1NC
OFF
Aff must say what “us’ and “legalize nearly all” mean
**Legalization requires specifying how drugs are made legally available
Mark Haden 2, Adjunct Professor of the UBC School of Population and Public Health, “Illicit IV Drugs: A Public Health
Approach,” CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH VOLUME 93, NO. 6,
http://journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/article/download/390/390
The existing laws could be changed to remove legal sanctions. With
“decriminalization”, criminal prosecution is not an
option for dealing with drugs. This term is often confused with the term “legalization” which specifies
how drugs can be legally available . The term “decriminalization” is limited in its utility , as it only
states what will not be done and does not explain what legal options are available . Proponents of
“decriminalization” usually distinguish between personal use, and trafficking and smuggling. Those who profit from the black market would still be
subject to criminal charges but personal use would not be subject to legal sanctions. Decriminalization, or benign neglect, means ignoring the problem
and results in unregulated access to drugs of unknown purity and potency.
Vote neg:
Fairness—legalize can include hundreds of regulations which radically alter the
case neg we need- makes the aff a moving target and spikes out of our disads
Legal education—vote neg on presumption
Charles D. “Cully” Stimson 10 is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; as a local, state, federal, and military
prosecutor; and as a defense attorney and law professor. “Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No” Legal
Memorandum #56 on Legal Issues September 13, 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuanawhy-citizens-should-just-say-no ac 6-18
Theoretical arguments in favor of marijuana legalization usually overlook the practical matter of
how the drug would be regulated and sold . It is the details of implementation , of course, that will
determine the effect of legalization on families, schools, and communities. Most basically, how and where would
marijuana be sold?
Independently, The AFF has not specified a test case.That’s a voter --- knowing
what case they rule on is key to precedent and facts-specific ground.
OFF
Legalize means production, distribution, sale, and use must be legal for all or
most people
Caulkins et al 12 (Jonathan, H. Guyford Stever Professorship of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon,
Angela Hawken (Author), Beau Kilmer (Author), Mark Kleiman, 7-13-12, “Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know”
Print [Fill in Pg. Numbers])
What does it mean to legalize a drug?
Legalization is the opposite of prohibition . It avoids the costs of prohibition—loss of liberty, criminal enterprise, and
the need for enforcement—at the risk of increased drug abuse.
Legalization means treating a drug (not necessarily all drugs) more or less the way we treat other
commodities: production, distribution, retail sale, possession, and use would all be legal for all
or most people (e.g., for adults but not for minors).
Restricting Congress’s commerce clause authority does not legalize marijuana—
the CSA is independently supported by Treaty Power—proves the courts plank of
the plan is extra-topical
Dupont et al 04 [Robert L. DuPont et al 4, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School, President of the
Institute for Behavior and Health, Inc. and Vice-president of Bensinger, DuPont and Associates, was the first Director of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the second Director of the White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, 2004,
Brief of Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, John Ashcroft et al v. Angel McClary Raich et al, Supreme Court of the United States,
No. 03-1454, http://www.ibhinc.org/pdfs/ARAmicusBrief.pdf]
I. The Treaty Power Provides a Separate and Independent Source of Congressional Power in This
Case. While Congress must certainly regulate in accordance with its enumerated powers, the Commerce Clause does not
provide the sole source of congressional authority in this case. The United States may enter into
treaties governing matters of international concern and impact. Such treaties , in conjunction with the
federal Constitution and federal legislation, comprise the supreme law of the land. U.S. Const. Art. II, sec. 2. cl. 2
(power of the President to enter into treaties); U.S. Const. Art. VI, cl. 2. Congress has the power to enact all laws "necessary and
proper for carrying into Execution...all...Powers granted by this Constitution." U.S. Const. Art. I, sec.8, cl. 18. Accordingly, Congress
has the power to enact laws implementing the United States' obligations under treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. The
Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. sec. 801 et seq. (1970), ("CSA") is such a law, and its regulation of the class of activity in this
Federal laws, like the CSA, which implement U.S. treaty
obligations, are unquestionably a valid exercise of congressional power, even in the face of
conflicting state laws." In Missouri v. Ho/land, 252 U.S. 416 (1920), this Court upheld the power of Congress
to enact legislation, pursuant to a treaty, despite contrary state law. The Court stressed that such
legislation—in that case the Migratory Bird Treaty Act—stands on a separate basis of congressional power,
and rejected the argument that Congress must have independent constitutional authority separate
from a treaty as a basis for enacting legislation. Id. at 432-33. The CSA's comprehensive regulatory
structure, too, is supported by the Treaty Power, as well by Congress' authority under the
Commerce Clause.
case is necessary to fulfill those obligations.
Vote neg
1. Limits—there are infinite procedural ways to reduce federal authority to
regulate marijuana—explodes the neg research burden and makes prep
impossible
2. Ground—they garner unpredictable advantages based limiting Congressional
authority
OFF
Iran sanctions are top of the docket- PC key to stave off a veto-proof majority
Everett, 12-29 – Politico congressional reporter
[Burgess, "GOP to Move on Iran Sanctions Legislation," Politico, 12-29-14, www.politico.com/story/2014/12/gop-senate-iransanctions-bill-113852.html, accessed 12-29-14]
GOP to move on Iran sanctions legislation
Congressional Republicans are setting up early challenges to President Barack Obama in January, preparing to move forward
quickly on new Iran sanctions legislation following on the heels of a vote on a bill approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. The
Republican-controlled Senate is expected to vote on legislation that would impose additional economic penalties on Iran in the first
few weeks of next year, according to Republican senators and aides. The starting point would be a bill written a year ago by Sens.
Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) that managed to accrue the support of 60 senators in both parties despite
opposition from the White House. Kirk and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said over the weekend that an Iran vote could occur in
January after a vote on Keystone, which is the first bill the Republican Senate will take up and is also opposed by President Barack
Obama. Republican leaders have not yet finalized their legislative schedule, but the bipartisan Iran proposal is supported by
incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and all of his leadership team. And taking a confrontational stance toward
Iran as diplomatic negotiations continue with a group of Western nations appears to be top of mind for the new Senate Republican
majority. “It’s an important issue, a priority, and has wide bipartisan support in the Senate,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart
on Monday. The Republican House overwhelmingly passed a sanctions bill targeting Iran’s energy industry in 2013, though that
legislation was never taken up by the Senate. The Kirk-Menendez legislation would tighten economic sanctions on Iran if the country
walks away from ongoing negotiations over nuclear enrichment or reneges on an interim agreement that has frozen some of Iran’s
nuclear activities in return for unwinding some sanctions. In November, Western and Iranians negotiators extended that interim deal
until July as they attempt to hammer out a permanent deal that would curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions and relax sanctions that have
crippled Iran’s economy and isolated the country globally. A separate bill written by Graham and incoming Senate Foreign Relations
Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) would require Congress to approve of any final deal and could figure into the GOP’s plans next
year. “You will see a very vigorous Congress when it comes to Iran. You will see a Congress making sure that sanctions are real
and will be reimposed at the drop of a hat. You will see a Congress wanting to have any say about a final deal,” Graham said at a
weekend press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A dozen returning Senate Democrats officially signed
on in support of the Kirk-Menendez legislation in 2014, though President Barack Obama’s administration convinced other onthe-fence members to hold off public support after warning that voting on that legislation could upset ongoing negotiations.
While the Kirk-Menendez legislation could very well accrue 60 votes to clear the Senate in the new Congress, Democratic aides
on Monday declined to estimate the level of enthusiasm for fresh sanctions in the new year. Indeed, the largest challenge for both
supporters of Iran sanctions and the Keystone pipeline is building veto-proof levels of support in Congress that would require
dozens of Democrats in the House and Senate to oppose the White House. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said in
November that new penalties during negotiations would be “counterproductive.” Garnering 67 votes in the Senate for the
Kirk-Menendez bill could be a steep task, given the defeat of several moderate Democratic supporters,
opposition from Obama and lack of unanimous support in the GOP. But Kirk said on Sunday in an interview with
Fox news that he expects “really bipartisan votes” and predicted having a “shot of even getting to a veto-proof majority in the
Senate.”
Plan wrecks PC with the dems – legalization divides them
David Downs 11-11-14, Journalist “No California Legalization? Blame the DINOs”, EAST BAY EXPRESS,
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/LegalizationNation/archives/2014/11/11/no-california-legalization-blame-the-dinos
Despite Democratic control of all three branches of government in California, the Golden State still could not pass
basic regulations for its billion-dollar medical cannabis industry this year. This is part of a trend . The
Washington Post reports Monday on the singular role purportedly progressive Democrats have played in blocking cannabis law
reform in California. For one, the drug war started as a 1930s New Deal-era experiment in legislating morality. But more recently,
US Attorney General Eric Holder played a starring role in keeping pot illegal in California when in 2010 he flew into Los Angeles and
threatened the state if it voted to tax and regulate pot for adults 21 and over. Holder said the Obama administration
“strongly opposes” [Prop 19] and “will vigorously enforce the (Controlled Substances Act) against those individuals and
organizations that possess, manufacture or distribute marijuana for recreational use, even if such activities are permitted under state
law.” Support for Oakland-led Prop 19 plummeted from 54 percent in favor to 46 percent in three weeks. Prop. 19’s key swing vote
was politically interested Democrats who followed their leaders away from the measure. “Political elites exert extensive influence
over Americans’ policy opinions in general and their referendum votes in particular," the Post notes. By contrast, Holder stayed out
of the election in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, DC, all of which saw legalization pass. “These results
suggest that Democratic politicians’ strong opposition to Proposition 19 helped derail marijuana
legalization in California,” the Post states. The analysis is germane to the present. Leading California
Democrats like Senator Dianne Feinstein have positions to the right of Republicans on
marijuana. Senator Barbara Boxer opposed Prop 19 as well. Governor Jerry Brown campaigned against Prop 19 and
this year made the asinine remark that controlling legal cannabis would make us less competitive with China. Lieutenant Governor
Gavin Newsom, supports legalization, and so does Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee, but they are outliers. Look at current
state Attorney General Kamala Harris, who campaigned against Prop 19, laughed at reforms this year, and then idiotically
suggested legalization would cause "open-air use that can lead to contact highs among bystanders who had no intention of
inhaling." It’s California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, not Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi who
carried water for legalization in DC.
Pelosi also campaigned against Prop 19. As activists gear up for 2016, getting
DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) will stomp the
Democrats on board better be a major priority. Otherwise,
California movement, yet again.
Interim deal solves prolif- sanctions wreck it
Alkhatib, 12-8 -- WAND staff
[Rawan, Women’s Action for New Directions, "New Sanctions on Iran Would Undermine Diplomacy," 12-8-14,
www.wand.org/2014/12/08/new-sanctions-on-iran-would-undermine-diplomacy/, accessed 1-1-15]
New Sanctions on Iran Would Undermine Diplomacy
On November 24, the deadline for the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 – the permanent members of the UN
Security Council plus Germany -- was extended for another seven months. Reacting to the extension, a number of members of
Congress are demanding harsher sanctions on Iran to, in their view, increase pressure on the Iranians to make greater concessions.
Imposing new sanctions on Iran would violate the terms of the Joint Plan of Action -- the interim agreement from November 2013 -and undermine the United States’ role at the negotiating table. The Iranians must believe the United States is negotiating in good
faith. Otherwise, U.S. credibility will diminish and reaching a nuclear deal with Iran that lessens the threat of nuclear proliferation
will be near impossible. Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), and Kelly Ayotte (NH) are among those
voicing the most significant opposition to the continuation of the nuclear negotiations without additional demands on the Iranians.
They argue that the failure to impose more sanctions will diminish Iran’s incentive to maintain a nuclear program solely for energy
rather than weapons and, in turn, set off an unbridled nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It is hard to take their intentions at face
value. Indeed, in an interview with ABC News Radio, Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-AR) revealed what he believes would result from
this course of action: “Cotton said the way to accomplish [an end to the negotiations] would be to reimpose the economic sanctions
that were relaxed as part of an interim deal with Iran so that negotiations could continue.” (As part of the JPOA, the P5+1 provided
modest sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for Iran freezing and rolling back aspects of its nuclear program.) One thing seems clear:
McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are not considering the political impact that renewed sanctions could have on Iran’s citizens and how
this might subsequently play into the negotiations. We cannot risk losing the support of ordinary Iranians who will benefit from
economic improvements once a deal is done and who would be most adversely impacted by new sanctions. Conversely, renewing
sanctions on Iran will empower Iranian hard-liners that find ways around the economic pain while loudly calling for more
aggression against the United States and for unchecked nuclear proliferation. While it was disappointing that the sides could not
come to an agreement on the self-imposed November 24 deadline, the extension to the nuclear negotiations nonetheless
represents progress. The obligations established by the JPOA are still in effect and as experts note, nothing in the extension
weakens the hands of the P5+1 to secure a final agreement. That is, Iran continues to have curbs on its ability to produce materials
for nuclear weapons and its facilities continue to be scrutinized by international inspectors. In fact, the extension requires heightened
scrutiny. Iran must “expand IAEA access to centrifuge production facilities to double the current frequency and allow for no-notice or
"snap" inspections.” If Congress were to impose renewed sanctions on Iran, the progress made up to this point would likely unravel.
As Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) argued, "A collapse of the talks is counter to U.S. interests and would further
destabilize an already volatile region." In this way, Congress needs to present a united front to crystallize the United States’
negotiating position. Splintering causes the Iranians to doubt American intentions. In a highly volatile region, diplomacy with Iran is
the only good option. Moreover, engaging in meaningful dialogue with Iran is only possible when we demonstrate our own
commitment to the process by making good on our commitments under the JPOA and holding off on actions that would undermine
our position.
Iran proliferation causes nuclear war
Edelman, 11 -- et al., distinguished fellow – Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
(Eric S, Andrew Krepinevich, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments President, Evan Braden Montgomery, Research
Fellow, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, “The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran,” Foreign Affairs, January/February,
ebsco, accessed 11-14-13)
The reports of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States and the Commission on the Prevention Of Weapons of
Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, as well as other analyses, have highlighted the risk that a nuclear-armed Iran could trigger
additional nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, even if Israel does not declare its own nuclear arsenal. Notably, Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia,Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates— all signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (npt)—have recently
announced or initiated nuclear energy programs. Although some of these states have legitimate economic rationales for pursuing nuclear power
and although the low-enriched fuel used for power reactors cannot be used in nuclear weapons, these moves have been widely interpreted as
hedges against a nuclear-armed Iran. The npt does not bar states from developing the sensitive technology required to produce nuclear fuel on
their own, that is, the capability to enrich natural uranium and separate plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. Yet enrichment and reprocessing can also be
used to accumulate weapons-grade enriched uranium and plutonium—the very loophole that Iran has apparently exploited in pursuing a nuclear
weapons capability. Developing nuclear weapons remains a slow, expensive, and di⁄cult process, even for states with considerable economic
resources, and especially if other nations try to constrain aspiring nuclear states’ access to critical materials and technology. Without external support,
it is unlikely that any of these aspirants could develop a nuclear weapons capability within a decade. ¶ There is, however, at least one state that
could receive significant outside support: Saudi Arabia. And if it did, proliferation could accelerate throughout the region. Iran and
Saudi Arabia have long been geopolitical and ideological rivals. Riyadh would face tremendous pressure to respond in some form to a
nuclear-armed Iran, not only to deter Iranian coercion and subversion but also to preserve its sense that Saudi Arabia is the leading
nation in the Muslim world. The Saudi government is already pursuing a nuclear power capability, which could be the first step along a slow
road to nuclear weapons development. And concerns persist that it might be able to accelerate its progress by exploiting its close ties to
Pakistan. During the 1980s, in response to the use of missiles during the Iran-Iraq War and their growing proliferation throughout the region, Saudi
Arabia acquired several dozen css-2 intermediate-range ballistic missiles from China. The Pakistani government reportedly brokered
the deal, and it may have also oªered to sell Saudi Arabia nuclear warheads for the css-2s, which are not accurate enough to deliver conventional
warheads eªectively. There are still rumors that Riyadh and Islamabad have had discussions involving nuclear weapons, nuclear
technology, or security guarantees. This “Islamabad option” could develop in one of several diªerent ways. Pakistan could sell operational nuclear
weapons and delivery systems to Saudi Arabia, or it could provide the Saudis with the infrastructure, material, and technical support they need to
produce nuclear weapons themselves within a matter of years, as opposed to a decade or longer. Not only has Pakistan provided such support in
the past, but it is currently building two more heavy-water reactors for plutonium production and a second chemical reprocessing facility to
extract plutonium from spent nuclear fuel. In other words, it might accumulate more fissile material than it needs to maintain even a
substantially expanded arsenal of its own. Alternatively, Pakistan might oªer an extended deterrent guarantee to Saudi Arabia and deploy nuclear
weapons, delivery systems, and troops on Saudi territory, a practice that the United States has employed for decades with its allies. This arrangement
could be particularly appealing to both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. It would allow the Saudis to argue that they are not violating the npt since they
would not be acquiring their own nuclear weapons. And an extended deterrent from Pakistan might be preferable to one from the United States
because stationing foreign Muslim forces on Saudi territory would not trigger the kind of popular opposition that would accompany the deployment of
U.S. troops. Pakistan, for its part, would gain financial benefits and international clout by deploying nuclear weapons in Saudi Arabia, as well as
strategic depth against its chief rival, India. The Islamabad option raises a host of difficult issues, perhaps the most worrisome being how
India would respond. Would it target Pakistan’s weapons in Saudi Arabia with its own conventional or nuclear weapons? How would this
expanded nuclear competition influence stability during a crisis in either the Middle East or South Asia? Regardless of India’s reaction, any
decision by the Saudi government to seek out nuclear weapons, by whatever means, would be highly destabilizing. It would increase
the incentives of other nations in the Middle East to pursue nuclear weapons of their own. And it could increase their ability to do so by
eroding the remaining barriers to nuclear proliferation: each additional state that acquires nuclear weapons weakens the nonproliferation regime,
even if its particular method of acquisition only circumvents, rather than violates, the NPT.¶ n-player competition¶ Were Saudi Arabia to acquire nuclear
weapons, the Middle East would count three nuclear-armed states, and perhaps more before long. It is unclear how such an n-player
competition would unfold because most analyses of nuclear deterrence are based on the U.S.- Soviet rivalry during the Cold War. It seems
likely, however, that the interaction among three or more nuclear-armed powers would be more prone to miscalculation and
escalation than a bipolar competition. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union only needed to concern themselves with an
attack from the other. Multipolar systems are generally considered to be less stable than bipolar systems because coalitions can shift
quickly, upsetting the balance of power and creating incentives for an attack. More important, emerging nuclear powers in the Middle East
might not take the costly steps necessary to preserve regional stability and avoid a nuclear
exchange. For nuclear-armed states,
the bedrock of deterrence is the knowledge that each side has a secure second-strike capability, so that no state can launch an attack with the
expectation that it can wipe out its opponents’ forces and avoid a devastating retaliation. However, emerging nuclear powers might not invest in
expensive but survivable capabilities such as hardened missile silos or submarinebased nuclear forces. Given this likely vulnerability, the close
proximity of states in the Middle East, and the very short flight times of ballistic missiles in the region, any new nuclear powers might be
compelled to “launch on warning” of an attack or even, during a crisis, to use their nuclear forces preemptively. Their governments might also
delegate launch authority to lower-level commanders, heightening the possibility of miscalculation and escalation. Moreover, if early
warning systems were not integrated into robust command-and-control systems, the risk of an unauthorized or accidental launch would increase further
still. And without sophisticated early warning systems, a nuclear attack might be unattributable or attributed incorrectly. That is, assuming
that the leadership of a targeted state survived a first strike, it might not be able to accurately determine which nation was responsible. And this
uncertainty, when combined with the pressure to respond quickly,would create a significant risk that it would retaliate against the wrong party,
potentially triggering
a regional nuclear war.
OFF
Plan leads to court stripping
David Gordon, senior fellow, Ludwig von Mises Institute, MISES DAILY, 11—4—08,
http://mises.org/daily/3185)
So far, you may ask, what is original about that? Do not many other critics of the Court attack its at-times-bizarre interpretive methods? Quirk's
originality rests in his taking literally, and emphasizing, a part of the Constitution that most writers ignore. According to Article III, Section 2, the
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court lies almost totally up to Congress. The Court has original jurisdiction only in cases involving disputes among the
states and in cases where foreign diplomats are a party. Its appellate jurisdiction is subject to whatever "rules and exceptions" Congress chooses to
make. So far as lower federal courts are concerned, they stand completely at the mercy of Congress. If it wished to do so, Congress could abolish the
lower federal courts altogether. Thus,
if Congress does not like the decision of the Court in Roe v Wade and its successor
cases, it can take away the right of the Court to hear any cases on appeal that involve abortion. True enough, that
would still leave the decision on the books, and it would presumably be binding on other courts; but in practice, it might be difficult to sustain it. If a
court decided to allow restrictions on Roe contrary to the mandate of the Supreme Court, this ruling could not then be appealed to that court for
reversal. Congress might, by getting rid of the federal courts completely, leave abortion entirely in the hands of the state courts. In like fashion, of
course, for other controversial areas. Quirk points out that until 1875, the lower federal courts did not have the right to hear appeals from state court
decisions about federal law. By using its Article III powers, Congress could radically reshape constitutional law. One might
at first think that Quirk has made a mistake. Is he not blowing out of proportion a passage that really deals only with setting up rules of procedure for
the federal courts? History buffs will be aware of the famous case of ex parte McCardle (1868), in which the Reconstruction Congress withdrew the
right of the Court to hear a case, while that very case was pending before the Court; but is not this use of Article III an aberration? Surely, like the
famous Tenure of Office Act, this was an example of how extreme that Congress was, rather than a guide to sound constitutional practice. To those
inclined to think so, the ruling of the Court in McCardle will come as a surprise. It fully recognized the right of Congress to withdraw its jurisdiction. The
Court said, “We are not at liberty to inquire into the motives of the legislature. We can only examine its powers under the Constitution; and the power to
make exceptions to the appellate jurisdiction of this court is given by express words… It is quite clear, therefore, that this court cannot proceed to pass
judgment in this case, for it no longer has jurisdiction of the appeal; and the judicial duty is not less fully performed by declining ungranted jurisdiction
than in exercising firmly that which the Constitution and the laws confer. (pp. 289–90) It is Quirk's great merit to show that Congress's
power
to limit the federal courts is a recurring theme in American history. Quirk is a Jeffersonian; and he points out that
Jefferson and his followers feared the potential for abuse in federal judicial power and acted to curb it. The Federalists had secured the appointment of
a number of Federalist judges in the Judiciary Act of 1801. The Republicans replied to the Judiciary Act of 1801 by repealing it in the Judiciary Act of
1802. The 1802 act repealed "federal question" jurisdiction. It stripped the new judges of their offices. (p. 178) Congressional power under Article III is
far from a theoretical question. Congress has in fact acted to limit the federal courts in several notable instances. By the early 1930s, a majority of
Congress had come to think that the courts often acted in an improperly antilabor way by issuing injunctions that forbade unions to strike. Employers
who claimed that unions were a threat to their property did not have to go through the long and involved process of a civil suit. Once an injunction
against a union had been issued, the court could instead hold the union in contempt and inflict civil and criminal penalties. Accordingly, in the NorrisLaGuardia Act (continually misspelled in the book), Congress, exercising its Article III authority,
took away the power of federal
courts to issue injunctions in labor cases. An interesting question, not discussed in the book, is why Franklin Roosevelt did not
resort to this tactic in his disputes with the Court. Again, in the 1950s, there was a Congressional outcry against several Supreme Court decisions that
were deemed unduly protective of the civil liberties of members of the Communist Party. Senator William Jenner introduced a bill to withdraw the
appellate jurisdiction of the Court in such cases; and although the measure failed to pass, its constitutionality was not seriously challenged.[2]
Opponents, such as Senator Jacob Javits of New York, claimed rather that the bill was unwise. One eminent law professor, Arthur J. Freund, who
opposed the Jenner Bill, responded in this way when asked whether it was constitutional to limit the Supreme Court's jurisdiction: "You can't challenge
the constitutionality of a constitutional provision" (p. 234). The famous Engel v. Vitale (1962) decision, which held recitation by a public school teacher
of a prayer in class to be unconstitutional, and the failure of a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn it to gain sufficient votes, aroused
Senator Jesse Helms in 1979 to propose a "stripper" bill, as this sort of legislation is called, but it also failed of passage. In a number of instances,
though, Congress
has in fact stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction, and several such laws remain
on the books today. In recent years, a number of scholars have maintained that the Article III power of Congress is limited and that it cannot,
e.g., bring it about that a constitutionally protected right is withdrawn from judicial scrutiny. Supporters of this position can appeal to the weighty
authority of Justice Story, who thought that Congress was required to extend the full "judicial power" mentioned in the Constitution to the federal courts.
