome and you will be a better person for it.