Quirk successfully shows, though, that there is an extremely strong case that Congress does have the power to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction.
kills legitimacy—turns solvency
Tom Clarke, Department of Political Science, Emory University, THE LIMITS OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE, 2010, p. 161162.
In this vein, students of the separation of powers have recognized that congressional hostility toward the Court may be an important component of the
strategic interaction between the institutions. Noting confrontations between the branches – such as those discussed in Chapter 2 – as well as more
regular patterns of interinstituional tension, these scholars have focused on congressional hostility in its role as an institutional threat to exercise power
(Segal, Westerland, and Lindquist, Forthcoming; McNollgast 1995, Rosenberg 1992). That is, the focus on congressional “saber rattling” – through
either committee hearings (Segal, Westerland, and Lindquist, Forthcoming) or even Court-curbing (Rosenberg 1992) – has been primarily concerned
with the potential for Congress to use its constitutional powers to formally sanction the Court. For example, Friedman and Harvey (2003, 17) note,
“[t]here are numerous weapons a sitting Congress can apply against a Supreme Court deemed to be recalcitrant, including jurisdiction stripping,
the possible
connection between institutional confrontations and the Court’s legitimacy. “If…[Congress and the
President] succeed in overriding the Court’s interpretation, the Court will certainly pay a policy
price …The Court also may bear a cost in terms of its legitimacy. Every override of the Court’s
budget cutting, Court packing, and even the impeachment of Supreme Court Justices.” One study has even briefly noted
interpretation will chip away at its legitimacy even if only marginally. Given that the Justices’ ability to achieve their policy goals
hinges on their legitimacy, because they lack the power to enforce their decisions, any erosion of the
Court’s legitimacy is a concern.” (Epstein, Knight Martin 2001, 598)
Pharma
Pharma strong, aff kills revenue
Jackson ‘12
Lee Jackson, staffwriter for Daily Finance News and 24/7 Wall St. News, 12/11/12, “Will National Legalized Marijuana Help
or Hurt Big Pharma, Tobacco and Alcohol?” http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/12/11/will-national-legalized-marijuana-helpor-hurt-big-pharma-tobacco-and-alcohol/
One other big and powerful industry might have something to lose: Big Pharma . It is estimated that the
global pharmaceutical market will be worth more than $1 trillion by 2014. Industry giants Merck &
Co. (NYSE: MRK), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) have
warded off patent cliffs for yearsusing their large cash reserves to acquire smaller companies with
robust product pipelines. The last thing these companies want see is current product lines that
are producing dependable revenue flow to be dented by legal marijuana. The big pharmaceutical firms
have a lot of money to spread around, so when it comes to lobbying efforts, very few have this group’s clout. One thing it
wants is for marijuana to remain illegal.
There are countless maladies where the ingestion of marijuana has been believed to help alleviate
or control the symptoms. These include glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, AIDS-related complications,
Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia, chemotherapy complications and others.Big pharma has tried to
come up with their own pot pill. There are more than 400 chemicals in marijuana, 80 of which are
called “cannabinoids.”Drug companies have tried reducing it to one chemical and results have been poor.
Researchers find that when you reduce cannabis to just tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), you lose efficacy and gain side
effects.
In a book critical of the pharmaceutical industry called “Our Daily Meds,” author Melody Petersen offers a statistic
showing more than 100,000 people die each year from prescription drugs. This includes death from abuse and overdose,
side effects, misdiagnosis and interaction error.Many physicians may currently be reluctant to prescribe
legalized marijuana. A national mandate would provide many physicians with the moral and
ethical cover they need to be more aggressive if they feel medical marijuana may help their
patients. Then it is very possible thatmedical marijuana prescriptions will put a dent
in many currently prescribed drugs. This is not an outcome that big pharma is likely to tolerate
well, unless they get in on the action themselves.
Loss of pharmaceutical revenues kill biotech innovation
Ranade ‘08
Vinay Ranade, chief executive officer of GeneMedix plc, an Alternative Investment ¶ Market (AIM) company listed on the
London Stock Exchange that is engaged ¶ in the business of research, development, manufacturing, and marketing of
biosimilars ¶ (biopharmaceutical products) in Europe and is a chartered accountant and a management graduate,,
February 2008, “Early-Stage Valuation in the ¶ Biotechnology
Industry” http://fsi.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Ranade_FINAL_Feb_2008.pdf
A single alliance may be the lifeblood for a small biotech company; the same ¶ relationship may be
just one of many for the pharma partner.Management and ¶ leadership of these alliances should rest squarely on
the shoulders of those on the ¶ biotech side. Alliances should be led and managed by the biotech companies,
even ¶ though it is the big pharma companies that experience the innovation gap, who ¶ need biotech
expertise beyond their own in-house R&D, and who are the paying ¶parties. Strategic biotechnology
alliances are not relationships among equals. Smaller ¶ companies invariably have less say in the alliance yet still have to
do more to keep the ¶ alliance on track. Yet responsibility for the relationship should fall on the shoulders ¶ of the
leadership of the biotech company for two reasons. First, knowledge frontiers ¶ are moving quickly, and biotech
companies with competent scientists are better able ¶ to master this dynamic field. Second,
depends , to a large ¶ extent, on alliance revenues.
Biotech innovation is key to respond to a bioterror attack
Alton ‘12
a biotech firm’s survival
Jennifer B. Alton, Vice President of Government Affairs with Bavarian Nordic, Inc. 12/10/12, “The Future of Biodefense: Will
Public-Private Partnerships Continue?”
http://www.biotech-now.org/health/2012/12/the-future-of-biodefense-will-public-private-partnerships-continue#
Ten years ago, in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, the U.S.government set out on a bold path
to improve the country’s preparedness for bioterrorism by developing and stockpiling new drugs
and vaccines to protect Americans from health emergencies. Individuals from both political parties – many
who had experienced bioterror first hand – worked together to harness the power of innovative science and tackle this
national security threat. The ten year initiative was called Project BioShield.
Since then, biotechnology companies have partnered with the government to help fulfill that
mission. As a result of support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development
Authority (BARDA),companies have moved more than 70 medical countermeasure products into
advanced development and several more – including vaccines against smallpox and anthrax, and treatments for
botulism and radiation exposure – into the government’s Strategic National Stockpile.
A report issued in September 2012 by the Alliance for Biosecurity and MD Becker Partners reflects on the important
advancements and progress made over the last decade in medical countermeasures development
and identifies core challenges and key recommendations for the futur e. The report, titled “Medical
Countermeasures: A Roundtable Discussion,” includes insights from 16 field experts from industry,
government, and Wall Street.
The experts agree that tremendous progress has been made. However, this public-private partnership
is at a critical juncture where further funding, research and development are necessary to ensure that
progress continues and the U.S. population is protected.
Unchecked bioterror causes extinction – outweighs nukes
Ochs 2 (Richard Ochs, ANALYST FOR THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS WORKING GROUP, July 9
2002 -- “BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS MUST BE ABOLISHED IMMEDIATELY” -http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html )
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineeredbiological weapons, many
without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on
earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these
weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a
massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely
compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on
the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no
way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally
released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would
be
small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical
weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their
persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized .
Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural
environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological
weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years
and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents
by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than
could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging
plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN
EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.
OFF
The United States should announce that it supports global harm reduction
policies for non-marihuana drugs, especially in India, China, Russia, and
Afghanistan
The United States should cease drug eradication efforts in Afghanistan and direct
NGOs and other governments to do the same.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency should not implement rules
expanding clean water act jurisdiction.
The United States should distinguish the Raich decision from the regulation of
commodities as per the Stoker evidence.
The counterplan preserves Lopez and Morrison—their ev
Brandon J. Stoker 9, J.D. Candidate, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, “Note and Comment: Was
Gonzales v. Raich the Death Knell of Federalism? Assessing Meaningful Limits on Federal Intrastate Regulation in Light of U.S. v.
Nascimento”, 23 BYU J. Pub. L. 317, lexis
V. Conclusion The progeny of Gonzales v. Raich demonstrates that meaningful judicial review of laws enacted under the Commerce
Clause may be at an end. While Raich muddled the standards raised in Lopez and Morrison, however, it
did not distinguish or overrule them. Thus, Lopez, Morrison, and Jones still provide a workable
limit on the Commerce Clause powers if the Court will give effect to their guiding principles. Since
Raich simply exploited the ambiguities of Lopez and Morrison to vitiate the force of their
precedents while still purporting to work within their framework, a new coalition amenable to "federalism
as substantive limits" n225 could just as easily exploit Raich's lip service to the Lopez-Morrison
standard to limit Raich . n226 A return to meaningful limits on the Commerce Clause powers
requires the Court, first and foremost, to give effect to the words "essential" and "undercut" in the
broader regulatory program exception. n227 If the Court gives any credence to the constitutional
limits on federal power, it cannot accept at face value Congress's whimsical inclusion of an
activity otherwise beyond its regulatory purview in a broader regulatory program. Second, the
Court should refine the definition of "economic activity" to preclude courts from transforming
activity universally understood to be outside of Congress's commerce authority - such as
intrastate criminal misconduct - into economic activity. Finally, the Court should reassert its role
in protecting the federal balance by eschewing the "rational basis" test without meaningful
inquiry. As Justice Kennedy aptly lamented, of the various structural elements in the Constitution - separation of powers, checks
and balances, judicial review, and federalism - only concerning the last does there seem to be apprehension about the Court's role
in preserving the Framers' carefully wrought safeguards. n228 If the Court does not correct its dithering federalism doctrine, nothing
A return to meaningful limits does not require the
Court to overturn Raich , however. The Court must simply give effect to the clear standards
articulated in Lopez and Morrison , and take seriously its charge to decide controversies "arising
under [the] [*349] Constitution" n229 rather than deferring blindly to Congress's regulatory
judgments.
will impede federal incursion into matters of state sovereignty.
Global Prohibition
Global Prohibition 1NC
They won’t cause modeling or spill over
Miron 14 Jeffrey Miron is Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard
and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Cato Institute, January 27, 2014, “Is the War on Drugs Over?”,
http://object.cato.org/publications/commentary/war-drugs-over
In December 2013, Uruguay legalized marijuana, Earlier, in 2012, Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana under
the laws of their states, and 21 additional states and the District of Columbia have now decriminalized or allowed medical use of
marijuana. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001, and the Netherlands has practiced de facto
legalization for marijuana for decades. More broadly, many countries have de-escalated their “Wars on Drugs.” Indeed,
President Obama hinted strongly in a recent interview that he supports marijuana legalization.
Legalization advocates, therefore, are feeling optimistic: Many expect full legalization, at least for marijuana, within a
few years.
This euphoria is understandable, but premature .
Legalizers are correct that prohibition is a terrible approach to balancing the costs of drug abuse against the costs of policies that
attempt to reduce drug abuse.
Prohibition drives drug markets underground, thereby generating violence and corruption. Participants in black markets cannot
resolve their disputes with courts and lawyers, so they resort to violence instead.
Prohibition makes quality control difficult, so the incidence of accidental poisonings and overdoses is higher than in a legal market.
People who purchase alcohol know what purity they are getting; people who purchase cocaine or heroin do not.
Prohibition spreads HIV. Elevated drug prices incentivize injection (users get a big bang for the buck), while fostering restrictions on
clean needles. Users therefore share dirty needles, which accounts for a large fraction of new HIV infections in the United States.
Prohibition harms those who use drugs despite prohibition, since they risk arrest and imprisonment in addition to the negatives of
drug use itself.
Prohibition encourages racial profiling and other infringements on civil liberties. Neither party to a drug transaction wants to notify
the police, who therefore use more intrusive tactics in the attempt to enforce the law.
Prohibition wastes criminal justice resources and prevents collection of taxes on the production or purchase of drugs, thus adversely
impacting government budgets.
And abundant evidence from America’s experiment with Prohibition, from state decriminalizations, and medicaliziations; from
comparisons across countries with weak versus strong prohibition regimes; and from experience with other prohibited commodities
suggests that prohibitions generates only moderate reductions in drug use. Some of that reduction, moreover, is a cost of
prohibition, not a benefit—since many people consume drugs without ill effects on themselves or others.
Prohibition is therefore a terrible policy, even if one endorses government attempts to reduce drug use. Prohibition has large costs
with minimal “benefits” at best in terms of lower use.
So legalizers are right on the merits, and recent opinion polls show increasing public support for legalization (at least for marijuana).
But the negatives of prohibitions have been widely understood at least since the 1933 repeal of
alcohol prohibition, yet this has not stopped the U.S. from pushing drug prohibition both at home
and abroad.
In addition, further progress toward legalization faces serious impediments.
The first is that recent de-escalation of the Drug War addresses marijuana only . Yet much prohibitioninduced harm results from prohibitions of cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Public opinion is less open to
legalizing these drugs.
Even worse, drug warriors might respond to marijuana legalization by ramping up hysteria toward
still-prohibited drugs , increasing prohibition-induced ills in those markets. The public would then observe increased drugmarket violence in the wake of marijuana legalization, which would appear to show that legalization causes violence.
A different worry is that while public opinion currently swings toward legalizations, public opinion can change. And marijuana
remains illegal under federal law, so a new president could undo President Obama’s “hands off”
approach.
Perhaps the greatest threat to legalization is that many people—including some legalizers—believe policy can eliminate the black
market and its negatives while maintaining strict control over legalized drugs. That is why recent legalizations include restrictions on
production and purchase amounts, retail locations, exports, sales to tourists, high taxes, and more.
If these restrictions are so weak that they rarely constrain the legal market, they do little harm. But if these restrictions are serious,
they re-create black markets.
Legalizers must accept that, under legalization, drug use will be more open and some people will misuse. The incidence of use and
abuse might be no higher than now; indeed, outcomes like accidental overdoses should decline. But legalizers should not
oversell, since that risks a backlash when negative outcomes occur.
None of this is meant to deny that recent policy changes constitute real progress . But these gains
will evaporate unless the case for legalization includes all drugs and is up front about the
negatives as well as the positives.
AIDS: 1NC
AIDS decreasing—contained in 20 years
Kelland 14 7/16 (Kate, contributor, Kate, Global AIDS epidemic can be controlled by 2030, U.N. says
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/16/us-health-hiv-unaids-idUSKBN0FL0RX20140716>, TF)
New HIV infections and deaths from AIDS are decreasing , the United Nations said on Wednesday, making it
possible to control the epidemic by 2030 and eventually end it " in every region, in every
country".¶ "More than ever before, there is hope that ending AIDS is possible. However, a business-as-usual
approach or simply sustaining the AIDS response at its current pace cannot end the epidemic," the U.N. AIDS program UNAIDS
said in a global report issued ahead of an AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia next week. ¶ It said the number of people
infected with HIV was stabilizing at around 35 million worldwide. The epidemic had killed some 39 million of
the 78 million people it has affected since it began in the 1980s.¶ "The AIDS epidemic can be ended in every region,
every country, in every location, in every population and every community," Michel Sidibe, the director of
UNAIDS, said in the report. "There are multiple reasons why there is hope and conviction about this goal."¶ The human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS can be transmitted via blood, breast milk and by semen during sex, but can be kept
in check with cocktails of drugs known as antiretroviral therapy or ART.¶ UNAIDS sa
id that at the end of 2013, some 12.9 million HIV positive people had access to antiretroviral therapy - a dramatic improvement on
the 10 million who were on treatment just one year earlier and the only 5 million who were getting AIDS drugs in 2010.¶ Since 2001,
new HIV infections have fallen by 38 percent, it said. AIDS deaths have fallen 35 percent since a peak in 2005.¶
"The world has witnessed extraordinary changes in the AIDS landscape. There have been more achievements in the past five years
than in the preceding 23 years," the report said.¶ The U.N. report said ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030 would mean the
spread of HIV was being controlled or contained, and that the impact of the virus in societies and
in people's lives had been reduced by significant declines in ill health, stigma, deaths and the
number of AIDS orphans.¶ "It means increased life expectancy, unconditional acceptance of people's diversity and rights,
and increased productivity and reduced costs as the impact diminishes."¶ According to UNAIDS, $19.1 billion was available from all
sources for the AIDS response in 2013, and the estimated annual need by 2015 is currently between $22 billion and $24 billion.¶
Sidibe said the international community should seize the opportunity to turn the epidemic around.¶ "We have a fragile five-year
window to build on the rapid results that been made," he said. "If we accelerate all HIV scale-up by 2020, we will be on track
to end the epidemic by 2030. If not, we risk significantly increasing the time it would take - adding a decade, if not more."¶
He said controlling the epidemic by 2030 would avert 18 million new HIV infections and 11.2 million AIDS deaths between 2013 and
2030.¶ In 2011, U.N. member states agreed to a target of getting HIV treatment to 15 million people by
2015. As countries scaled up treatment coverage, and evidence showed how treating HIV early also reduces its spread, the World
Health Organization (WHO) set new guidelines last year, expanding the number of people needing treatment by more than 10
million.¶ Jennifer Cohn, medical director of the access campaign for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said millions of
HIV positive people still do not get the drugs they needed.¶ "Providing life-saving HIV treatment to nearly 12 million people in the
developing world is a significant achievement, but more than half of people in need still do not have access," she said. "We know
that early treatment helps prevent transmission of HIV and keeps people healthy; we need to respond to HIV in all contexts and
make treatment accessible to everyone in need as soon as possible."
No extinction
Card is in general disease 1NC
Posner 5—Senior Lecturer, U Chicago Law. Judge on the US Court of Appeals 7th Circuit. AB from Yale and LLB from Harvard.
(Richard, Catastrophe, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html)
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000 years or
so of its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction events. There have been
enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox, and now AIDS, but none has come close to
destroying the entire human race. There is a biological reason . Natural selection favors germs of
limited lethality; they are fitter in an evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be
spread if the germs do not kill their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus,
wholly natural, that by lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no
danger that AIDS will destroy the entire human race . The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would
cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in prehistoric times,
when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the spread of disease), despite wider human
contacts that make it more difficult to localize an infectious disease.
Afghan Ans 1NC
Aff destabilizes Afghanistan—world market alt cause
Fox 14 [Marlowe Fox, formerly lead counsel at a nationwide foreclosure defense firm with over two hundred attorneys across
the United States, “DRUG CARTELS, TERRORISM, AND MARIJUANA”, GLOBAL, POLITICS JULY 14, 2014,
http://raybounmulligan.com/mexican-drug-cartels-afghanistan-and-marijuana/, \\wyo-bb]
In his recent blog, H.A. Goodman illustrates some of the possible benefits of legalizing marijuana. Goodman
notes that
Afghanistan is the world’s largest supplier of cannabis and legalization would allow Afghans to
realize an immediate revenue stream. Goodman concludes that this revenue would contribute to the overall
stability in the region. However, he does not consider the fact that legalization would remove
barriers of entry for American and international entrepreneurs . Goodman cites Rand Corporation figures that
Americans spend approximately $40.6 billion a year on marijuana. Hence, entrepreneurs from around the world
would put their hat into the ring and effectively push Afghan growers out of any new market
created by legalization. Thus, the conjectured stabilization in Afghanistan as a result from
marijuana legalization is not likely to happen .
**No draw in
Fettweis ‘11 Christopher Fettweis, Professor of Political Science @ Tulane. “Dangerous Times: The Futurist Interviews Christopher
Fettweis”. World Future Society. 1/12/2011. http://www.wfs.org/content/dangerous-times-futurist-interviews-christopher-fettweis
THE FUTURIST: In the next few years, the United States will end its military oversight of Afghanistan and Iraq. We can hope that
the two fledgling democracies’ civil governments will prove strong enough to withstand their armed insurgent enemies, but it’s
obvious that they might possibly not. In that case, Afghanistan and/or Iraq could fall back into chaos. What can we
do in that situation to make sure that a new regional war does not come to pass as a result?
CHRISTOPHER FETTWEIS: We can’t determine for sure if Iraq will implode. But the odds of it drawing everybody
else in seem low to me. People worry about the Iranians coming into Iraq. But the Iranians are more hated in Iraq than the
Americans are. In the nineteenth century, power vacuums used to draw powers in. Nowadays they
don't. Countries tend to stay away from them. They don’t want to even send troops into
peacekeeping missions. I don’t think invading Iraq has made us safer or less safe. It's just been a mess. Afghanistan
is the same thing. I don’t think it matters much to U.S. security either way. They may well end up
having their own civil war. But will it spill over into other countries? Probably not.
AfghanLegalizing pot causes hemp to scale up and displace cotton
Josh Sager – Writes for Progressive Cynic, April 2013 “Why Cotton and Not Hemp?”
http://theprogressivecynic.com/2013/04/29/why-cotton-and-not-hemp/
When looking at what makes our clothing, we are struck with a choice between various plants and synthetics to
choose from. Cotton may be the most common clothing fabric in the United States today, but it is not the only viable material to
use in clothing. Numerous fabrics—silk, hemp, polyester, and many more—are all possible alternatives to cotton but, for a
variety of reasons, none have replaced cotton as a more efficient material.¶ The synthetics may be strong and do
not require growing plants to form, but many are highly flammable and most require the extraction and refinement of petrochemicals.
As such, they aren’t really a good alternative to cotton in the long run. ¶ Animal fabrics, like leather and silk, are simply not easy to
mass produce and all animal-skin products are simply far more inefficient than their plant-based alternatives.¶ When we look at this
situation and try to find a solid alternative to cotton, we find a precious few viable organic materials. One of these materials however
is called Hemp and is created from the plant fibers of the Cannabis Sativa¶ ¶ Hemp¶ The plant fibers of the Cannabis
Sativa plant can be harvested to create very tough and efficient to create fabrics—alone or mixed with
other fibers. Of the more common uses for hemp, Americans utilized the fiber in clothing and in the creation of sail canvas for boats.
Before the illegalization of Cannabis, and thus the outlawing of hemp production, hemp was
recognized as one of the best materials for making fabrics . The United States had a long history
of hemp production, and many of our founding fathers grew hemp on their farms as a staple crop.¶ Through an outlook of
sustainability, plant fibers from hemp are both very strong and far more water and efficient than
cotton. According to a comprehensive study by the Stockholm Environmental Institute, hemp uses half of the land
space required by cotton, and only a third of the water—in this, it is FAR more efficient to the grower and much
less of a strain on the environment.¶ Because of the lower requirements to produce hemp when compared with cotton,
hemp is a viable alternative to cotton for small farmers looking to supply local clothing producers. The efficiency
of hemp allows small farmers to grow much more substantial amounts of hemp with their
available land and water resources.¶ In addition to the efficiency and comparative strength of hemp over cotton, hemp
requires far fewer pest control measures to be grown effectively. Unlike cotton plants, cannabis
overshadows small weeds and strangles them, rather than the other way around. In dealing with insects and
invasive fungi, cannabis has the natural pesticide THC, which kills or repels pest species. Unlike with cotton growing, where farmers
favor large numbers of toxic pesticides, hemp produces its own pesticide and does not entice farmers to spray it with caustic
one may wonder why it is
illegal and in a massively subservient position to cotton in the global fabric markets. This is a very
chemicals.¶ As hemp is stronger, more efficient, and requires fewer pesticides than cotton,
easy question to answer: The natural pesticide THC repels insects and plant parasites, but it is the active ingredient that makes
cannabis a narcotic.¶ ¶ The War on Hemp/Pot¶ Despite the history of American hemp production, hemp was made illegal in the early
years of the 20th Century. Through a toxic combination of misguided prohibition, corporate cronyism, and racism, cannabis was
made illegal and the American hemp industry was killed.¶ In the early 20th Century, DuPont Chemical started developing chemical
procedures to pulverize wood and turn it into paper and chemical pesticides in order to facilitate the growth of cotton. Hemp is a very
strong plant material and DuPont wanted to sell its nylon material as a substitute for the natural fibers of hemp. In addition to this,
hemp requires few pesticides and simply had no need for the new chemical pesticides that were being developed by DuPont; if
hemp were to have overshadowed cotton as the primary textile fiber, DuPont’s new chemical pesticide industry would have been
worth far less and their sales would have been drastically reduced. As such, hemp was a dual competitor with DuPont’s business
and the company did everything in its power to kill the hemp industry.¶ In order to kill the hemp industry, DuPont used its influence
over the government. Throughout the 1920s, Andrew Mellon was US Treasury Secretary, the owner of DuPont’s primary financial
backer, Mellon Bank, and a relative of Harry Anslinger, a high ranking official in the federal alcohol prohibition office. This trifecta of
influence allowed DuPont chemical to push for the criminalization of cannabis after Harry Anslinger became the head of the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. From 1930 to 1937, Anslinger pushed a hard line anti-cannabis policy that eventually resulted in the
criminalization of both hemp and cannabis for smoking.¶ In order to facilitate the criminalization of cannabis, the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics utilized a combination of racism and disinformation. Cannabis was tarred as a dangerous and powerful narcotic that would
turn people into psychotic killers. Here is a propaganda poster from this era: ¶ dope¶ To further compound the propaganda around
cannabis, many interests connected cannabis to racism against Black and Hispanic Americans in that era. Cannabis was
proclaimed to be an invasive drug, brought in by Mexicans and offered to white Americans in a way that would translate the
perceived “laziness and criminality” of Mexicans to the American population. It was also declared to be a major factor in Black
American’s committing crimes and harming white people. Obviously, none of these smears on racial minorities or cannabis are
based in reality—the attacks on minorities were based in pure racism, while the attacks on cannabis were based in the economic
interests funding the anti-cannabis movement.¶ incarceration¶ Since the mid-20th Century, the criminalization of cannabis
has shifted from a move by rival textile and chemical giants, to profitization schemes by private
law enforcement interests (ex. private prisons and security contractors) and general policy inertia. Fortunately, these bans
are lifting slowly, as the American population realizes that they have been deceived by anti-cannabis propaganda, and
hemp
may soon become an extremely viable crop again.
Cotton key to uzbekistan growth- lynchpin to eurasian stability
R. James Ferguson 2003 The Department of International Relations, SHSS, Bond University, Queensland, Australia “An
Arc of Instability? - Security Dilemmas in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Chechnya” http://www.internationalrelations.com/wbeurasia/WBEA-2003-Lec4.htm
Because of Soviet agricultural policies, large irrigation schemes have not aided this problem, but have helped destroy much land
through salination, excessive use of fertilisers, and has also resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Aral Sea. This
problem effected Uzbekistan as well, where cotton production rose from 2.24 to 9.10 million tons
between 1940 and 1980, though a poor Uzbek would be unlikely to pay the import cost of Russian manufactured cotton shirts
(Rashid 1994, p91). As of the mid-1990s, Uzbekistan produced 20% of the world's cotton (Jones 1995b) and
with high prices in the mid-90s, hoped to maintain good cash flows into the country. However, poor
crops in 2000 reduced income through 2001, with also increases in local food stuffs (DFAT 2001). As we have seen (lecture
3), problems in water usage, irrigation, and damage to the Aral Sea has had a negative impact the ability of the country to rely too
strongly on cotton production.¶ Aside from cotton, Uzbekistan does have a range of other natural resources which need further
development. As noted by Ahmed Rashid: -¶ Uzbekistan has a large natural gas industry, which produced 41 billion cubic metres in
1991, much of it from the Mubarek gas fields. Uzbek gas is still exported along a pipeline that stretches from Bukhara to the Urals.
Uzbekistan's petroleum production in 1990 was 2.8 million tons and a large oilfield was discovered in the Ferghana valley in March
1992. (Rashid 1994, p94)¶ Uzbekistan, however, like nearby Kazakhstan, has the problem of how to export its oil and gas onto the
world market, and at present still relies in large part on older Russian infrastructure. At present, it produces more than enough oil for
its own needs, and has large gas fields that would make the eight-largest gas producer globally (Feif 2002). It has had some
problems in mobilising resources and investment for future modernisation of its fields, and through 2002 planned to sell 49% of it
stake in Uzbekneftegaz, the state-own company that controls the petroleum sector (Feif 2002). ¶ The country also has some metallic
resources, including sizeable gold reserves underground, and an industrial base which includes a quite well-skilled base of
technicians and workers, although this has been eroded by some 1.7 million Russians leaving since 1988 (Rashid 1994, p95;
literacy in the country verges on 100%). Another main problem had been the slowness of development of the private sector, with a
mere 5-9% of gross national product accounted for in late 1992, though many joint ventures have been planned (Rashid 1994,
pp95-6). Foreign investment has only begun in earnest in Uzbekistan during the last eight years, and the World Bank and the
International Monetary initially only pledged some $300 million in aid. The result was rather uneven economic development through
the 1990s: "the government began a reform program in 1994, including tight monetary policies, privatisation of government-owned
enterprises and improving the investment environment. Inflation continues to be a problem - it topped over 40 percent in 1996,
although it has dropped to 23 percent in 1999. The country's GDP growth moved from an economic contraction of -1 percent in
1995 to marginal growth of 2 percent in 1999, with foreign debt still at high levels - close to 3 billion" (DFAT 2001). Foreign
investment remains limited, in part through concerns over corruption, government control of resources, and concerns over an overly
strong set level for the currency (the som), which makes it not freely convertible, e.g. held for a time at the official rate of 430 som
per American dollar, compared to the black market rate of 1,200 in 2002 (Feif 2002; through early 2002 the som moved to around
960 to the dollar). Through 2002, however, there was a serious improvement in the rate of privatisation: 'A total of 1,912 enterprises
were privatized in 2002, 30% more than in 2001' (Interfax 2003a). The Asian Development Bank (ADB) also announced that it 'plans
to provide Uzbekistan with over $500 million in credits in 2003-2005 to implement 11 investment projects' (Interfax 2003b).¶ The
slow change-over to capitalism has resulted in early high unemployment rates - 22.8 percent in 1990. The government has
attempted to pull back land under cotton production, and become more self-sufficient in food (Hans 2000, pp356-357), but as of
1994 there had been no serious attempt to reform land ownership, because the issue might have been explosive in the Ferghana
valley region (Rashid 1994, p96). Plans were set up in 1995-6 to establish long-term private leases for up to 40% of the irrigated
land. Aside from cotton, the country also exports tobacco, and can produce more food for internal consumption. However,
Uzbekistan must also face both relatively high population growth and the fact that a large number
of young people will try to enter its work-force in the next decade (60% of the population are under 25 years
of age). As a result, the economy must grow at a very fast rate to ensure social stability (Hanks 2000,
p351). It is possible that by the year 2015 Uzbekistan might have a population of 36 million (Hanks 2000, p357). In large part, the
country will rely on foreign direct investment (FDI) to stimulate such growth, but at present the geographical spread of such
investment tends to be unbalanced, focusing on Tashkent region (Hanks 2000, p360). ¶ Reform in the economy is based on a kind of
gradualism, characterised as the 'Uzbek Road': -¶ Stability, the early principal goal, is to be secured by proemployment economic policies, public education, child allowances, and welfare allotments to neighborhood associations
(mahallah) run by elders. Once self-sufficiency in energy and food has been secured, government guidance and investments will
pursue growth by developing backward linkages into more extensive cotton processing, textiles, food processing, petrochemicals
and plastics, and agricultural machinery. Imported equipment and technology are essential to this investment strategy, which if
successful would increase exports of semi-fabricated and manufactured goods. (Spechler 2000)¶ The main elements of this "Uzbek
Road" include: -¶ Gradual reform, while maintaining social and political stability¶ State role preserved in shaping industrialization
priorities¶ Self-sufficiency in energy and food¶ Legal basis established for reforms and private sector¶ Social protection of rural,
dependent, and low-income groups (Spechler 2000)¶ Uzbekistan is one of the few states in the region that has ensured that it has a
strong military presence, cooperating with Russia on CIS defence arrangements, then asserting a more independent posture since
2001. As noted by Rashid: -¶ <President> Karimov has created a National Guard of some seven hundred men and a new Ministry of
Defence, staffed largely by Russian officers. The National Guard is being rapidly expanded. In early 1992 the government began to
take over Russian military installations in agreement with Moscow, and in May all Uzbek soldiers serving outside Uzbekistan were
recalled home to serve under a joint CIS-Uzbek military command which has 15,000 troops and 280 tanks as well as a large,
modern air force. This command works closely with Moscow, as was seen by the military help given by Tashkent to pro-communist
Tajik forces who defeated the Tajik Islamic opposition in December 1992. ¶ While the civil war in Tajikistan preoccupied all Central
Asia leaders, Karimov publicly proclaimed that he wanted Russia 'to be the guarantor of security in Central Asia'. (Rashid 1994,
pp102-3)¶ In other words, Uzbekistan had favoured the CIS arrangement as a security guarantee, but it was reluctant to go all the
way with Russia and has resisted initiatives for a new Eurasian Union. Uzbekistan has managed to build up a regionally-strong
national force, as of 1995 including 20,000 in the army, a small but modern airforce including 32 MiG-29s and 32 Su-27s, plus
paramilitary units of some 16,000 men, and Internal Security troops of 15,300 (Chipman 1995, pp166-7). By 1998, this has been
strengthened further, with some 50,000 in the army, 17-19,000 Internal Security Troops, and 1,000 in the national guard (Chipman
1998, p164). Through 2002, there was an active defence force of 50-55,000, with 18-20,000 internal security troops (Chipman 2002,
p137). In late 1999, Uzbekistan once again re-affirmed its military cooperation with Russia in a Russo-Uzbek military cooperation
agreement designed to deepen coordination in a number of areas including military-technical cooperation. The agreement was
signed for the 'sake of ensuring military security, fighting international terrorism, bolstering cooperation in the development and
production of armaments and military equipment, and training military personnel for the Russian and Uzbek armed forces'
(ITAR/TASS 1999).¶ Uzbekistan's importance was further increased strategically once the United States and its allies decided to
engage in military action against the Taliban and Al-Quaeda bases in Afghanistan. After negotiations with both Uzbekistan and
Russia, bases and facilities in Uzbekistan were used to set up communication, command and control centres. As a result, this
country in a sense became part of the 'front line' against terrorism , with its government also gaining de facto
support for its hardline policies against Islam generally. Likewise, Uzbekistan hopes that its engagement as an ally of the United
States will also result in long term economic and diplomatic benefits. Through 2002-2003 this has resulted in increased military aid
and cooperation, worth at $160 million in 2002 (Feif 2002). This has led to some Russian fears that Uzbekistan might become
'another Turkey', cooperating with the U.S. and NATO (e.g. through the Partnership for Peace program, with joint exercises in the
region in 1998 and 2000), but this time in the heart of Eurasia (Feif 2002). ¶ Uzbekistan, then, remains an important
linchpin of Central Asia. Its progress towards economic and ethnic stability, or the lack of such
progress, is crucial in determining the future of Eurasian stability. In spite of government preference for a
secular style of government, there is no doubt that faith in Islam is growing within the country - in 1993 the country only had some
200 mosques, in 1995 it could claim approximately 5,000 (Jones 1995b). Yet the opposition parties, Birlik (Unity) and Erk parties
have been banned from participating in elections, with only the government People's Democratic Party and 'official' (co-opted)
Fatherland Progress Party holding most of the 250 seats in the Parliament (Jones 1995b).
A2 “Pakistan”
Afghanistan instability does not lead to Indo-Pak – doesn’t make Pakistan
aggressive and is stabilizing.
Finel ‘9 Bernard Finel, an Atlantic Council contributing editor, is a senior fellow at the American Security Project.. “Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and Nuclear War”. September 1, 2009. Atlantic Council. http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/afghanistan-pakistan-andnuclear-war
Second, the
argument relies on incoherent strategic logic. “Fixing” Afghanistan would have no
effect on the risk of nuclear war and might indeed increase it by some tiny fraction. Lindholm and Foust
seem to believe that Islamist radicals, if allowed to return to Afghanistan, would create pressure for
the Pakistani government to behave more aggressively toward India or independently provoke a
conflict between the two. The first is almost certainly the reverse of what would occur. The
second unlikely but also unrelated to Afghanistan. Does radicalism in Afghanistan pressure
Pakistan into more extreme behavior? Clearly not. Some indiscreet Pakistani strategists consider Afghanistan as
providing strategic depth in the case of a conflict with India. The concept is fuzzy frankly, because unless the Pakistani
army plans to retreat over the border — with no infrastructure or supplies — to avoid Indian
advances, there is no compelling conventional strategic depth argument . But, on the other hand,
having as a neighbor a state that would unquestionably take Pakistan’s side in a conflict would
provide some opportunity to retreat strategic assets, leadership, and potentially provide a base
for guerrilla resistance against an Indian incursion. In short, what a Taliban controlled Afghanistan
might provide Pakistani leaders is a small measure of reassurance that in a conflict , the Pakistani
army would not find itself crushed between an Indian advance and a closed Afghan border. But
while in a constrained and unlikely case, the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan could provide Pakistan with some options in
the case of an Indian attack, there is no way in which the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan could aid in the development of
an offensive military option against India. In short, strategic logic suggests that a Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan would reduce the risk of conflict by reducing insecurity among Pakistani elites.
Because it would not provide Pakistan with any additional offensive capabilities, it ought not
increase insecurity among Indian decision makers. Lower levels of insecurity usually result in
lower levels of risk taking and less pressure for military pre-emption in times of crisis. An Islamist
— and likely anti-Indian — regime in Afghanistan almost certainly eases the security dilemma in
South Asia rather than increasing it.
case
Centralization 1NC (1:10
Raich didn’t kill federalism—it was already dead
Lopez was the exception that proved the rule—the court has no appetite for enforcing dual federalism—their precedent will be
circumvented anyway
Reynolds and Denning 05 (Glenn, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee,
and Brannon, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Faculty Development, Cumberland School of Law at Samford University,
Winter 2005, "FEDERALISM AFTER GONZALES V. RAICH: SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: WHAT HATH RAICH WROUGHT? FIVE
TAKES" 9 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 915, Lexis)
VI. TAKE FIVE: IS RAICH THE "THIRD DEATH OF FEDERALISM?" n55 OR WAS
LOPEZ MERELY "ZOMBIE
FEDERALISM"? Early on, Lopez appeared to signify that reinvigoration of a judicially-enforced
federalism was the principal project of what Professor Merrill has coined the "second Rehnquist Court." n56 Chief Justice
Rehnquist appeared to make good on his prior expression of confidence that federalism "will ... in time again command the support
of a majority of this Court." n57 The evidence was certainly there: requiring Congress to make a "clear statement" was designed to
protect federalism interests, n58 as was articulation of the "anti-commandeering" principle. These were followed not only by Lopez,
but also by the expansion of sovereign immunity beginning with Seminole Tribe v. Florida, n59 by the limitation of congressional
power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, n60 by extension of the anti-commandeering principle in Printz v. United
States, n61 and, finally, by invoking the Commerce Clause for the second time in five years to invalidate an Act of Congress. n62
The combined effect of these cases led one federal judge to complain that the Court was "narrowing the nation's power"; and that
the Court had "sided with the states" against federal power. n63 [*928] The near-hysteria expressed by some
academics at the Court's tentative steps toward judicial enforcement of federalism principles
obscured a good deal that should have given comfort to those who heard, in the opinions of the
Federalism Five, the hoofbeats of the New Deal's famously obstructionist "Four Horsemen." First,
there were a number of cases decided contemporaneously with those whose holdings were in
tension with the federalism cases, and the Court never seemed (as Raich graphically demonstrates) to be
able to follow earlier cases to their logical conclusions. Second, when examined closely, many of
the "restraints" imposed on Congress by the Court's federalism decisions proved to be rather
mild fetters that could easily be circumvented. In this Part we attempt a retrospective (if panoramic) view of these
dissonant notes in the Rehnquist Court's federalism project. Future historians might consider whether there was,
at last, anything for the Raich Court to kill off - if, in fact, Raich represents any retreat at all. A. The
Spending Power Many hoped that the Court would follow up Lopez by elaborating the limits on
Congress's power to impose conditional restrictions on money appropriated to states, thus enabling it
to regulate indirectly what it could not regulate directly. n64 In Sabri v. United States, n65 however, the Court
declined the opportunity, upholding Congress's power to criminalize bribery of a state official concerning a state program
that received some federal money, despite the lack of any connection between the federal money and the bribe itself. n66 While
there were some procedural issues that made the issues in Sabri less clean than they might have been, nothing in the case
indicated any appetite to strengthen Dole's rather flaccid constraints on conditional spending
requirements, much less revisit larger constitutional questions such as whether Congress can spend "for the general welfare" or
only in connection with one of its Article I, Section 8 enumerated powers. B. Preemption Court critics made great sport of contrasting
several of the Court's recent cases in which state power was deemed to have been preempted by federal law with cases like
Morrison or Seminole Tribe. Indeed, the Court - including members of the Federalism Five - has shown a real appetite for applying
implied preemption doctrines liberally, even to the point of limiting or [*929] extinguishing state common law tort claims, n67 despite
the Court's previous admonition that preemption of statutes reflecting an exercise of a state's traditional police powers required a
clear statement of congressional intent to do so. n68 The erosion of the "presumption against preemption" has been particularly
noticeable in cases involving state regulations that have international implications. Recently, in fact, the Court held that a mere
presidential policy statement that Holocaust survivors and their heirs should settle claims outside of the judicial system and through
a system established by executive agreement was sufficient to preempt a state law requiring merely that insurance companies
disclose their involvement in insurance sales prior to the Holocaust as a condition of doing business in the state. n69 This despite
the fact that the executive agreement establishing the compensation fund disclaimed any preemptive intent and the fact that
Congress had both acknowledged that states were legislating in this area and had, years before, left the regulation of the insurance
industry to the states. C. The Anti-Commandeering Principle In the wake of New York v. United States and Printz,
there were questions about the extent to which the so-called "anti-commandeering principle"
operated. After all, preemption itself, as Mark Tushnet has argued, constitutes a type of commandeering, since it "commands"
the states and their officials not to engage in particular types of conduct, and may require the expenditure of resources to comply
with the federal regime. n70 South Carolina might therefore have been forgiven for thinking that it had a winner when it challenged a
federal statute prohibiting any person or state from selling driver's license data. n71 The Court thought otherwise. In a
unanimous opinion, it drew a distinction between mandates from the federal government that
required affirmative action on the part of states and their officials and preemption, which, it noted,
not only required mere forbearance on the state's part but was [*930] also rooted in the text of the
Supremacy Clause itself. n72 Since the Act in question was a valid exercise of Congress's
commerce power, the Court held it was binding on the states. D. The Commerce Power Soon after
Lopez was decided, the Court decided United States v. Robertson, which raised the question
whether a local Alaska gold mine's operations "substantially affected" interstate commerce for
purposes of the RICO statute. n73 In a per curiam opinion, the Court concluded that because the
mine purchased out-of-state equipment and supplies, it was engaged in interstate commerce for
purposes of that statute, and did not reach the substantial effects question. n74 For some commentators
Robertson signaled that Lopez was likely a limited decision. n75 Had Lopez been a truly
transformative opinion, one might have expected the Court to hear more Commerce Clause cases,
much as it did when expanding the scope of sovereign immunity. The Court did not lack for attractive candidates,
but it either refused to grant certiorari , n76 dodged the constitutional question , n77 or affirmed the
power of [*931] Congress . n78 With the benefit of hindsight, it is Lopez and Morrison, not Raich,
that look like the outliers . n79 E. The Scope of Congressional Power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment
Another of Rehnquist Court critics' bete noires n80 was the limitation imposed by the Court on congressional power to enforce the
Fourteenth Amendment. Announced unanimously in Boerne v. Flores, that Court's "proportionality and congruence" test combined
with the Court's robust sovereign immunity jurisprudence to curb congressional efforts to subject states to liability for damages under
federal civil rights statutes. n81 In 2003, however, the Court pulled back, voting 6-3 to uphold provisions of the Family and Medical
Leave Act. n82 Professor Suzanna Sherry has persuasively argued that Hibbs is not consistent with what the Court's prior cases in
this area hold, and that the Court "unmade" precedent in order to reach the result it desired. n83 * * * [*932] When one
focuses on the sweep of the Court's cases (especially within the last five years), as opposed to focusing on
particular decisions, Judge Noonan's claim that the Court had "sided with the states" seems
melodramatic . In fact, it seems as if the Court's moves towards federalism were merely dissonant
notes in an overwhelmingly nationalist melody . n84 That was the thesis of Robert Nagel's The Implosion of
American Federalism, a book that, when it was written, was decidedly heterodox. n85 Nagel argued that whatever moves the
Court was making in the name of "federalism" or "state's rights" were overshadowed - particularly in
its decisions under the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment - by a consistent and
relentless nationalization that began sixty years ago and continued largely unabated, even
during the high tide of the Rehnquist Court's federalism project. He concluded that even ostensibly
"state's rights" or "federalist" justices actually offered a relatively tepid federalism, that "radical
federalism" was unlikely, and that the Court's program of "radical nationalism," particularly in civil
liberties areas was likely to continue unabated. What seemed to be a somewhat peevish dissent
from the conventional wisdom at the time, after Raich, looks prescient. Looking at the case law as
a whole, we wonder whether there was enough life left in judicially-enforceable federalism for
Raich to kill. In retrospect, it seems the Rehnquist Court conjured a zombie federalism that
wandered aimlessly for a while, killing off the occasional federal statute drafted with no thought
as to constitutionality (akin to the usual horror movie zombie victims who wander away from the group), but which, in
the end, was pretty easy to kill without even the aid of a shotgun-wielding action hero.
Dual federalism is unsustainable
Greve 2K (Michael, John G. Searle Scholar, American Enterprise Institute; Ph.D. (Government) Cornell University, 1987,
“Against Cooperative Federalism” Mississippi Law Journal, 70 Miss. L.J. 557, Lexis)
We may not be able to think of such means, much less to put them to work, any time soon. Dual,
competitive (or, in modern
unstable , principally because it frustrates political
and interest group demands. Under realistic conditions, dual federalism's legal institutional
structures will crumble and accommodate anticompetitive, cooperative entanglements. n7 The
corollary proposition is that cooperative federalism, unlike [*560] its virtuous but frail competitive cousin, is
stable. It accommodates the political and interest group demands that dual federalism frustrates,
thus giving organized groups a stake in the system. "Stable" does not mean static: cooperative federalism
public choice parlance, "market-preserving") federalism n6 is
periodically accommodates new demands, at a higher level of aggregate government spending. The moving political equilibrium
point is the next circle of hellish entanglement. n8 "Stable" simply means that fundamental institutional challenges,
and especially attempts to re-introduce competitive structures, will usually founder on
cooperative federalism's political economy. We have nothing resembling a political theory that
would explain how dual, market-preserving federalism might preserve itself , n9 or how it might reemerge from a cesspool of cooperation. The difficulty of the task may help explain why thoughtful scholars have
acknowledged and conceded potent arguments against cooperative arrangements, and then dismissed those arguments on the
grounds that cooperative federalism is real and therefore rational, or at any rate inevitable. n10 Before we succumb to Hegelian
insouciance, though, cooperative federalism's manifest failures and dysfunctionalities compel another look at the problem of moving
from cooperation to competition.
Aff causes centralization- aggregation principle
Reynolds and Denning 05 (Glenn, Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of
Tennessee, and Brannon, Associate Professor of Law and Director of Faculty Development, Cumberland School of Law at Samford
University, Winter 2005, "FEDERALISM AFTER GONZALES V. RAICH: SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: WHAT HATH RAICH
WROUGHT? FIVE TAKES" 9 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 915, Lexis)
In an article written right after Morrison, Professor Adrian Vermeule challenged the assumption that
judicially-enforced limits on the Commerce Clause would promote decentralized policymaking. n38
Vermeule suggested that, on the contrary, " Commerce Clause review ... will promote the
centralization of public policy at the national level by providing congressional coalitions with ex
ante incentives to legislate more broadly , and to create national programs that are more
comprehensive, than they would otherwise choose." n39 Vermeule noted that Lopez and Morrison left
untouched the " aggregation" principle of Wickard v. Filburn, as well as the "national-regulatory
scheme" exception borrowed from Hodel v. Indiana. n40 The latter, Vermeule argued, "may allow
Congress to regulate intrastate activities that are not themselves commercial or economic , so
long as the regulation is integral to the success of a larger valid scheme of (interstate or
commercial) regulation." n41 Permitting the aggregation and regulation of certain activities
essential to the furtherance of a national regulatory scheme, Vermeule wrote, "allows and
encourages Congress to [*923] ensure the constitutionality of otherwise-suspect provisions by
broadening their scope , or by bundling them into a comprehensive scheme of national economic
regulation. The ex ante effect of the current rules, then, may just as easily promote broader
federal regulation - policy centralization - as retard it." n42
Pot Not Key
Federal illegality is a non-issue
Kamin 12 - Professor of Law and Director of the Constitutional Rights & Remedies Program, University of Denver
Kamin, “Keynote: Marijuana at the Crossroads,” Denver
Thus, the
[Sam
University Law Review, Volume 89 Issue 4 (2012)
state has permitted (or at least tacitly endorsed) that which the federal government has officially
prohibited—the possession of mari-juana.8 This development is both contradictory and unproblematic
from a federalism perspective . That is, it is a matter of black letter constitutional law that the federal
government cannot commandeer state governments into helping federal officials enforce the
CSA’s continuing marijuana prohibition.9 And the federal government, although free to prohibit mari-juana under its
Commerce Clause power,10 cannot force the states to pro-hibit particular conduct that they do not wish
to prohibit. Thus, there is nothing inherently illegitimate or inappropriate about the states choosing
to decriminalize or even permit conduct that violates federal law .11 pg. 979
General Fsm ACs 1NC
Alt causes swamp federalism –
The EPA
Yeatman 9-2-14, William Yeatman is Senior Fellow specializing in energy policy and global warming at the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, How the EPA Is Undermining Cooperative Federalism under the Clean Air Act And What Congress Can Do
About It, http://cei.org/sites/default/files/William%20Yeatman%20How%20the%20EPA%20Is%20Undermining%20Cooperative%20Federalism.pdf
When it crafted legislation to fight air pollution, Congress relied on America’s unique system of federalism. The 1970 Clean Air Act
establishes a “division of responsibilities” between the state and federal governments commonly known as “cooperative
federalism.”2 In practice, this means that the federal agency sets minimum standards, which states are left to meet however they
best see fit, subject to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approval. Pursuant to this partnership, “[t]he state proposes”
and “the EPA disposes.”3 Typically, states shoulder 80 percent of the costs of implementing regulations under the Clean Air Act.4
For most of the Clean Air Act’s history, states and the EPA have worked well together. However,
during the Obama administration, there has been a marked shift away from harmonious relations
between these co-sovereigns. This transition from cooperative to combative federalism has led to some
serious problems
EPA takeovers of state air quality programs, known as
Federal Implementation Plans (FIPs), have increased precipitously since
President Obama took office. The Obama administration has imposed more FIPs than the sum of the previous three
administrations—
-eight percent (50 of 51) of ObamaEnvironmental special interests have “captured” the EPA. In return for investing in electoral politics, green groups have been given
By using a legal strategy known as “sue and settle,” the EPA has
effectively undermined states’ authority in favor of environmental special interests in the implementation of
the Clean Air Act. This involves the agency implementing policy changes in response to lawsuits by environmental pressure groups,
rather than pursuant to any explicit delegation by Congress. Sue and settle litigation has tripled during the Obama
administration. Two legislative solutions would restore the proper balance of power between the state and federal
governments pursuant to the Clean Air Act. The first would level the balance of justice when state and federal governments disagree
on how to implement the Clean Air Act. The second would ameliorate the impacts of collusive “sue and settle” policymaking
Obama Administration Ushers in Unprecedented
Expansion of Federal Power at the Expense of States. During the Obama administration, the EPA has
demonstrated an unprecedented usurpation of the states’ role under the Clean Air Act’s system of
between EPA and special interests, to the exclusion of the states. The
cooperative federalism. If the EPA disapproves a state Clean Air Act compliance plan, then the agency is empowered to impose a
Federal Implementation Plan that would achieve the statute’s purpose. 5 Under the Clean Air Act’s cooperative federalism structure,
a FIP is the most drastic and aggressive action the EPA can take against a state government, as it represents a seizure of the
state’s authority.
Obamacare
Moffit 10, Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D., is Senior Fellow in Domestic and Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation,
Revitalizing Federalism: The High Road Back to Health Care Independence,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/06/revitalizing-federalism-the-high-road-back-to-health-care-independence
Americans face a direct and historic challenge to their personal liberty and to their unique citizenship in a federal republic. Though
A ffordable C are A ct (PPACA), official Washington is not merely
radically altering the relationships between individ-uals
and the government as well as the national gov-ernment and the states.
In other words, the PPACA is a direct threat to federalism itself . As
its enactment of the massive Patient Protection and
engi-neering a federal takeover of health care, but is also
Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University, has argued, “Federalism
was already on life
support before the individual mandate. Make no mistake about it, this plan might provide a bill of good health for the
could amount to a ‘ do not resuscitate’ order for federalism .”[1]
Never before has Congress exercised its power under Article I, Section 8 of the Federal
Constitu-tion to force American citizens to purchase a pri-vate good or a service, such as a health
pub-lic, but it
insurance policy.[2] Congress
is also intruding deeply into the internal affairs of the states ,
commandeering their officers, specifying in minute detail how they are to arrange health
insurance markets within their bor-ders, and determining the products that will be sold to their
citizens.
If allowed to stand, this unprecedented concen-tration of political power in Washington will result in the
states being reduced to mere instruments of federal health policy rather than “distinct and
inde­pendent sovereigns,” as James Madison described them in Federalist No. 40.[3]
Africa War--1NC
No escalation
Adusei, energy expert – Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 1/6/’12
(Lord Aikins, “Global Energy Security and Africa's rising Strategic Importance,” http://www.modernghana.com/news/370533/1/globalenergy-security-and-africas-rising-strategi.html)
Additionally, the
prospect of major inter-state conflict in Africa involving the use of deadly weapons that
could destabilise oil and gas supply looks relatively distant . Few African countries possess the destructive
war machines that Middle Eastern countries have acquired over the last 10 to 20 years. In 2010 for example
Saudi Arabia purchased $60 billion worth of U.S. military hardware which experts believe is geared towards countering Iran's arms
build up. Again most of Africa's oil is located offshore and could be exploited and transported relatively
easily with very little contact with the local population. By way of distance the parts of Africa where
most of the oil and gas are located is relatively closer to the U.S. making cost of transportation and the
security associated with it relatively less expensive. These factors make oil and gas from Africa more reliable
than say the Middle East and remain some of the main reasons why Africa's strategic importance is growing among oil and
gas importers.
Low risk of conflict—prefer quantitative methodology
Posner 8— Associate Professor of Political Science at UCLA— James Habyarimana is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Georgetown University—Macartan
Humphreys is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University—Jeremy Weinstein is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. (Daniel, Is
Ethnic Conflict Inevitable? Parting Ways Over Nationalism and Separatism, Foreign Affairs. New York: /2008. Vol. 87, Iss. 4; pg. 138, ProQuest)
If correct, his conclusion has profound implications both for the likelihood of peace in the world and for what might be done to promote it. But is it correct? Do ethnic divisions
inevitably generate violence? And why does ethnic diversity sometimes give rise to conflict? In fact, ethnic differences are not inevitably, or even commonly, linked to violence
on a grand scale. The assumption that because conflicts are often ethnic, ethnicity must breed conflict is an example of a classical error sometimes called "the base-rate
fallacy." In the area of ethnic conflict and violence, this fallacy is common. To assess the extent to which Muller falls prey to it, one needs some sense of the "base." How
political
scientists James Fearon and David Laitin did the math. They used the best available data on ethnic demography for every country in
Africa to calculate the "opportunities" for four types of communal conflict between independence and 1979:
ethnic violence (which pits one group against another), irredentism (when one ethnic group attempts to secede to join co-ethnic communities in other
states), rebellion (when one group takes action against another to control the political system), and civil war (when violent conflicts are aimed at creating a new
ethnically based political system). Fearon and Laitin identified tens of thousands of pairs of ethnic groups that could
have been in conflict. But they did not find thousands of conflicts (as might have been expected if ethnic differences
consistently led to violence) or hundreds of new states (which partition would have created). Strikingly, for every one thousand such
pairs of ethnic groups, they found fewer than three incidents of violent conflict. Moreover, with few exceptions,
African state boundaries today look just as they did in 1960. Fearon and Laitin concluded that communal violence,
although horrifying, is extremely rare. The base-rate fallacy is particularly seductive when events are much more visible than nonevents. This is the case with
frequently does ethnic conflict occur, and how often does it occur in the context of volatile mismatches between ethnic groups and states? A few years ago, the
ethnic conflict, and it may have led Muller astray in his account of the triumph of European nationalism. He emphasizes the role of violence in homogenizing European states
but overlooks the peaceful consolidation that has resulted from the ability of diverse groups-the Alsatians, the Bretons, and the Provencals in France; the Finns and the Swedes
in Finland; the Genoese, the Tuscans, and the Venetians in Italy-to live together. By failing to consider the conflicts that did not happen, Muller may have misunderstood the
dynamics of those that did. Of course, ethnic divisions do lead to violent conflict in some instances. Violence may even be so severe that partition is the only workable solution.
Yet this extreme response has not been required in most cases in which ethnic divisions have existed. Making sense of when ethnic differences generate conflict-and knowing
how best to attempt to prevent or respond to them when they do-requires a deeper understanding of how ethnicity works.
Food Scarcity--1NC
Food insecurity won’t cause war
Allouche 11 The sustainability and resilience of global water and food systems: Political analysis of the interplay
between security, resource scarcity, political systems and global trade ☆
Development Studies, Brighton, UK
Available online 22 January 2011.
Jeremy Allouche
Institute of
At sub-national scales (i.e. the intra-state level and the local level), the link between scarcity and
conflict is more complex. At the intra-state level, recent research on civil wars shows that
countries suffering from environmental degradation (soil degradation, deforestation and freshwater
supply linked to high population density) were indeed more likely to experiance civil war, but that
the magnitude of the effects was secondary to political and economic factors (see for
example [Urdal, 2005] and [Hauge and Ellingsen, 1998]). The same is true for hunger and food
insecurity as a cause of conflict. The work of Collier and the US State Failure Task Force seems to suggest
a possible correlation between food insecurity and civil wars. Collier found a strong relationship between indicators of
deprivation (such as low per capita income; economic stagnation and decline; high income inequality; and slow growth
in food production per capita) and violent civil strife (Collier, 1999). The US State Failure Task Force found that infant
mortality, a surrogate measure of food insecurity and standard of living, was one of three variables most highly
correlated with civil war (Goldstone et al., 2003). However, a number of specialists have challenged the
notion that food insecurity is a proximate cause of conflict and prefer to emphasize
ethnic and political rivalry (Paalberg, 1999). Nonetheless, most analysts would agree that structural conditions
of inequality and hunger are among the underlying causes of conflict. But again, ‘ physical resource scarcity’
is not in most cases the result of insufficient production or availability but is usually
linked to the politics of inequality.
2NC
Fsm
--Centralization 2NC
The courts won’t follow through - federalism is dead
Bryant 13 (A. Christopher Bryant, Professor, University of Cincinnati College of Law.Constitutional Newspeak: Learning to
Love the Affordable Care Act Decision, 39 J. Legis. 15, 42 (2013), Westlaw)
Both friends and enemies of the Rehnquist Court's Lopez and Morrison decisions have already suggested that National Federation
of Independent Businesses may foretell future efforts on the part of the Roberts Court to reinvigorate the two earlier decisions.148
When considered against the historical record, this understanding of the case seems ill-founded.149 For better or worse, that
history impeaches the Court's implied promise to reign in congressional power.¶ It is beyond
credulous to think that after a century of self-defeating fits and starts the Court is now finally
willing and able to impose and enforce meaningful limits on congressional authority . For the first
half of the twentieth century, the Court repeatedly asserted some role in policing the outer
boundaries of the Commerce Clause, along with other explicit grants of power to Congress. But as
often is the case, when confronted with a federal statute a majority of the Justices deemed beneficial ,
the Court abandoned all concern with the limits of congressional *37 power to uphold the law.150 Then,
between 1942 and 1995, the Justices, and eventually the legal profession more generally, honored the spirit of the New Deal
settlement, whereby Congress would be the judge of the scope of its own authority, at least where the object of regulation was in
some sense economic.151
Lopez and Morrison reflected the Rehnquist Court's attempt to make
meaningful this last reservation on congressional power.152 But even that modest effort
foundered the first time the Court encountered a federal statute dividing the American political
right-wing's social conservative and libertarian constituencies.153 For more than a century, the Court has
again and again failed to field a reliable majority consistently committed to limiting the powers of
Congress. Nothing about the five-justice consensus in National Federation of Independent Businesses provides any reason to
expect the future to be different.
Lopez did not revive dual federalism—court deference to the federal government
means the counterplan can’t set an effective precedent
Williams 07 (Norman, Associate Professor of Law, Willamette University. J.D., New York University; A.B., Harvard University,
August 2007, "Constitutional "Niches": The Role of Institutional Context in Constitutional Law: The Commerce Clause and the Myth
of Dual Federalism"
In any event, the
Lopez rule did not herald the substantial restriction on federal legislative authority
that many either hoped or feared. Indeed, the Court's economic activity rule has proven as
unprincipled or porous [*1920] (and maybe both) as the Gilded Age's formalisms. In the seven years
since Morrison, the Court has upheld several federal statutes that regulate noncommercial activity
- the very type of activity Lopez and Morrison said was beyond Congress's authority. In Pierce County
v. Guillen, n379 the Court unanimously upheld section 409 of the Highway Safety Act, n380 which banned the discovery and
admissibility into evidence in any state or federal court proceeding of materials compiled or collected by a state agency for purposes
of planning safety enhancements of dangerous roads. n381 The discovery of accident reports is, of course, quintessentially
noneconomic activity. n382 Nevertheless, without any discussion of Lopez or Morrison, the Court cursorily declared that Congress
"could reasonably believe" that affording confidentially to accident reports and other such documents "would result in more diligent
efforts to collect the relevant information, more candid discussions of hazardous locations, better informed decisionmaking, and,
ultimately, greater safety on our Nation's roads." n383 As a consequence, the congressional measure "can be viewed as legislation
aimed at improving safety in the channels of commerce and increasing protection for the instrumentalities of interstate commerce."
n384 This last statement was the linchpin in the Court's decision for it suggested that, of the three categories of activity that
Congress's commerce power reaches - channels of interstate commerce, instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and intrastate
activities substantially affecting interstate commerce - the Lopez rule was entirely inapplicable to the first two categories. Stated
differently, Congress's commerce power authorized it to regulate noncommercial activity as part of its regulation of the channels or
instrumentalities of interstate commerce. This was an incongruous limitation on Lopez, n385 but, more fundamentally, it undermined
the theoretical basis for the Lopez rule, which rested on the Court's apprehension that some limitation on Congress's power was
necessary to preserve state authority over noncommercial activities. If Congress could regulate noncommercial, intrastate activity
when such activity was related to a channel or instrumentality of interstate commerce, it made no sense to prohibit Congress from
regulating such conduct when it substantially [*1921] affected interstate commerce. The Court surely did not argue that the
regulation of noncommercial activities in the latter category would intrude upon state prerogatives in some, more constitutionally
troubling fashion, and any such claim would be highly dubious. At the same time, the Guillen Court's implicit recognition that
Congress must be able to reach noncommercial activity so as to make real its power over interstate commerce would apply equally
to the regulation of noncommercial activities that substantially affected interstate commerce. Moreover, in limiting Lopez in this
fashion, Guillen introduced yet another layer of formalism into the modern Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence. As noted
above, the modern Court identified three categories of permissible federal regulation. The Court, however, had never defined the
three categories, let alone suggested that they were mutually exclusive or jurisprudentially significant. In fact, they initially had been
listed merely as examples of what Congress could do. n386 Guillen, however, gave these categories profound significance because
the Lopez rule would only apply to regulatory measures falling in the third category. Thus, it became incumbent on the Court (and on
Congress and litigants challenging congressional action) to identify into which category a given federal regulation fell. And, because
the Court had never (and still has not) given any guidance as to how to make that determination, that task invited unbridled
discretion on the Court's part. Indeed, attesting to this fact, the Court typically declares in a conclusory fashion into which category a
given regulation falls. Adding further confusion was the Court's decision in Gonzales v. Raich, n387 in which the Court upheld
Congress's power to prohibit the intrastate growth and personal consumption of marijuana for medical reasons. Once again, the
growth and personal consumption of marijuana seemed to be prototypical noncommercial conduct within the meaning of Lopez.
Moreover, the Guillen limitation on Lopez was inapplicable because, as the Court cursorily declared, the federal regulation of
medical marijuana did not involve a channel or instrumentality of interstate commerce but rather implicated the third category of
congressional action involving intrastate activities substantially affecting interstate commerce. [*1922] The Court's opinion hardly
provides clear guidance. At first, the Court agreed that the cultivation of marijuana for personal, medicinal use was noncommercial
activity, but it incongruously then declared that fact to be immaterial. Invoking Wickard (which Lopez and Morrison had viewed as
limited to economic activity), the Court said that "Congress can regulate purely intrastate activity that is not itself "commercial,' in
that it is not produced for sale, if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the
interstate market in that commodity." n388 And, because allowing the personal cultivation of marijuana would impact the market for
the drug, Congress was acting within its commerce power. n389 Later in the opinion, though, the Court declared that the growth and
consumption of marijuana were "quintessentially economic" activities and therefore within the Lopez and Morrison rule. n390 That
conclusion was made possible, however, only by adopting a capacious definition of "economic activity" as including "the production,
distribution, and consumption of commodities" - a definition that clearly encompassed the activity in Lopez. n391 And, adding
formalism to confusion, the Court then distinguished those cases also on the "pivotal" ground that, there, the challenges were to an
entire provision of a federal act, rather than, as here, the application of an otherwise valid provision to particular conduct. n392 The
Court seemed to be suggesting that facial challenges were permissible but that as-applied challenges were impermissible, even if
the regulated conduct was outside Congress's power. n393 Guillen and Raich are undoubtedly in some tension with Lopez and
Morrison, but to point out that incongruity is not to make any claim about the correctness or prospective vitality of individual
decisions. Academic commentators have been quick to offer theories to reconcile the decisions, [*1923] such as that Congress may
regulate intrastate activities so long as it does so with a "commercial purpose." n394 Alternatively, one might view Guillen and Raich
as indications that Lopez and Morrison were erroneous aberrations in the same way Hammer was and that, like Hammer, the latter
two decisions will wither unused until the Court finally jettisons them entirely. n395 For present purposes, there is no need to judge
which view is the correct one; rather, the key point is that dual federalism remains very much dead, despite calls for or fears of its
resurrection. n396 After Guillen and Raich, it is clear that, in addition to its unbridled authority over intrastate commercial activities,
Congress has the power to regulate noncommercial intrastate activities within the traditional ambit of state authority. In fact,
Congress's commerce authority far exceeds what the Gilded Age Court was prepared to accept. Whatever their
proponents hoped, Lopez did not herald a return to Carter Coal, and Morrison did not presage a
revival of Hammer. n397 IV. American Commercial Federalism in the Twenty-First Century Dual federalism is dead;
indeed, it was never really alive. The Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence differs
substantially depending on whether it is federal or state action that is under review. For federal
action, the Court applies a generous and deferential inquiry, asking whether Congress [*1924] could rationally
believe that the regulated activity involves a channel of interstate commerce, an instrumentality of such commerce, or intrastate
activity substantially affecting such commerce. The Lopez-Morrison limitation that Congress may regulate only "economic activities"
applies only to regulations falling into the third category, and, even then, the lesson of Gonzalez v. Raich appears to be that
Congress may regulate noneconomic, intrastate activity that is part and parcel of some larger commercial activity regulated by
Congress. With regard to state action, the categorization of the subject matter of the regulation, the determination that its nature is
commercial or economic, and the identification of a relationship to some broader regulatory scheme are entirely irrelevant. Rather,
under the Dormant Commerce Clause, states may not act in a parochial fashion, favoring in-state economic interests at the expense
of out-of-state competitors or needlessly exposing interstate commerce to great burdens for little or no justification. There is no
formal linkage between the affirmative and Dormant Commerce Clause doctrines. This divergence is entirely understandable, for the
underlying theoretical concerns driving the two doctrines are themselves unconnected. In the affirmative context, the Court is torn
between two competing concerns. n398 On the one hand, the Court has acknowledged that commerce is a practical, economic
phenomenon and that Congress, if its power to govern interstate commerce is to be made real, must necessarily have the authority
to reach those intrastate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Given the highly interconnected nature of the
American economy, this pragmatic, economic understanding of Congress's commerce power has licensed the adoption of
numerous comprehensive regulatory schemes governing much of American life. On the other hand, and as reaction to that
observation, the Court is also driven by the impulse to circumscribe federal authority so as to reserve some matters exclusively for
state or local regulation. This concern has led the Court to grasp for formal boundaries, such as the commerce-manufacturing rule of
United States v. E.C. Knight Co., the direct-indirect rule of A.L.A. Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States, and, most recently, the
economic activity rule of United States v. Lopez. These, of course, are mutually exclusive concerns, which accounts for the
incoherence in the Court's doctrine when it has tried to accommodate both. As Raich indicates most clearly, the Court can embrace
an economically realistic conception of [*1925] Congress's commerce power or a formalist one, but it cannot coherently embrace
both at the same time. In the dormant context, the Court is driven by a concern for national economic union, a
desire to inhibit retaliatory acts by other states, and a distrust that state political processes will
act in nation-regarding ways. These interests have manifested themselves most clearly in the Court's prohibition on state
protectionism. n399 And even in the absence of such discrimination, the Court's undue burden branch of the Dormant Commerce
Clause also draws upon a fear that state parochialism may corrupt state political processes, leading to the adoption of ineffectual
but costly measures whose costs are largely exported to other states. n400
--Link Turn 2NC
Legislative coalitions will anticipate the court and broaden the scope of
legislation to make it unstoppable
Vermeule 01 (Adrian, Professor of Law, The University of Chicago, "DOES COMMERCE CLAUSE REVIEW HAVE
PERVERSE EFFECTS?" Villanova Law Review, Lexis)
All I have demonstrated so far is that a perverse effect is possible; there is absolutely no reason to assume a priori that
increasing the intensity of Commerce Clause review, from a baseline of no review, causes a linear decrease in
centralization. It may well cause an increase in centralization, as congressional coalitions that prefer a
broad federal regulatory scheme to no federal regulation at all broaden and bundle provisions to
ensure their constitutionality. That response would persist until the Court moved to a far more
intensive form of review a la Thomas. But the Court has no stomach for that course of action; it is
not politically feasible . As a result, the principal consequence of the recent revival of Commerce
Clause review may be to increase the centralization of national policymaking.¶ [*1338] The next question
is whether the possibility of perverse effects is empirically serious or not. There is no "burden of proof" on this question; proponents
of Commerce Clause review who assume a decentralizing effect have no foundation for their assumption, so we have to approach
the empirical question without presuppositions in either direction. Here I shall first sketch some of the variables that an empirical
analysis would have to consider, and then I'll ask what courts should do about the Commerce Clause if (or during the period that)
they have no definitive answer to the empirical question about the magnitude of perverse effects. ¶ One natural starting point leads
down a blind alley. This is the observation that striking down statutes is likely to reduce the total volume of federal law because
political inertia - the costs of legislating produced by bicameralism, presentment, and so on - make it difficult for Congress to
respond by re-enacting a broader or bundled statute to save a statute that has recently been invalidated. It's not so clear that the
conventional image of the inertia-ridden Congress is sensible, but the real flaw in the observation is analytical. It's true that
when narrow statutes like the Gun-Free School Zones Act are invalidated, inertia may prevent
Congress from enacting a correcting statute. The contrary effect, however, is that legislative
coalitions, anticipating judicial behavio r, may broaden the scope of statutes when they are first
enacted, packaging suspect provisions with unimpeachable provisions in order to ensure that
the suspect provisions are held constitutional. The volume of federal lawmaking is a function not only of the number
of extant statutes, but also of their scope. The perverse effect of intermediate intensities of review is to reduce the number of
statutes while broadening the scope of new enactments. The latter effect may dominate the former. ¶ There is also a more subtle
argument: courts should not worry about the perverse effect of current doctrine because the harms of the perverse effect, if any,
have already been felt. The aggregation doctrine has been around at least since Wickard; the
comprehensive-scheme principle has roots in the Shreveport Rate Cases from 1914, and it flowers no later than 1981, when the
Court decided Hodel. Perhaps Congress has already broadened and bundled its enactments to account
for these doctrines. If, on the other hand, Congress is not sensitive to Commerce Clause doctrine, then
the Court's recent decision to initiate more aggressive Commerce Clause review can't make
things worse (from the decentralizers' standpoint).¶ But this point fails to distinguish two possible roles that
doctrines such as the aggregation and comprehensive-scheme principles might play: (1) as safe harbors for congressional exercise
of the commerce power; or (2) as restrictions on the exercise of that power. In Wickard and the other cases, the effect of
emphasizing aggregation or comprehensiveness was to make safely constitutional a law that pressed the limits of contemporaneous
[*1339] Commerce Clause doctrine. n58 After that sort of opinion, it's quite easy to imagine congressional coalitions drawing the
lesson that such doctrines are safe harbors but not restrictions; the Court would invoke them to sustain legislation that regulated
intrastate activities, but would not point to their absence to invalidate intrastate legislation. In that case there would be no incentive
to broaden or bundle enactments. The incentive arises only if the doctrines cut both ways, so that meeting their conditions validates
an intrastate regulation, while failing their conditions makes the regulation invalid.¶ This view explains the seeming puzzle that Lopez
has been the most dramatic Commerce Clause decision in decades even though it effected little surface change in Commerce
Clause doctrine. The answer to the puzzle is that before Lopez, the nominal limits on the commerce power weren't enforced;
legislators had every reason to believe that the Court's repeated warnings about limits on the commerce power were cheap talk, and
that any new statute regulating intrastate activity would be upheld on some ground or other. That answer, however, exacerbates our
uncertainty about the possibility of perverse effects in the future. In the prior period, legislators might have thought that
any intrastate regulation could be enacted under the commerce power, but in important instances
- such as the Gun-Free School Zones Act - they chose to enact regulations of very confined scope. Lopez
and Morrison now give legislators reason to believe that the aggregation and comprehensivescheme principles serve as restrictions, and thus create the incentive to bundle and broaden
provisions into larger and more centralized packages . That incentive will operate, to some degree, in the short
and medium-term; but it is still far too early to tell how strong the perverse effect will be.
The red wolf regulation proves—increasing review causes bundling and more
centralization
Vermeule 01 (Adrian, Professor of Law, The University of Chicago, "DOES COMMERCE CLAUSE REVIEW HAVE
PERVERSE EFFECTS?" Villanova Law Review, Lexis)
For ease of exposition, I shall stipulate that those who support Commerce Clause review do so because: (1) they support policy
decentralization; and (2) they assume that Commerce Clause review will promote that goal. n16 This is a soft rational-choice
assumption that allows maximizing actors to hold preferences over institutional arrangements, as well as over substantive policies.
n17 A different view would hold that the Justices who support Commerce Clause review do so because
they believe the Constitution requires it. But I need not contest that possibility, because all the [*1329] points I want to
make hold whether or not it is true. Even Justices who vote their best constitutional understanding of the Commerce Clause would
want to know, or should want to know, the costs and benefits of doing so - in part because most (plausible) interpretive theories hold
that the consequences of alternative interpretations are themselves relevant to the determination of meaning, n18 even if
consequences are not dispositive, and also because the role morality of the judge does not license blindness to the consequences
of action. So it matters, even on this view of what the Justices maximize, whether the recent resurgence of Commerce Clause
review promotes centralization or localism.¶ The more interesting question is whether the revival of Commerce Clause review will
indeed promote decentralization. The standard assumption is that it will, and that view has intuitive appeal.
Suppose that at some given time, courts are engaging in no Commerce Clause review - roughly the
situation before Lopez. n19 After that time, as the courts move incrementally from no Commerce Clause
review to moderate Commerce Clause review - striking down a couple of statutes, as in Lopez and Morrison judges may assume that centralization decreases linearly. After all, the courts are striking down federal statutes
on the ground that the statute exceeds the federal government's constitutional authority, even though the states may enact precisely
the same rule, absent some other constitutional prohibition. There is also another decentralizing effect: not only
are judges wiping out national regulatory statutes, but legislative coalitions may sometimes take
account of the new constitutional restrictions by filtering out proposed bills that would violate
them (if the risk of judicial invalidation makes Congress less likely, rather than more likely, to enact unconstitutional laws admittedly a murky question).¶ But the assumption that an incremental increase in Commerce Clause
review produces a linear decrease in centralization may get things backwards . Instead, a move from
no Commerce Clause review to some Commerce Clause review may produce an increase in
centralization. To be sure, a further move to even more intensive review - a move from the position of the Lopez majority
opinion to say, Justice Thomas' concurring position n20 - might begin to effect real decentralization. But that is just to say that
centralization, as a function of increasingly stringent Commerce Clause review, might not be continuously decreasing, but
rather might
display an inverted U-shape .¶ [*1330] This inverted U-shape arises if and when the doctrines the
courts use at the intermediate intensities of review allow Congress to enact otherwise-unconstitutional
policies by broadening their scope or by bundling them together with valid policies. The proponent of
Commerce Clause review assumes that if Congress enacts policy P and the courts strike it down ,
then the decision has increased decentralization or, equivalently, prevented a new centralization. But if the courts' rules allow or
encourage Congress to enact P so long as P is broadened to include some admittedly constitutional policy Q, or is bundled together
with policy Q, then the result of striking down P may not be to remit the decision about P to the states. It may simply be to produce a
federal statute that mandates both P and Q, either because Congress reenacts the invalidated statute in its new, more expansive
form, or because Congress anticipates the effect of the judicial rule and enacts the expansive form of the statute in the first
instance.¶ Current doctrine under the Commerce Clause has just this effect of encouraging the broadening
and bundling of federal policies. Two doctrines are critical: the aggregation principle and the comprehensive-scheme
principle. Aggregation is familiar. The Court has said since Wickard v. Filburn n21 that the substantial-effects
test should be applied, not to some particular instance of a regulated intrastate activity, but to the
class of all such instances taken in the aggregate . n22 Morrison added that aggregation has only
been allowed (and presumably will only be allowed) for intrastate activities that are themselves
economic or commercial. n23 It is clear that the aggregation principle "conditions the Commerce Clause power to
accomplish a certain goal on Congress legislating far more broadly than necessary," as John Nagle puts it, because the effect of the
principle is that "if Congress gathers enough substantial impacts into the covered class, the trivial impacts can be regulated, too."
n24¶ The comprehensive-scheme principle has a similar consequence. This principle holds that the regulation of some activity that
Congress could not reach standing alone, because the activity occurs intrastate and lacks a substantial effect on commerce in its
own right, may nonetheless be constitutionally permissible if the regulation of that activity is essential or integral to the maintenance
of a larger regulatory regime governing interstate activity or commercial activity or both. This idea is at least as old as [*1331] the
Shreveport Rate Cases, n25 but it takes center stage in Hodel v. Indiana, n26 which stated that challenged provisions not valid in
themselves will be upheld if they are "an integral part of [a] regulatory program" that is valid when taken as a whole. n27 And the
idea surfaces in Lopez itself in a critical passage that has gone largely unnoticed by commentators. The Gun-Free School Zones
Act, the Court said:¶ ¶ is not an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity, in which the regulatory scheme could be
undercut unless the intrastate activity were regulated. It cannot, therefore, be sustained under our cases upholding regulations of
activities that arise out of or are connected with a commercial transaction, which viewed in the aggregate, substantially affects
interstate commerce. n28¶ ¶ The lower courts, however, did notice this passage, and they have frequently invoked the quoted
passage from Lopez, both before and after Morrison. n29 I'll give some examples below of cases that uphold statutes very much like
the statute struck down in Lopez, merely because those statutes were packaged along with a larger national regulatory scheme. But
bundling provisions can ensure the
validity of all of them. The decision is Gibbs v. Babbitt , n30 in which the Fourth Circuit upheld federal regulations
that limited the killing of endangered red wolves on private land in North Carolina.¶ Lopez and Morrison announced that
the commerce power authorizes congressional regulation of: (1) the channels of interstate
commerce; (2) instrumentalities, persons or things moving in interstate commerce; and (3)
intrastate activity that substantially affects interstate commerce. n31 Gibbs upheld the red wolf
regulation on the ground that it fell within the third Lopez/Morrison category. n32 The court invoked
the aggregation principle to brush aside the objection that killing a single wolf doesn't affect
interstate commerce. n33 Killing all the red wolves would affect interstate commerce by eliminating
the red wolf tourism industry and in other [*1332] ways. n34 But Morrison says that only intrastate
"commercial" or "economic" activities can be aggregated, n35 and killing a red wolf doesn't look
very much like commercial or economic activity. The court said a killing might have a commercial
or economic motivation, if the farmer was trying to protect his livestock or homestead, n36 but so
here I'll mention an important case decided after Morrison which shows that
might carrying a gun around a school, if the gun owner is selling drugs to young children and wants to protect his sales territory
against competitors.¶ Given the weakness of the aggregation argument, it is not surprising that the court also invoked the
comprehensive-scheme principle. n37 The red wolf regulation, the court said, was "sustainable as
'an essential part of a larger regulation of economic activity.'" n38 The plaintiffs in Gibbs hadn't challenged the
facial validity of the Endangered Species Act under the Commerce Clause, so the court could simply assume that the Act is indeed
a valid national regulatory scheme that bundled red wolf protection with protections for many other endangered species in other
states. The bundling appeared critical: "Given that Congress has the ability to enact a broad scheme for the
conservation of endangered species," the court wrote, "it is not for the courts to invalidate
individual regulations." n39 This can only mean that the red wolf regulation, even if unconstitutional
standing alone, was constitutional because it was packaged with a broader set of valid
prohibitions. ¶ This emphasizes one important difference between the comprehensive-scheme principle and the aggregation
principle. The two are closely related, because federal regulation of a class of activities that affects interstate commerce when taken
in the aggregate will often be integral to the success of a comprehensive national regulatory scheme. But the best reading of the
cases suggests that the comprehensive-scheme principle, unlike the aggregation principle, may allow
Congress to regulate intrastate activities that are not themselves commercial or economic , so
long as the regulation is integral to the success of a larger valid scheme of (interstate or
commercial) regulation. The key passage from Lopez, for example, suggests that the scheme taken as a whole must
regulate economic activity, while the ancillary regulation need not itself do so, at least if the ancillary [*1333] regulation "arises out
of" or is "connected to" commercial activity. n40 Judge Edith Jones, who is occasionally unsympathetic to national regulation,
understands the comprehensive-scheme principle in this way. n41 So does Justice Breyer: in an insightful passage in his Morrison
dissent, he asked whether the comprehensive-scheme principle would allow Congress to "save the present law [the Violence
Against Women Act] by including it, or much of it, in a broader 'Safe Transport' or 'Workplace Safety' act?" n42 We don't know, of
course, whether the Court will eventually confirm this understanding, but certainly that's currently the law in the lower courts, as I will
discuss later.¶ B. An Example¶ ¶ The aggregation and comprehensive-scheme principles allow and encourage Congress to ensure
the constitutionality of otherwise-suspect provisions by broadening their scope, or by bundling them into a comprehensive scheme
of national economic regulation. The ex ante effect of the current rules, then, may just as easily promote broader federal regulation policy centralization - as retard it. A simple numerical example will illustrate the effect. Imagine that there are three legislators, A, B
and C. They are considering three proposals:¶ . Proposal 1 is a bill titled the "Gun-Free Nation Act." Section 1 of the Act prohibits the
transportation or use of handguns in interstate commerce and is clearly constitutional under current doctrine. Section 2 of the Act
prohibits the bare possession of a handgun, anywhere.¶ . Proposal 2 prohibits possession of a handgun within 1,000 feet of a
school. This is the "Gun-Free School Zones Act" invalidated in Lopez. n43¶ . Proposal 3 is that there be no federal handgun
regulation (the status quo ante).¶ Our three legislators are assumed to have the following preference ordering over these choices:¶ A
(1>2>3)¶ B (3>2>1)¶ C (2>1>3)¶ (reading "Z(p>q>r)" to mean "legislator Z prefers proposal p to proposal q and prefers proposal q to
proposal r").¶ [*1334] The interesting legislator here is C. Legislators A and B are ideologues who both arrange the bills in order of
their centralizing effects, although they evaluate those effects from opposing normative premises. C, however, has a complex
preference structure: she is a moderate who opposes comprehensive national gun regulation, but prefers that to no national gun
regulation at all. C has a puzzling worldview from the standpoint of someone who is ideologically committed either to seeing any
incremental centralization as good (A) or any incremental centralization as bad (B), because C's preferences aren't arranged in
order of the bill's centralizing tendency. Why might C have that preference structure? Well, why not? Voting for a broad statute
imposes political costs on C, in the loss of political support from regulated parties, but voting to maintain the non-regulation status
quo would forfeit political support from those who desire regulation. In C's case, these forces might net out as described. ¶ Given the
preferences of legislators A, B and C, imagine a series of pairwise votes across the three proposals. In a vote between proposals 1
and 2, 2 wins, while in a vote between proposals 2 and 3, 2 wins. Proposal 2, the Gun-Free School Zones Act, is enacted. n44 After
Proposal 2 is enacted, a court strikes it down as exceeding congressional authority over commerce. Proponents of localism dance in
the streets. Subsequently, however, there is another vote between Proposal 3 and Proposal 1. The winner is Proposal 1 - the Gun-
Free Nation Act becomes law. n45¶ Is Section 2 of that law - the part that prohibits the bare possession of a handgun, anywhere constitutional? The courts of appeals think so. Consider 18 U.S.C. 922(o), which prohibits the simple "possession" of a machinegun
acquired after 1986. n46 The section number should ring a muffled bell. The statute struck down in Lopez was 18 U.S.C. 922(q);
both provisions derive from the Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986. n47 The eight circuits that have considered the
constitutionality of the [*1335] machinegun possession ban have all upheld it. n48 The opinions commonly distinguish Lopez on the
ground that broader federal regulation is more constitutionally defensible. The Third Circuit, for example, reasoned that the GunFree School Zones Act attempted to regulate possession only within school zones - "a discrete area unlikely to have a meaningful
aggregate effect on commerce" - while the machinegun statute should be sustained because it is a general (albeit, intrastate) ban.
n49 This is the perverse effect of the aggregation principle: broaden the statute's reach and there are more applications to
aggregate, until the bar of the substantial-effects test has been cleared.¶ An objection to this analysis is that, after Morrison, only
economic activities can be aggregated, and possession of a machinegun does not look economic in any simple sense. So an even
more popular rationale for upholding 922(o) has been the comprehensive-scheme principle. The Second Circuit, following and
summarizing precedent from all over the nation, distinguished Lopez on the ground that the machinegun statute is "integral to a
larger federal scheme for the regulation of trafficking in firearms." n50 The standard claim is that the federal regulatory scheme both
dampens supply, by prohibiting the trafficking and sale of firearms in interstate commerce, and also dampens demand, by
criminalizing intrastate possession. The demand-side regulation, then, is a necessary auxiliary to the supply-side regulation, and the
supply-side regulation is clearly valid as an interstate regulation of commercial traffic. The flaw in the Gun-Free School Zones Act,
on this theory, is that it didn't ban enough intrastate possession to squelch the demand-side of the firearms market. n51¶ Both the
aggregation theory and the comprehensive-scheme theory support our hypothetical Gun-Free Nation Act. Section 1 is clearly
constitutional. Section 2 can be upheld on the aggregation ground if we describe the prohibition as "economic," and by the Second
Circuit's reasoning it can certainly be upheld as an essential part of a comprehensive regulatory scheme. The ban on handgun
possession is a necessary auxiliary measure for dampening the demand-side of the market for illegal handguns, a market whose
supply-side Congress has attacked by an interstate regulation of unquestioned validity. By either expanding the [*1336]
reach of the prohibition to aggregate more conduct, or by bundling the intrastate prohibition with
a comprehensive interstate regulatory scheme , Congress can ensure the constitutionality of a
provision that would be unconstitutional in its narrower, unbundled state. The upshot is that the Gun-Free
Nation Act will probably be upheld by the courts. The final result is an increase in centralization , relative not
only to the no-regulation baseline, but also to the law held unconstitutional on federalism
grounds. That result is perverse from the decentralizers' point of view. ¶ Put another way,
decentralizers like Justice Thomas have overlooked that if you can't get your first choice, you're not
necessarily better off the closer you get to your first choice . From Thomas' point of view, the first choice would
be an extremely restrictive view of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause. But he can't get that, so Thomas has joined
opinions like Lopez and Morrison, while issuing brief concurrences that tell us he is merely voting for the rule closest to his own
preferences within the feasible set. n52 But the effect of the Court's intermediate position may be to move outcomes away from, not
towards, Thomas' preferences, even relative to the pre-Lopez baseline. If Thomas' first-choice position derives from a preference for
localism, he should consider joining Justice Breyer and the other dissenters.
No Modeling 1NC
No modeling—epistemology disad to their authors
Moravcsik 5 -- Princeton politics professor and European Union Program director
[Andrew, “Dream On America,” Newsweek 1/31/05, http://www.fsteiger.com/DreamOnAmerica.html, accessed 8-28-14]
Dream On America The U.S. Model: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life.
But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards . Not long ago, the
American dream was a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the rest of the
world. East Europeans tuned into Radio Free Europe. Chinese students erected a replica of the Statue of Liberty in Tiananmen
Square. You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to
appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's rhetoric
confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America relentlessly pursuing its narrow national interests. But the greater danger may be
a delusional America, one that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary , that the American Dream lives
on, that America remains a model for the world, one whose mission is to spread the word. The gulf between how
Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of
Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global
security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas
and customs" should spread globally. Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as
a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in
Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is
measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively. Tellingly, the antiBushism of the president's first term is giving way to a more general anti-Americanism. A plurality of voters (the average is 70
percent) in each of the 21 countries surveyed by the BBC oppose sending any troops to Iraq, including those in most of the
countries that have done so. Only one third, disproportionately in the poorest and most dictatorial countries, would like to see
American values spread in their country. Says Doug Miller of GlobeScan, which conducted the BBC report: "President Bush has
further isolated America from the world. Unless the administration changes its approach, it will continue to erode America's good
name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs." Former Brazilian president Jose Sarney expressed the sentiments
of the 78 percent of his countrymen who see America as a threat: "Now that Bush has been re-elected, all I can say is, God bless
the rest of the world." The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. Not only do others not share America's
self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of
faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President
Kerry would have had to confront a similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread
of democracy, free markets and international institutions; globalization, in a word. Countries today have dozens of
political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti-Americanism is especially virulent in Europe
and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways; none made in
America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream," hails an emerging European Union based on
generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law; a model that's caught on quickly across the former
nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as
much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate culture. "First we emulate," one Chinese
businessman recently told the board of one U.S. multinational, "then we overtake." Many are tempted to write off the new antiAmericanism as a temporary perturbation, or mere resentment. Blinded by its own myth, America has grown
incapable of recognizing its flaws. For there is much about the American Dream to fault. If the rest of the world has lost
faith in the American model, political, economic, diplomatic, it's partly for the very good reason that it doesn't work as well anymore.
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: Once upon a time, the U.S. Constitution was a revolutionary document, full of epochal innovations: free
elections, judicial review, checks and balances, federalism and, perhaps most important, a Bill of Rights. In the 19th and 20th
centuries, countries around the world copied the document, not least in Latin America. So did Germany and Japan after World War
II. Today? When nations write a new constitution, as dozens have in the past two decades, they seldom look to the American model.
When the soviets withdrew from Central Europe, U.S. constitutional experts rushed in. They got a polite hearing, and were sent
home. Jiri Pehe, adviser to former president Vaclav Havel, recalls the Czechs' firm decision to adopt a European-style parliamentary
system with strict limits on campaigning. "For Europeans, money talks too much in American democracy. It's
very prone to certain kinds of corruption, or at least influence from powerful lobbies," he says. "Europeans would not
want to follow that route." They also sought to limit the dominance of television, unlike in American campaigns where, Pehe
says, "TV debates and photogenic looks govern election victories." So it is elsewhere. After American planes and bombs freed
the country, Kosovo opted for a European constitution. Drafting a post-apartheid constitution, South Africa rejected American-style
federalism in favor of a German model, which leaders deemed appropriate for the social-welfare state they hoped to construct. Now
fledgling African democracies look to South Africa as their inspiration, says John Stremlau, a former U.S. State
Department official who currently heads the international relations department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg:
"We can't rely on the Americans." The new democracies are looking for a constitution written in modern times and reflecting their
progressive concerns about racial and social equality, he explains. "To borrow Lincoln's phrase, South Africa is now Africa's 'last
great hope'." Much in American law and society troubles the world these days. Nearly all countries reject the United States' right to
bear arms as a quirky and dangerous anachronism. They abhor the death penalty and demand broader privacy protections.
Above all, once most foreign systems reach a reasonable level of affluence, they follow the Europeans in
treating the provision of adequate social welfare is a basic right. All this, says Bruce Ackerman at Yale University Law
School, contributes to the growing sense that American law, once the world standard, has become "provincial." The United States'
refusal to apply the Geneva Conventions to certain terrorist suspects, to ratify global human-rights treaties such as the innocuous
Convention on the Rights of the Child or to endorse the International Criminal Court (coupled with the abuses at Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo) only reinforces the conviction that America's Constitution and legal system are out of step with the rest of the world.
Food
Tech development solves
Thompson 5/13/11 – Dr. Robert L. Thompson is a senior fellow for The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and
professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Proving Malthus Wrong, Sustainable agriculture in
2050” http://scienceblogs.com/tomorrowstable/2011/05/proving_malthus_wrong_sustaina.php
Tools available today, including plant breeding and biotechnology, can make presently unusable
soils productive and increase the genetic potential of individual crops - enhancing
drought and stress tolerance, for example - while also producing gains in yields. Existing tools can
also internalize plants' resistance to disease, and even improve a plant's nutritional
content - meaning consumers can get more nutritional value without increasing their consumption. Furthermore,
modern high-productivity agriculture minimizes farmers' impact on the environment .
Failure to embrace these technologies will result in further destruction of remaining forests. Adoption of
technologies that produce more output from fewer resources has been hugely
successful from an economic standpoint: prior to the price spike in 2008, there was a 150-year downward
trend in the real price of food. The jury is still out on whether the long-term downward trend will resume, prices will
flatten out on a new higher plateau, or they will trend upward in the future. The key is investing in research in the public
and private sectors to increase agricultural productivity faster than global demand grows. Long ago, British scholar
Thomas Malthus predicted that the human population would eventually outgrow its ability
to feed itself. However, Malthus has been proven wrong for more than two centuries
precisely because he underestimated the power of agricultural research and technology
to increase productivity faster than demand. There is no more reason for Malthus to be
right in the 21st century than he was in the 19th or 20th - but only if we work to support,
not impede, continued agricultural research and adoption of new technologies around
the world.
Food scarcity doesn’t cause war
Salehyan, 08 – Department of Political Science, University of North Texas (Idean, “From Climate Change to
Conflict? No Consensus Yet,” Journal of Peace Research, May, palgrave)
First, the deterministic view has poor pre-dictive power as to where and when conflictswill break out. For
every
potential exampleof an environmental catastrophe or resourceshortfall that leads to
violence, there aremany more counter-examples in which con-flict never occurs. But
popular accounts typ-ically do not look at the dogs that do notbark. Darfur is frequently cited as a
casewhere desertification led to food scarcity,water scarcity, and famine, in turn leading tocivil
war and ethnic cleansing.5Yet, foodscarcity and hunger are problems endemic tomany
countries – particularly in sub-Saharan
Africa – but similar problems elsewhere havenot led to large-scale violence. According tothe
Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations, food shortages and mal-nutrition affect more
than a third of the popu-lation in Malawi, Zambia, the Comoros,North Korea, and
Tanzania,6although noneof these countries have experienced full-blown civil war and
state failure. Hurricanes,coastal flooding, and droughts – which areall likely to intensify as the climate warms –are
frequent occurrences which rarely lead toviolence. The Asian Tsunami of 2004,although caused by an oceanic
earthquake,led to severe loss of life and property, flood-ing, population displacement, and resourcescarcity, but it did
not trigger new wars inSoutheast Asia. Large-scale migration has thepotentialto provoke conflict in receiving areas(see
Reuveny, 2007; Salehyan & Gleditsch,2006), yet most migration flows do notleadto conflict, and, in this regard, social
inte-gration and citizenship policies are particularlyimportant (Gleditsch, Nordås & Salehyan,2007). In short, resource
scarcity, naturaldisasters, and long-term climatic shifts areubiquitous, while armed conflict is rare;therefore,
environmental conditions, bythemselves, cannot predict violent outbreaks.
Second, even if local skirmishes overaccess to resources arise, these do not
alwaysescalate to open warfare and state collapse.While interpersonal violence is more
or lesscommon and may intensify under resourcepressures, sustained armed conflict on amassive
scale is difficult to conduct. Meier,Bond & Bond (2007) show that, undercertain circumstances, environmental
condi-tions have led to cattle raiding among pas-toralists in East Africa, but these conflictsrarely escalateto
sustained violence. Martin(2005) presents evidence from Ethiopia that,while a large refugee influx and
populationpressures led to localized conflict over naturalresources, effective resource managementregimes were able to
ameliorate these ten-sions. Both of these studies emphasize therole of localdispute-resolution regimes andinstitutions –
not just the response of centralgovernments – in preventing resource con-flicts from spinning out of control.
Martin’sanalysis also points to the importance ofinternational organizations, notably the UNHigh Commissioner for
Refugees, in imple-menting effective policies governing refugeecamps. Therefore, local hostilities need
notescalate to serious armed conflict and can bemanaged if there is the political will to
do so.
CP
A2 “Lone Wolf—FBI Stuff”
The FBI has devoted 100% of its resources to counter-terrorism even with the
existence of the RICO statute – their evidence is from 2006 and too old
Masnick 1/6/14 – Mike, “FBI Admits It's Not Really About Law Enforcement Any More; Ignores Lots Of Crimes To Focus On
Creating Fake Terror Plots” https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140106/00442525768/fbi-admits-its-not-really-about-lawenforcement-any-more-ignores-lots-crimes-to-focus-creating-fake-terror-plots.shtml
A couple years ago, it was revealed that the FBI noted in one of its "counterterrorism training manuals" that FBI agents could "bend
or suspend the law and impinge upon the freedoms of others," which seemed kind of odd for a government agency who claimed its
"primary function" was "law enforcement." You'd think that playing by the rules would be kind of important. However, as John
Hudson at Foreign Policy has noted, at some point last summer, the FBI quietly changed its fact sheet, so
that it no longer says that "law enforcement" is its primary function, replacing it with "national
security." Of course, I thought we already had a "national security" agency -- known as the "National Security Agency." Of
course, while this may seem like a minor change, as the article notes, it is the reality behind the scenes. The FBI
massively beefed up resources focused on "counterterrorism" and... then let all sorts of other
crimes slide . Including crimes much more likely to impact Americans, like financial/white collar fraud. Between 2001 and
2009, the FBI doubled the amount of agents dedicated to counterterrorism , according to a 2010
Inspector's General report. That period coincided with a steady decline in the overall number of criminal
cases investigated nationally and a steep decline in the number of white-collar crime investigations. "Violent crime,
property crime and white-collar crime: All those things had reductions in the number of people
available to investigate them," former FBI agent Brad Garrett told Foreign Policy. "Are there cases they missed? Probably."
The article correctly notes that this has had a big impact: The reductions in white-collar crime investigations became obvious. Back
in 2000, the FBI sent prosecutors 10,000 cases. That fell to a paltry 3,500 cases by 2005. "Had the FBI continued investigating
financial crimes at the same rate as it had before the terror attacks, about 2,000 more white-collar criminals would be behind bars,"
the report concluded. As a result, the agency fielded criticism for failing to crack down on financial crimes ahead of the Great
Recession and losing sight of real-estate fraud ahead of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. The article accurately notes how the
FBI has basically started ignoring a tremendous amount of financial/white collar crime, but unfortunately never bothers to do the
flipside: to look at whether or not the FBI has been even remotely effective in the whole "national security" aspect that is now its
"primary function." Because, from the evidence we've seen, it seems like a disaster. Rather than tracking down and capturing actual
terrorists (remember how the FBI knew all about the Boston bombers, but did nothing about them?), it seems like the FBI has been
coming up with ways to keep itself busy that have nothing to do with really protecting national security. So... what has the FBI been
doing? Well, every time we hear anything about the FBI and counterterrorism, it seems to be a case where the FBI has been
spending a ton of resources to concoct completely made up terrorism plots, duping some hapless, totally unconnected person into
taking part in this "plot" then arresting him with big bogus headlines about how they "stopped" a terrorist plot that wouldn't have even
existed if the FBI hadn't set it up in the first place. And this is not something that the FBI has just done a couple times. It's happened
over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And those are
just the stories that we wrote about that I can find in a quick search. I'm pretty sure there are a bunch more stories that we wrote
about, let alone that have happened. All of these efforts to stop their own damn "plots" screams of an agency that feels it needs to
Thousands of agents were reassigned from stopping
real criminals to "counterterrorism" and when they found there were basically no terrorists
around, they just started making their own in order to feel like they were doing something... and to have headlines to appease
"do something" when there's really nothing to be done.
people upstairs. The government seems to have gone collectively insane when it comes to anything related to "terrorism."
HR
Ext1—Pot Insufficient
Marijuana legalization doesn’t end the overall prohibitive approach or trigger a
shift to harm reduction
Jean Daudelin 9-10, Professor at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,
9/10/14, “A less-violent, illicit drug market? It is possible,” http://opencanada.org/features/comments/a-less-violent-illicit-drug-marketit-is-possible/
The Americas are slowly moving towards the full legalization of cannabis. Uruguay is still alone among
national governments to have gone all the way, but for marijuana at least, hard-line prohibition is quickly being
replaced by a range of flexible arrangements, from the legalization of ‘personal doses,’ to the decriminalization of
possession – as in the ‘ticket’ option being considered by Canada’s Justice Minister, Peter MacKay.
These changes are long overdue, and the fuller the liberalization, the better, in spite of the increase in consumption which should
logically follow the drop in price and the lifting of sanctions. The benefits of consumption are most likely limited, but the potential
negative health and social consequences of higher cannabis consumption pale when compared to the massive damage inflicted by
tobacco, alcohol and prescription opioids. Moreover, much of the harm caused by the criminalization of cannabis is
tied to the huge social and economic impact of marijuana-related arrests and convictions in the United States, an
issue that would simply vanish with legalization.
Eliminating that part of the problem is a good thing. But the main challenge lies elsewhere . The ‘War
on Drugs’ has been an unmitigated disaster, mainly because it has created the conditions for mass murder in Latin
America. In five years, between 2007 and 2012 and according to the latest available data (UNODC, 2014), 773,052 people have
been murdered in the region: 274,585 in Brazil, 121,683 in Mexico, 92,274 in Colombia, 84,980, in Venezuela, 36,237 in Guatemala,
and so on. By no means all of those homicides were drug-related, but most analysts agree that a very large proportion of them is
tied to drugs or more precisely to conflict over shares of domestic markets and export routes.
But to this carnage, cannabis and its traffic have contributed very little . Cocaine is the culprit and
its legalization , which would destroy the black market and eliminate the violence currently tied to it, is not in the cards.
Not here, nor in Latin America. Something else must be sought.
By any humane standard, harm reduction in this case has to mean the reduction of homicidal violence and
the limited liberalization that is politically feasible would simply not help . Decriminalization of cocaine
possession and personal use, moreover, could very well lead to increased consumption and create larger, more valuable and more
competitive drug markets. What is needed are policies that make those markets less violent.
No chance of spillover to broader drug reform
Benoît Gomis 14, Visiting Scholar at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Network for
Research in Terrorism, Security and Society, February 2014, “Illicit Drugs and International Security: Towards UNGASS 2016,”
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/home/chatham/public_html/sites/default/files/0214Drugs_BP2.pdf
In the last three years, the drug policy debate has evolved more than in the previous three decades. However, there
remain a number of obstacles to making recent developments sustainable ahead of UNGASS 2016.54
Although Latin American leaders have been instrumental in pushing the debate forward, the political context is more complicated
today than it was around the 2012 Summit of the Americas. There is widespread consensus in the region that the
‘war on drugs’ has failed, that drugs are primarily a health problem, and that use and possession should be decriminalized
further. However,
disagreements remain on how to control supply (in particular on the effectiveness of
regulation models), what law enforcement should look like in a regulated market, and what public health
strategies mean in practice, especially in countries that have had difficulty in controlling parts of their territory and collecting
taxes.55
Political leadership towards reform is also more hesitant than it was in 2012. In Mexico, President Enrique
Peña Nieto has been willing to discuss alternative policies. He has said he would aim to prioritize social and economic issues, and
readjust security policy towards reducing violence while ending widespread US access to Mexican intelligence. However, the
Mexican government is undertaking other ambitious reforms, including in the energy and education sectors and in economic and
fiscal policy. The country’s diplomatic efforts with the United States have also prioritized immigration and gun laws over drug policy
reform. President Santos of Colombia has taken a back seat in the international debate to some extent, focusing instead on the
peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), and on the
forthcoming presidential elections. Guatemala, under the leadership of President Molina and Foreign Minister Fernando Carrera,
remains very proactive and continues to punch above its weight in the drug debate. However, it is a small country that needs
partners and has been more reluctant than its neighbours to engage in a review of its domestic policy.56
Two elements further complicate the political context in Latin America. The revelation by Edward Snowden of widespread US
intelligence activities that included targeting the emails of former president Felipe Calderón and the text messages of Peña Nieto
when he was running for president may have an impact on Mexico’s collaboration with the United States. Although such intelligence
practices were arguably always presumed within the country’s political elite, their public revelation means that government leaders
need to address the issue.57 In addition, the populations of Latin American countries are still predominantly
against more progressive drugs policies. In Uruguay, 63 per cent of the population were opposed to the marijuana bill
in July 2013.58 Around the same time in Mexico, only 32 per cent of the population supported marijuana legalization.59 The support
has been even lower in Colombia and Peru – respectively 13 per cent and 11 per cent in 2010.60
In the United States, the referendums in Colorado and Washington, and the OAS report, have put pressure on the
Obama administration to discuss domestic and international drug policy reforms more openly .
Some notable progress has been made domestically. US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the federal government
would order prosecutors to sidestep federal mandatory minimum sentencing in certain low-level cases as a way to reduce the prison
population. He also confirmed that the Department of Justice would not seek to challenge the marijuana regulation laws in Colorado
and Washington.61 However,
concerns remain on the international stage as to how open the United
States will be in discussing and promoting reform given the country’s historical reluctance to
challenge international drugs conventions .
Meanwhile Russia has expressed concerns over flows of drugs from Afghanistan following the withdrawal
of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2014. It is pushing for harsher counter-narcotics policies
in the country, as the latest UN report indicates a record annual increase of opium production.62 Russia has also supported
a series of counter-narcotics programmes focused on law enforcement and interdiction training in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, and in Central American countries. Russia’s uncompromising prohibitionist
stance continues to be popular in numerous countries in Asia and Africa that advocate zerotolerance policies.63
Europe certainly has lessons to offer regarding drug policy but European governments have largely stayed away from the recent
international debates. In countries such as Portugal, where progressive policies have been implemented, budgetary pressures and
the rise of conservative views are endangering progress domestically.64 In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister David Cameron
rejected the parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee’s proposal for a Royal Commission to comprehensively reassess current
policies. Home Secretary Theresa May has been reluctant to discuss reform, even disregarding recommendations from the Advisory
Council on the Misuse of Drugs and putting in place a ban on khat.65 An internal review into drug policy concluded that decreases
in use in the country demonstrate that existing policies are working. This argument, however, ignores the international nature of the
challenge and the larger responsibility of West European governments in tackling a truly global and complex problem that fuels high
levels of organized crime and violence. In addition, the United Kingdom faces an increase in the use of other drugs, including new
psychoactive substances and over-the-counter or prescription medicine.
Other regions of the world face increased levels of political uncertainty and insecurity related to drug production and trafficking. West
Africa struggles to tackle the multiple challenges linked to the growing trade through the region, including corruption, organized
crime, financing of extremist organizations, an increase in addiction and an increased burden on law-enforcement agencies and
other already struggling public institutions.66 In Afghanistan, the withdrawal of ISAF from the country and the transition to an
Afghan-led security apparatus shows little promise of mitigating opium production and related corruption.67
This international political context makes it very difficult, if not impossible , to substantially
reform the UN conventions. However, current difficulties and the overall complexity of the problem should not be used as
an excuse for policy inaction and inertia. The current situation – characterized by persistent levels of violence, insecurity and
corruption, changing trade routes causing instability in new regions, the emergence of new drugs and the negative impact of drug
policies – is no longer sustainable.
Marijuana doesn’t spill over---too much support for the drug war
Renee Scherlen 12, associate professor in the department of government and justice studies at Appalachian
State University, Ph.D., Political Science, University of Texas, Austin, “The Never-Ending Drug War: Obstacles to
Drug War Policy Termination,” PS, Political Science & Politics45.1 (Jan 2012): 67-73, proquest
The Political Environment of the Drug War Policy Termination Process¶ At present, one could argue that there is
a mildly positive prevailing political ideology with regard to drug war termination. Most notably, the drug czar stated in an interview
with The Wall Street Journal that he was committed to "completely and forever end[ing] the war analogy, the war on drugsâ[euro]
(Kerlikowske 2009). The Obama administration has stated publicly that it will support needle exchange programs and it will no
longer support federal raids on medical marijuana facilities in states that have legalized medical use of marijuana. This discussion
no one in the administration openly supports "policy
termination.â[euro] Much of this change is presented as modifications; this suggests that opposition to the drug war
has compromises short of complete termination. Medical marijuana could be considered a
compromise move ; in terms of the policy termination process, this lessens the likelihood of policy
termination. The coalition in favor of termination grows annually; for instance, StoptheDrugWar.org (DRCNet),
indicates some openness to change. However,
established in 1997, is now a 27,000-person online network (based on membership figures). The Drug Policy Alliance has 76,619
has yet to attract powerful political allies. A review of the advisers or
honorary board members (likely indicators of alliance) show numerous " formers :â[euro] ... former governors, former
subscribers. The coalition, however,
district attorneys, former surgeon generals, and former judges. For instance, the recent "Report of the Global Commission on Drug
Policyâ[euro] issued in June 2011 condemning the war on drugs has an impressive roster of participants: the former president of
Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso; the former president of Mexico, Ernesto Zedillo; the former president of Colombia, Cesar
Gaviria; and the former US secretary of state, George P. Shultz.
Sitting political actors rarely , if ever, voice support
for policy termination. The final factor, speed, is clearly not a characteristic of the drug war policy termination process.¶ All of
the constraints noted by DeLeon restrain the drug war policy termination process. The antitermination coalition still has
considerable size and strength . Many people might argue that the changes supported by the Obama administration
(needle exchange, increased emphasis on public health) are a sign of dynamic conservation. The O ffice of N ational
D rug C ontrol S trategy is still legally prohibited from considering legalization or decriminalization. The
costs associated with policy termination are typically presented as high. The cost-savings of drug war termination (and potential
taxation of drugs) is frequently questioned:¶ The only way the State can effectively get rid of the black market for marijuana, and
thus save these law enforcement dollars, is to take away the substantial profits in the market and allow the price of marijuana to fall
to an amount close to the cost of production. Doing so, however, will mean a substantially smaller tax revenue than currently
anticipated from this change in policy¶ (Pacula 2009).
AIDS: Russia/India/China—2NC
Their ev says Russsia, China, India- all wrong:
Russia
Kaiser Health News, 7 ["UNAIDS’ HIV/AIDS Estimates for Russia ‘Exaggerated,’ Country’s Top Health Official Says,"
kaiserhealthnews.org/morning-breakout/dr00049079/]
UNAIDS’ HIV/AIDS Estimates for Russia ‘Exaggerated,’ Country’s Top Health Official Says New UNAIDS figures
that indicate between 900,000 and one million people in Russia are HIV-positive are "exaggerated," Gennady Onishchenko,
the country's top health official, said on Monday, RIA Novosti reports. Onishchenko added that the "data gathering
techniques" used by the agency are not "understandable" to Russian officials (RIA Novosti, 11/26). UNAIDS in a report
released last week said that Russia represents 66% of the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among former Soviet Union
countries. Michel Kazatchkine -- executive director of the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria -- on Monday when
discussing the Russian estimates said that UNAIDS had completed substantial work "in order to obtain objective figures,"
AFP/Yahoo! Health reports (AFP/Yahoo! Health, 11/26). Onishchenko said that Russia has registered 403,000 HIV cases since
1987, when the first case of the virus was reported in the country. "Russia is the only country which carries out
testing of risk groups," he said, adding that this year, 22 million people will be tested for HIV (RIA Novosti, 11/26). Russian
experts say the actual number of HIV-positive people in the country is about 1.3 million (AFP/Yahoo! Health, 11/26).
India
Sikora, 7 -- Daily Mail [Karol, "The Aids epidemic that never was and why political correctness influences too much medical
spending," forum1.aimoo.com/RethinkersWorldwideforum/m/News/Did-Aids-Inc-just-blink-1-1006327.html\
Billions of pounds were spent telling us we were ALL at risk from Aids. But as scientists now admit the threat was
overblown, Britain's top cancer expert attacks the political correctness that influences too much medical spending. Medical care
should always be geared to the saving and protecting of lives. Compassion in the face of any type of human suffering should be at
its core. But sadly, the vicissitudes of political correctness can dictate medical priorities. Certain diseases become
fashionable in the public consciousness and so attract more political support and attention. A classic
example of this pattern is HIV/Aids. When this burst on the scene in Britain in the early Eighties, it became the biggest health
issue facing the country, over-riding all other medical problems. Hard-hitting: An image from the Government's Aids awareness
campaign in the Eighties It monopolised ministerial attention and swallowed huge sums of public money in campaigns to raise public
awareness. The gay community, which was the most likely to be affected by Aids, was at the forefront of the pressure for vastly
increased state funding. A whiff of panic filled the air, with projections of a soaring rate of mortality from Aids before the end of the
century. The Aids terror was extended overseas. It was said that a massive pandemic, on the scale of a modern Black Death, was
sweeping through the Third World. Death, in the form of HIV/Aids, was sweeping his cruel scythe through Africa and the Indian subcontinent, extracting an unprecedented toll. Just as the Aids scare in Britain galvanised the bureaucracy of the state into expensive
action, so the international agencies, such as the UN, the World Health Organisation and a host of Third World charities, were
gripped by a sense of urgency about the need to tackle Aids. Yet it has turned out that much of this panic, however understandable,
was misplaced. In Britain, contrary to all the official propaganda of the Eighties that everyone was at risk, it turns out that the
disease has largely been confined to certain specific groups: gay men, drug users and migrants. All those with HIV and Aids, of
course, deserve all the medical support that can be given, but the truth is that the overblown panic, based more on politics than
science, led to a gross misallocation of resources. Between the early Eighties and 1993, the Government spent £900 million on
advertising, educating about and treating Aids. And the 1987 public awareness campaign - comprising the now famous Tombstone
and Iceberg leaflets and adverts, as well as a week of educational TV programmes - cost £20 million. At one stage in the early
Nineties, we had the absurdity that the number of people in Aids counselling, helplines and other jobs exceeded the conceived
number of sufferers. Moreover, for every three Aids victims there was one Aids organisation. A fortune was wasted on lecturing
people who were never at risk. Now it turns out that, to an extent, the same is true of the developing world, where the UN has
admitted that the scale of Aids has been exaggerated. An official report published yesterday shows that the grim forecasts have
been over-blown. In reality, far from seeing a remorseless rise, Aids has been on the decline for a decade.
According to the UN's latest, more honest, analysis, the number of people living with HIV has shrunk from
nearly 40 million to 33 million. Furthermore, new infections have been calculated at 2.5 million, a drop of more than 40 per cent on
last year's estimate. In India, the number of Aids sufferers has been revised downwards from six million to
three million.
China
Hayoun, 13 -- Al Jazeera ["World AIDS Day: Has China's PM made strides in HIV prevention?,"
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/1/china-hiv-aids-awarenessadvocatehujiacallsgovernmenteffortsafaca.html]
China's most widely recognized sex education and reproductive health advocate, Li Yinhe, told Al Jazeera
that the premier's round of talks with HIV/AIDS NGOs last year represented a turning point in the
government's relationship with HIV/AIDS advocates. "I think the government's has changed ... In the past (the
government) did not support (NGOs) because they conducted anti-government activities," she said. "Li Keqiang is really great,
keeping an open attitude and developing (these relationships with NGOs)," she added. Li Yinhe is a widely published
author and former professor in China, who has, in the past, taken a less confrontational tone with the government in addressing the
need for sex education and health facilities to combat sexually transmitted diseases. She said Hu, whose activity for HIV/AIDS
sufferers has essentially been outlawed since his first detention in 2002, "doesn't really know what he's talking about." Pressed for
reasons why she thought that of Hu, Li said, "I'm not very clear who he is. He must be a very young man." Still, Li believes that by
finally working together with the government, NGOs may be able to "more easily deal with this
issue."
afghan
Not k2 pakistan
might provide Pakistani leaders is a small measure of reassurance that in a conflict , the Pakistani
army would not find itself crushed between an Indian advance and a closed Afghan border. But
while in a constrained and unlikely case, the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan could provide Pakistan with some options in
the case of an Indian attack, there is no way in which the “strategic depth” provided by Afghanistan could aid in the development of
an offensive military option against India. In short, strategic logic suggests that a Taliban-controlled
Afghanistan would reduce the risk of conflict by reducing insecurity among Pakistani elites.
Because it would not provide Pakistan with any additional offensive capabilities, it ought not
increase insecurity among Indian decision makers. Lower levels of insecurity usually result in
lower levels of risk taking and less pressure for military pre-emption in times of crisis. An Islamist
— and likely anti-Indian — regime in Afghanistan almost certainly eases the security dilemma in
South Asia rather than increasing it.
Indopak 1NC
Zero risk of indopak war
Kumar, 13 (Sanjay – correspondent for The Diplomat, “Pakistan’s Elections: A Harbinger of Peace on the Subcontinent?”, The
Diplomat, http://thediplomat.com/the-pulse/2013/05/16/pakistans-elections-a-harbinger-of-peace-on-the-subcontinent/)
Now that we know Nawaz Sharif will succeed Raja Pervez Ashraf as the next prime minster of Pakistan, it’s worth noting that
Pakistan has never seen a democratic transition as smooth as the one set to take place between the outgoing Pakistan Peoples
Party (PPP) and the newly elected Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or PML(N).
In its 66-year history as an independent nation, Pakistan has witnessed three military coups and extended rule by army generals. Even today, the nation is plagued by political
turmoil. But
this year seems to be a new chapter
in its turbulent history.
The verdict from the 2013 elections gives the PML(N) 123 seats out of 254 declared results as of Tuesday evening, giving Sharif’s party an unassailable lead over its main rivals, PPP and Imran Khan's Pakistan
Tehreek-e-Insaf, which had secured 31 and 26 seats, respectively. The electoral results for the final 18 of Pakistan’s 272 National Assembly seats remain unannounced.
voter turnout this year was impressive, with 60 percent of all registered voters turning up to the polls, up from a 45
percent turnout in the last national elections in 2008. This impressive turnout came despite the threat of violence. More than
150 people lost their lives and scores were injured in attacks by insurgents across the country during the election campaigning
period and on election day. This brave statement by the people of Pakistan sends a new message to the outside world
and gives hope for peace on the Subcontinent.
In particular, India has a stake in the democratic success of its neighbor, with whom relations have been
The
turbulent. There
is widespread hope in India that Sharif, who formed a new Indo-Pakistani relationship in the 1990s, will
revive the peace process and improve Islamabad’s ties with New Delhi.
Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Sharif after his emphatic
victory. In a letter, Singh talked about charting a new course for the relationship between the two countries
and invited his Pakistan counterpart to visit India.
Sharif reciprocated and emphasized the need for improved relations with India. He further stressed the importance
of resolving issues, including Kashmir, through peaceful means. He even informally invited the Indian
premier to his inauguration ceremony in Islamabad.
According to veteran Pakistani author and political analyst Ahmed Rashid, circumstances may be more favorable this
time for Sharif to improve ties with New Delhi. He writes, “During his two premierships in the 1990s, Sharif made genuine
efforts at peace with India but was thwarted by an aggressive and uncompromising army.” But, he continues,
“The army—faced with a severe weakening of the state—now seems more amenable to improving relations with
New Delhi.”
The Hindu opines that where Sharif
“gives most hope is in his strong and unambiguous articulation of
better India-Pakistan relations, though this will depend on his stated determination to correct the civil-military imbalance, and
reclaim the national agenda from the security establishment. Whether he can succeed is another question, but India will be hoping
he will.”
As Pakistan passes through a rough economic patch, deeper engagement with its immediate neighbor will not only give
the volatile country increased political stability but will also boost growth . India can play a major role in
reviving Pakistan's bankrupt economy as a potential investor.
According to an article published by the New Delhi-based think tank Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), trade
between the two South Asian countries could receive renewed impetus under the new regime, barring complications from
opposition by the religious right. However, the IDSA article also notes that “one should not expect a lot of change in policies related to terrorism targeted at India or its aversion
to India’s presence in Afghanistan.”
there is a general mood of optimism in India about the regime change in Pakistan. Just a couple of weeks
ago Indian media was full of anti-Pakistan stories in the wake of the attack on Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh in a Pakistani jail. While
most Indian reports were full of jingoism in their coverage of the death of Singh, the election has changed the tone of the
Despite skepticism,
discourse.
The optimism stems from Sharif’s earlier initiatives in the 1990s to deepen ties with India. In 1999, he
started a bus service that runs between Lahore and New Delhi. Then Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Pakistan in the
inaugural bus ride. This bonhomie, however, was short-lived. Later that year hostilities erupted between the two nations at the Kargil sector, when the Pakistani army crossed
the Line of Control under the leadership of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf.
The new leadership in Pakistan has a very tough job at hand: alleviate the deep-seated historical fear and mistrust between the two countries.
Likewise, India will have to show maturity in understanding the changing mood and aspirations of the people of Pakistan.
never before has there been such an overwhelming consensus for Pakistan to
normalize relations with India. If the leaderships of both countries work hard to tap this desire, they may be able to
usher in a new era of peace and progress on the Subcontinent.
New Delhi needs to recognize that
Add on – no spillover
Threat exaggerated- no risk of Afghan spillover destabilizing central Asia.
Radnitz & Laruelle, 13
(“Will Afghanistan Take Central Asia Down with It?” Scott Radnitz is an associate professor of international studies & director of the
Ellison Center for Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies at the University of Washington. Marlene Laruelle is a
research professor & director of the Central Asia Program, Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George
Washington University. August 1, 2013 http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/will-afghanistan-take-central-asia-down-it-8815) KH
U.S. strategists have long imagined that chaos might spread from Afghanistan into Central Asia. In the
1980s, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the CIA in fact tried to facilitate the spread of insurgency from the mujahedeen it
was supporting to infect the Washington’s ideological rival to the north. Yet they found the majority of Soviet Central Asians
unsympathetic to the Afghan cause.
By the same token, today’s strategists exaggerate the threat Afghanistan poses to northern neighbors.
Proponents of the “spillover” are highly selective in the data points they bring to bear, and like
nineteenth-century British imperialists or today’s American neoconservatives, they have fallen victim to “mappism”:
the practice of making predictions about political trends based on geographic proximity and facts
that can be easily displayed on maps, such as ethnic settlement patterns, population density, and natural resources. Such an
approach has its merits, but it also means neglecting other details—such as culture, history and political practices—
which can make all the difference in understanding which scenario plays out.
While the details of how a spillover might unfold are usually left ambiguous, statements by
defense and intelligence planners suggest the following scenario: after NATO withdraws its troops, the Afghan government, lacking
a robust military presence and sufficient funds to buy off rival power brokers, will weaken to the point of collapse or find itself drawn
into a civil war.
Then, sometime after, elements of Afghan chaos spread across to border to the weak, corrupt and poorly governed Central Asian
states, whose populations share religious and ethnic ties with groups fighting in Afghanistan. The result is a region-wide
conflagration—collapsing states, widespread violence, Islamic extremism, rising drug trafficking—a nightmare scenario with dire
implications for U.S. interests. We see three plausible mechanisms by which the admittedly unlikely spillover
could take place: militants, refugees and ideological inspiration.
First, militants engaged in an Afghan civil war can cross the Amu Darya to recruit Central Asians to their cause or to overthrow their
own governments. For this to happen, two assumptions must be correct: that NATO is holding back the deluge of militants, and that
militants would indeed target Central Asia. In fact, NATO does not prevent Afghans from slipping across now if they want to, so
there is unlikely to be a major change next year. Even if, technically, the crossing of Afghan borders with the Tajik, Uzbek and
Turkmen neighbors is easy thanks to corrupt border-guard agencies, Central Asia has never been “invaded” by flows coming from
Afghanistan.
Borders do not keep all the bad guys (nor drugs or any other illicit goods) out, but states are good at sealing borders when they want
to, and crossing the Pamir Mountains is not easy. If the recent past is any guide to the present—and it should be—then the lack of
militant penetration into Central Asia during the last Afghan Civil War (1992-96), when the post-Soviet states were much weaker,
should give pause.
But do militants actually have their sights on Central Asia? Despite what the region’s leaders
have claimed, the presence of anti-government Islamic groups is small, so militants would be starting
almost from scratch. Moreover, the Taliban groups that may take power in Kabul are not interested in an
all-out war with their neighbors, and some, such as the Quetta Shura, have explicitly stated they will
maintain good economic relations with the Central Asian states , in part because Afghanistan
imports electricity from the region. They would therefore be unlikely to support calls for toppling
established regimes.
If not a deliberate campaign by militants, what about the inadvertent spread of chaos through refugees? Here,
the supposition is that coethnic (Uzbek, Tajik) refugees fleeing violence in Afghanistan stream across the border, overwhelm state
capacity, and drive locals to take up arms. A similar sequence of events can be seen in Central Africa from Congolese refugees, or
from the civil war in Syria. Yet unlike those cases, Central Asian governments are unwilling to accept large
numbers of refugees and have the ability to keep them out. In the 1990s Afghan Civil War,
despite the humanitarian need, the “frontline” states of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan together took in only a few tens of
thousands of Afghan refugees, compared with 2.6 million in Pakistan and Iran.
So if the spread of people is unlikely, then what about ideas? For a true mappist, this is the most enticing yarn to spin, as the
religious and cultural affinities appear from afar preordained to produce spillover. If the Taliban ends up taking power in
Afghanistan, strategists fear a bandwagon effect, as locals try to emulate Afghanistan and install
new, Islamist regimes. But what kind of inspiration could Afghanistan provide?
Despite cultural similarities on the surface, Central Asians regard the Taliban with disdain . They
are justifiably fed up with their corrupt, repressive leaders. But the image of protracted violence in Afghanistan
(followed by public executions, prohibitions on music and alcohol, and stoning for adultery) is certain to weaken domestic Islamists,
buttress the legitimacy of secular-authoritarian regimes, and convince ordinary people to accept the devil they know. Central
Asians interested in Islamic ideas tend to admire the Turkish or the Malaysian model , and remain
influenced by Islamic debates emanating from Russia, but do not consider the Taliban as a model
to follow.
U.S. officials must keep in mind that the spillover narrative supports two claims from Central Asian
governments that are self-serving, erroneous, and counterproductive for U.S. policy.
First, Central Asian governments pushing the spillover claim: we are threatened and need help. In arguing that their sovereignty is at
risk, they have successfully played the victim card vis-à-vis their Afghan neighbor. Thus, U.S. policy for the region post-2014 is
focused on border security and the fight against drug trafficking, two programs that have yielded littlesuccess. The expected
rise in narcotraffic post-2014 will not be a spillover from Afghanistan but “business as usual”
carried out by senior officials in both Afghanistan and the Central Asian states. Moreover, the “nonlethal” material to be given to
Afghan and Central Asian armies by NATO nations upon the latter’s exit could assist Central Asian armies and security services in
repressing their own populations.
Vague: Pot 1NC (:20/:35
Legalization requires specifying how drugs are made legally available
Mark Haden 2, Adjunct Professor of the UBC School of Population and Public Health, “Illicit IV Drugs: A Public Health
Approach,” CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH VOLUME 93, NO. 6,
http://journal.cpha.ca/index.php/cjph/article/download/390/390
The existing laws could be changed to remove legal sanctions. With
“decriminalization”, criminal prosecution is not an
option for dealing with drugs. This term is often confused with the term “legalization” which specifies
how drugs can be legally available . The term “decriminalization” is limited in its utility , as it only
states what will not be done and does not explain what legal options are available . Proponents of
“decriminalization” usually distinguish between personal use, and trafficking and smuggling. Those who profit from the black market would still be
subject to criminal charges but personal use would not be subject to legal sanctions. Decriminalization, or benign neglect, means ignoring the problem
and results in unregulated access to drugs of unknown purity and potency.
Vote neg:
Fairness—legalize can include hundreds of regulations which radically alter the
case neg we need- makes the aff a moving target and spikes out of our disads
Legal education—vote neg on presumption
Charles D. “Cully” Stimson 10 is a Senior Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Before joining The Heritage Foundation, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; as a local, state, federal, and military
prosecutor; and as a defense attorney and law professor. “Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No” Legal
Memorandum #56 on Legal Issues September 13, 2010. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuanawhy-citizens-should-just-say-no ac 6-18
Theoretical arguments in favor of marijuana legalization usually overlook the practical matter of
how the drug would be regulated and sold . It is the details of implementation , of course, that will
determine the effect of legalization on families, schools, and communities. Most basically, how and where would
marijuana be sold?
OR
**Skills- research proves vagueness crushes critical thinking and motivation
Clarity is the strongest predictor of student success--strong statistical support
CONSTANCE V. HINES et al University of South Florida DONALD R. CRUICKSHANK and JOHN J. KENNEDY The Ohio
State University. “Teacher Clarity and Its Relationship to Student Achievement and Satisfaction” American Educational Research
Journal Spring 1985, Vol. 22, No. I, Pp. 87-99 DOI: 10.3102/00028312022001087
Relationships between the clarity behaviors of teachers and the dual outcome measures of student achievement and satisfaction
were examined. Relatively reliable
measures of clarity (both of a low-inference and high-inference nature) on 32
preservice teachers who taught the same lesson within a smalt-group laboratory setting were
generated by (a) trained observers, fb) participating students, and (c) the teachers themselves.
The
of teacher clarity correlated highly, and both were significantly
and positively related to post instructional measures of student achievement and student
satisfaction . A number of specific clarity behaviors have been identified that appear to be strongly and
directly linked to desirable student outcomes.
Research on teacher clarity and its antithesis, teacher vagueness, has been accumulating since clarity was
identified as the most promising teacher-effects variable by Ro
high and relatively low-inference measures
senshine and Furst (1971) in their review of 50 process-product studies. Good and Grouws (1977), for example, reported that
general clarity
of instruction (process) was one of the effective correlates of student achievement
(product) in their observational study of fourth-grade mathematics instruction. Evans and Guymon (1978). in a study of
the effects of clarity of explanation on student learning and student perceptions of teacher effectiveness, found clarity to be a
significant correlate of student achievement. Research on inhibitors of teacher clarity (e.g.. the
use of vague terms and mazes) has shown that examined inhibitors were negatively correlated with
student achievement, and that clear teaching discourse was positively related to achievement (Land
& Smith, 1979; Smith, 1977; Smith & Edmonds, 1978).
1NR
Impact Calc – 1NR
DA outweighs and turns case
A. Magnitude – massive war in the middle east – escalates, nuclear –
extinction
B. Timeframe – immediately collapses the deal – causes fast prolif – that’s
Edelman
Iran-US relations are a conflict dampener- prevent global wars
Adib-Moghaddam, 14 – London Middle East Institute Centre for Iranian Studies chair
[Arshin, MPhil and PhD, Reader in Comparative Politics and International Relations at SOAS, University of London, interviewed by
Firouzeh Mirrazavi, " Renewed Iranian-American Relations Stabilize World Politics – Interview," Eurasia Review, 2-16-14,
www.eurasiareview.com/16022014-renewed-iranian-american-relations-stabilize-world-politics-interview/, accessed 2-19-14]
I am in no doubt that renewed Iranian-American relations will have a stabilizing effect on world politics in general. The two
countries have merging interests and ultimately they are actors that can deliver. One of the reasons why the foreign policy of both
countries was not effective in the different strategic theatres that you have mentioned is exactly because there was no dialogue to
align them where necessary. This region needs peace and stability. The human suffering of the last decades is unbearable. The
threat of al-Qaeda continues to be real and urgent. Iran and the United States must sit on the same table in order to deliberate about
how to bring about a security architecture that will outlaw, once and for all, the use of force in the region. It is central that this is not
pursued in exclusion of other regional actors. Iran and the United States will continue to disagree on a range of issues, certainly
Palestine, Hezbollah, Bahrain etc., but I do not see any reason why these differences could not be negotiated within a diplomatic
context. Certainly, they are not more serious than the differences that the United States has with China.
Prolif destroys US leadership—turns harm reduction advantage
Todd Sechser, prof. at the University of Virginia, “Nuclear Weapons,” 12/30/2008, http://faculty.virginia.edu/tsechser/Sechser-Haas2009.pdf
What are the implications of the preceding argument for U.S. foreign policy? There are two separate policy questions to consider:
first, whether the United States should try to prevent its adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons; and second, whether it should
continue to adhere to a doctrine of universal nonproliferation. The answer to the first question is unequivocally affirmative. The
arguments in this chapter do not imply that the United States should stop trying to pre-vent its adversaries from acquiring nuclear
weapons. Even if nuclear weapons are stabilizing overall, they could nevertheless permit hostile states to counter the
power and influence of the United States, potentially threatening U.S. interests. A nuclear Iran, for example, might seek to
deter, resist, or blackmail the United States. Stopping proliferation to U.S. adversaries will therefore remain an essential pillar of U.S.
foreign policy even if the proliferation optimists are correct. On this, the optimists and pessimists can probably agree.
Turns commerce clause – massive war, violence spills over
---A2 Deterrence
Iranian nuclear development has placed the region on unstable ground –
nuclear deterrence theory is not applicable specifically to the Middle East
because of Israeli fears of nuclear weapons – Strike goes nuclear
Ward 12 (Alex, studying for a Masters in International Relations from Durham University, "Iran's Nuclear Programme and the
Stability of the Middle East."EInternational Relations RSS, http://www.e-ir.info/2012/03/02/irans-nuclear-programme-and-thestability-of-the-middle-east/)
All in all, Iran’s nuclear programme has already had a profoundly destabilizing effect upon the region’s security architecture, evoking
an “intense concern about the restructuring of the region’s power relations” (Kaye & Wehrey, 2007: 112). This has led to Western
and Israeli concerns of a revisionist state pursuing an increasingly emboldened and subversive foreign policy, propagated further by
Ahmadinejad’s demagogic rhetoric. Indeed, fears of a revitalized Iranian pursuit of regional hegemony are shared by the GCC
states, particularly over the perceived Iranian fostering of a ‘Shia Crescent’ (Gause, 2007). Despite Iran’s intentions being most
suitably framed through the lens of defensive realism (Barzegar, 2005), Iran’s nuclear programme nonetheless has raised concerns
that run the danger of spiralling into a nuclear arms race due to the security dilemma (Mattair, 2007). On the contrary, Waltz’s
nuclear deterrence theory offers a more positive outlook, suggesting that, because of the possibility of MAD, a nuclear arms race
would inhibit direct military conflict, compelling states to adopt more diplomatic means to solve crises. However, the lack of
adequate inter-state communication infrastructures, the high possibility of an Israeli pre-emptive strike and the potential
crystallisation of a proliferation-induced anarchic multipolar system serve only to nullify the argument for nuclear deterrence,
shaping the post-nuclear Middle East into a region characterised by an increasingly unstable multipolar strategic order, plagued by
the spectre of all-out nuclear apocalypse.¶
Goes Nuclear
A. Religious and ethnic conflicts
Orde F. Kittrie, Associate Professor, law, Arizona State University, “A Nuclear Iran: The Legal Implications of a Preemptive
National Security Strategy: Emboldened by Impunity: The History and Consequences of Failure to Enforce Iranian Violations of
International Law,” SYRACUSE LAW REVIEW v. 57, 2007, p. 528-532.
fear that an Iranian
nuclear arsenal will unleash a cascade of proliferation across the Middle East was heightened by the
disclosure in November 2006 that six Arab states have recently begun to accelerate efforts to acquire nuclear
technology. n90 An editorial in the Egyptian government daily newspaper Al-Ahram put it as follows: "Iran's nuclear capability ... will spur many powers in the region to develop a
nuclear program." n91 Such a cascade of proliferation in the Middle East would likely lead to the worldwide collapse of the
already tottering nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) regime. n92 In addition, the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the
Middle East tinderbox, with its existing border disputes, religious fanaticism, ethnic hatreds, unstable
governments, terrorist groups, and tendency for conflicts to spiral out of control, seems likely to
result in nuclear war.
Another danger of Iran acquiring a nuclear arsenal is that many of its neighbors in the Middle East would feel compelled to follow suit. The
B. Israel first strike
Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior editor, “Thinking About the Unthinkable in the Middle East,” COMMENTARY, v. 106 n. 6, December
1998, p. 34+.
If preemption is largely ruled out as an option, what then?
To reduce its vulnerability--enemy missiles can arrive within ten minutes from
firing--Israel may well be compelled to adopt a "launch-on-warning" posture for both its conventional and nuclear
forces. For the purpose of considering this eventuality, we may assume that Israel has indeed developed a secure retaliatory force of the kind Tucker saw as
Israel is a tiny country,
and in a nuclear environment it would not have the luxury of waiting to assess the damage
from a first strike before deciding how to respond. Thus, in any future crisis, at the first hint from satellite intelligence or some
other means that a missile fusillade was being prepared from, say, Iran or Iraq, Israel, to protect its populace, would have to
punch first. And it would have to strike not only at missile sites, some of which it might well miss, but at a broader range of targets--communications
essential to stability. Even so, however, this would not offer much reassurance. Unlike its neighbors, and unlike the U.S.,
facilities, air bases, storage bunkers, and all other critical nodes--so as to paralyze the enemy and thus rule out the possibility of attack. These are the
such a posture presents grave problems. Lacking secure second-strike forces of their
Iran and Iraq would be under tremendous pressure to
launch their missiles first--to "use them or lose them." In other words, what this scenario leads to is
the prospect of both sides' moving to a permanent position of hair-trigger alert. It is a
nightmarish prospect. The possibility that nuclear war might break out at any moment--by
accident, miscalculation, or design--would inevitably place an intolerable strain on Israel's freedom of
implications of launch-on-warning. Clearly,
own, and aware that Israel would no doubt try to hit them preemptively,
military movement, and take a no less heavy toll on civilian morale.
Frontline
GOP is just short of a veto-proof majority- Obama’s PC is holding on-the-fence dems off
now- that’s 1NC Everett.
Vote is not veto-proof now- BUT Obama’s on a short leash- dems are under pressurePC key
Klapper, 12-4 -- Associated Press
[Bradley, "New Iran sanctions supporters seek veto-proof bloc," Associated Press, 12-4-14, news.yahoo.com/iran-sanctionssupporters-seek-veto-proof-bloc-071515139--politics.html, accessed 12-31-14]
New Iran sanctions supporters seek veto-proof bloc
Congressional hawks are struggling to build a veto-proof majority for new Iran sanctions despite wide discontent among
lawmakers over the lack of progress from more than a year of nuclear talks with Iran, recently extended for seven more months.
One week after world powers and Iran failed to meet their own deadline for a deal, many in Congress are decrying the stalemate
and what they perceive as widespread concessions by the United States and its partners for few steps by Iran to dismantle its
nuclear program. Rhetoric aside, however, there has been no serious push yet in the Senate that would match a package of new
sanctions approved by the House a year and a half ago. And even though Senate Republicans will be in the majority next month,
there is no clarity on what is going to happen. That's because President Barack Obama has threatened to veto any new sanctions
legislation while American diplomats push for an accord that would see Iran accept stricter limits on its uranium enrichment activity
for a gradual easing of the international sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy. Sanctions proponents thus need 67 votes
out of 100 in the Senate, and administration officials have been lobbying furiously to keep them below that threshold.
Incoming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., hasn't spoken on the subject since criticizing his Democratic rival, Sen. Harry
Reid of Nevada, for standing in the way of sanctions legislation in early November. That was before the midterm elections in which
Democrats received a drubbing. McConnell hasn't spelled out specific plans for when he can set the agenda. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.,
a leading anti-Iran voice in the Capitol, said last month he was still working on building a veto-proof majority in the Senate, though
he was more confident about sufficient support in the House. New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, the outgoing Democratic
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this week he is working with Kirk to redraft a bill they authored in 2013
which was stymied by administration pressure . It's unclear how many Democrats will support Menendez, whose
relations with the White House and State Department have become increasingly acrimonious over Iran. A minority of Republicans
may balk, too. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a possible presidential candidate, expressed optimism Wednesday about the
negotiations and with the constraints on Iran's nuclear program that U.S. and international negotiators have delivered. A year ago,
Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona joined Paul in declining to sign on to the Menendez-Kirk sanctions package. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.,
the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chairman, is vowing to increase pressure on Iran but has focused his energy on assuring
Congress has a say in a final deal and lawmakers lay down acceptable parameters for any agreement. In any scenario, Republicans
will need significant Democratic support to pass new sanctions on Iran, which says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
only. Administration officials believe they have a short window to negotiate unimpeded by Congress. But they know they're on a
short leash, with many Democrats under pressure from groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel
lobby, to join the sanctions push.
L: Courts—A2 “Delay”
It could be announced now
McElroy, 10 (Lisa, SCOTUS Blog, 1/27, “The last two days in plain English: Overturning precedent, per curiam opinions, and
pluralities” http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/01/the-last-two-days-in-plain-english/#more-15646)
Take Monday’s short-as-can-be decision in Briscoe v. Virginia . Now, I and others on this blog have discussed the case from
any number of angles (see here, for example). But for those of you watching and reading out there, Monday’s decision may have
slipped right by you – that is how unexpected it was to some of us, in the timing at least. Why? Well, because the case was only
argued two weeks ago, as discussed here. Usually, it takes the Court a while to reach agreement about the proper outcome of a
case, then draft an opinion. As I discussed last week when explaining why we waited for quite some time for the
Citizens
United decision, these decisions are extremely important and far-reaching. But in Briscoe , the Court decided the case
quickly and definitively in what Richard Freidman, one of the attorneys in the case, has called a G . . . . VR.
Violates - should - voter for jurisdiction
Summers 94 (Justice – Oklahoma Supreme Court, “Kelsey v. Dollarsaver Food Warehouse of Durant”, 1994 OK 123, 11-8,
http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/DeliverDocument.asp?CiteID=20287#marker3fn13)
4 The
legal question to be resolved by the court is whether the word "should" 13 in the May 18 order
connotes futurity or may be deemed a ruling in praesenti.14 The answer to this query is not to be divined from rules of grammar;15
it must be governed by the age-old practice culture of legal professionals and its immemorial language usage. To determine if the omission (from the
critical May 18 entry) of the turgid phrase, "and the same hereby is", (1) makes it an in futuro ruling - i.e., an expression of what the judge will or would
do at a later stage - or (2) constitutes an in in praesenti resolution of a disputed law issue, the trial judge's intent must be garnered from the four
corners of the entire record.16
[CONTINUES – TO FOOTNOTE]
13 "Should" not only is used as a "present indicative" synonymous with ought but also is the past tense of "shall" with various shades of meaning not
always easy to analyze. See 57 C.J. Shall § 9, Judgments § 121 (1932). O. JESPERSEN, GROWTH AND STRUCTURE OF THE ENGLISH
LANGUAGE (1984); St. Louis & S.F.R. Co. v. Brown, 45 Okl. 143, 144 P. 1075, 1080-81 (1914). For a more detailed explanation, see the Partridge
quotation infra note 15. Certain
contexts mandate a construction of the term "should" as more than merely
indicating preference or desirability. Brown, supra at 1080-81 (jury instructions stating that jurors "should" reduce the amount of
damages in proportion to the amount of contributory negligence of the plaintiff was held to imply an obligation and to be more than advisory); Carrigan
v. California Horse Racing Board, 60 Wash. App. 79, 802 P.2d 813 (1990) (one of the Rules of Appellate Procedure requiring that a party "should
devote a section of the brief to the request for the fee or expenses" was interpreted to mean that a party is under an obligation to include the requested
segment); State v. Rack, 318 S.W.2d 211, 215 (Mo. 1958)
("should" would mean the same as "shall" or "must" when
In praesenti means literally "at the
present time." BLACK'S LAW DICTIONARY 792 (6th Ed. 1990). In legal parlance the phrase denotes that which in law is
presently or immediately effective, as opposed to something that will or would become effective in the
future [in futurol]. See Van Wyck v. Knevals, 106 U.S. 360, 365, 1 S.Ct. 336, 337, 27 L.Ed. 201 (1882).
used in an instruction to the jury which tells the triers they "should disregard false testimony"). 14
L: Courts—2NC
Courts link
Mirengoff 10 [Paul E. Mirengoff, JD Stanford, Attorney in DC,
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aNOGdaFrKhYJ:www.fedsoc.org/debates/dbtid.41/default.asp+obama+minimalism+blame+court+confirmation&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a,
6-23-10]
There's a chance that the Democrats' latest partisan innovation will come back to haunt them. Justice Sotomayor and soon-tobe Justice Kagan are on record having articulated a traditional, fairly minimalist view of the role of judges.
If a liberal majority were to emerge -- or even if the liberals prevail in a few high profile cases -- the
charge of "deceptive testimony" could be turned against them. And if Barack Obama is still president at
that time, he likely will receive some of the blame .
All negative politics get tied to Obama
Nicholas and Hook 10 [Peter and Janet, Staff Writers—LA Times, “Obama the Velcro president”, LA Times, 7-30,
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/30/nation/la-na-velcro-presidency-20100730/3]
If Ronald Reagan was the classic Teflon president, Barack Obama is made of Velcro. Through two terms, Reagan eluded
much of the responsibility for recession and foreign policy scandal. In less than two years, Obama has become ensnared
in blame. Hoping to better insulate Obama, White House aides have sought to give other Cabinet
officials a higher profile and additional public exposure. They are also crafting new ways to explain the
president's policies to a skeptical public. But Obama remains the colossus of his administration — to a point
where trouble anywhere in the world is often his to solve. The president is on the hook to repair the Gulf Coast
oil spill disaster, stabilize Afghanistan, help fix Greece's ailing economy and do right by Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department
official fired as a result of a misleading fragment of videotape. What's not sticking to Obama is a legislative track record that his
recent predecessors might envy. Political dividends from passage of a healthcare overhaul or a financial regulatory bill have been
fleeting. Instead, voters are measuring his presidency by a more immediate yardstick: Is he creating enough jobs? So far the verdict
is no, and that has taken a toll on Obama's approval ratings. Only 46% approve of Obama's job performance, compared with 47%
who disapprove, according to Gallup's daily tracking poll. "I think the accomplishments are very significant, but I think most people
would look at this and say, 'What was the plan for jobs?' " said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.). "The agenda he's pushed here has
been a very important agenda, but it hasn't translated into dinner table conversations." Reagan was able to glide past controversies
with his popularity largely intact. He maintained his affable persona as a small-government advocate while seeming above the fray
in his own administration. Reagan was untarnished by such calamities as the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marines stationed in
Beirut and scandals involving members of his administration. In the 1986 Iran-Contra affair, most of the blame fell on lieutenants.
Obama lately has tried to rip off the Velcro veneer. In a revealing moment during the oil spill crisis, he reminded
Americans that his powers aren't "limitless." He told residents in Grand Isle, La., that he is a flesh-and-blood president, not a comicbook superhero able to dive to the bottom of the sea and plug the hole. "I can't suck it up with a straw," he said. But as a
candidate in 2008, he set sky-high expectations about what he could achieve and what
government could accomplish. Clinching the Democratic nomination two years ago, Obama described the moment as an
epic breakthrough when "we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless" and "when the rise of the oceans
began to slow and our planet began to heal." Those towering goals remain a long way off. And most people would have preferred
to see Obama focus more narrowly on the "good jobs" part of the promise. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of the population
rated unemployment and the economy as the nation's most important problem. By contrast, only 7% cited healthcare — a singleminded focus of the White House for a full year. At every turn, Obama makes the argument that he has improved lives in concrete
ways. Without the steps he took, he says, the economy would be in worse shape and more people would be out of work. There's
evidence to support that. Two economists, Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder, reported recently that without the stimulus and other
measures, gross domestic product would be about 6.5% lower. Yet, Americans aren't apt to cheer when something
bad doesn't materialize. Unemployment has been rising — from 7.7% when Obama took office, to 9.5%. Last month, more
than 2 million homes in the U.S. were in various stages of foreclosure — up from 1.7 million when Obama was sworn in. "Folks just
aren't in a mood to hand out gold stars when unemployment is hovering around 10%," said Paul Begala, a Democratic pundit.
Insulating the president from bad news has proved impossible . Other White Houses have tried doing so with
more success. Reagan's Cabinet officials often took the blame, shielding the boss. But the Obama
administration is about one man. Obama is the White House's chief spokesman, policy pitchman,
fundraiser and negotiator. No Cabinet secretary has emerged as an adequate surrogate. Treasury
Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is seen as a tepid public speaker; Energy Secretary Steven Chu is prone to long, wonky digressions
and has rarely gone before the cameras during an oil spill crisis that he is working to end. So, more falls to Obama,
reinforcing the Velcro effect: Everything sticks to him. He has opined on virtually everything in the hundreds of
public statements he has made: nuclear arms treaties, basketball star LeBron James' career plans; Chelsea Clinton's wedding.
Few audiences are off-limits. On Wednesday, he taped a spot on ABC's "The View," drawing a rebuke from Democratic
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, who deemed the appearance unworthy of the presidency during tough times. "Stylistically
he creates some of those problems," Eddie Mahe, a Republican political strategist, said in an interview. " His favorite pronoun
is 'I.' When you position yourself as being all things to all people, the ultimate controller and
decision maker with the capacity to fix anything, you set yourself up to be blamed when it doesn't
get fixed or things happen." A new White House strategy is to forgo talk of big policy changes that are easy to ridicule.
Instead, aides want to market policies as more digestible pieces. So, rather than tout the healthcare package as a whole, advisors
will talk about smaller parts that may be more appealing and understandable — such as barring insurers from denying coverage
based on preexisting conditions. But at this stage, it may be late in the game to downsize either the president or his agenda. Sen.
Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said: "The man came in promising change. He has a higher profile than some presidents because of his
youth, his race and the way he came to the White House with the message he brought in. It's naive to believe he can step back and
have some Cabinet secretary be the face of the oil spill. The buck stops with his office."
Yes, courts link
Harrison 5—Professor of Law—University of Miami, FL [Lindsay, “Does the Court Act as "Political Cover" for the Other
Branches?,” http://legaldebate.blogspot.com/]
While the Supreme Court may have historically been able to act as political cover for the President
and/or Congress, that is not true in a world post-Bush v. Gore. The Court is seen today as a politicized
body, and especially now that we are in the era of the Roberts Court, with a Chief Justice hand picked by the President and
approved by the Congress, it is highly unlikely that Court action will not, at least to some extent, be blamed on
and/or credited to the President and Congress. The Court can still get away with a lot more than the
elected branches since people don't understand the technicalities of legal doctrine like they understand the actions of the
elected branches; this is, in part, because the media does such a poor job of covering legal news. Nevertheless, it is
preposterous to argue that the Court is entirely insulated from politics, and equally preposterous
to argue that Bush and the Congress would not receive at least a large portion of the blame for a Court
ruling that, for whatever reason, received the attention of the public.
IL: Diplomacy Solves
Deal is key to Khamenei’s political survival- only sanctions override- this is the best
evidence on internal Iranian politics
Kahl, 12-31 -- Georgetown foreign affairs professor
[Colin, associate professor in Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow and director
of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. From 2009 to 2011, he was the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, "The Danger of New Iran Sanctions," National Interest, 12-31-14,
nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-danger-new-iran-sanctions-9651?page=4, accessed 12-31-14]
History thus suggests that external economic pressure matters, but the balance of domestic political forces in Iran matters at least
as much—and it is the interaction between the two that matters most of all. The Islamic Republic's authoritarian political system is
not nearly as static or monolithic as many casual observers assume. Rather, it is an arena for contestation between competing
political actors and interests—and the winners of these battles can have considerable influence over the ultimate course Iran takes.
To be sure, Supreme Leader Khamenei is the most powerful actor in the Iranian government, and he is the ultimate decider
on the nuclear issue. But he is not omnipotent or unmovable. More often than not, Khamenei stays above the political fray, waiting
to weigh in on controversial decisions until he has assessed the domestic power balance and the direction the political winds are
blowing. Iran’s domestic politics matter because competing factions place different values on the nuclear program relative to other
national priorities, and they have fundamentally divergent diplomatic and economic worldviews. Iranian moderates—including both
pragmatic conservatives and reformers—believe Iran’s national interests are best served by international recognition and
integration. They value the country’s nuclear program, but they also worry that pursuing nuclear weapons could ultimately leave Iran
less secure by worsening regional tensions and, by making Iran the target of sanctions, ruining the nation’s economy. Consequently,
they may be willing to settle for a nuclear outcome in which Iran maintains some distant, latent capability to develop nuclear
weapons under significant international constraints. Such a capability, in their view, would be sufficient to deter foreign adversaries if
security conditions deteriorate, but would not put Iran so close to an actual bomb that it results in international isolation. For
pragmatists like Rouhani, that latent status was achieved once Iran mastered uranium-enrichment technology, and they seem willing
to trade away more advanced nuclear capabilities to achieve their higher-order objectives of sanctions relief and reintegration into
the international community. In contrast, Iranian hardliners—including so-called Principlists and traditional clerical conservatives—do
not seek integration with the wider world. They embrace a narrative that portrays the United States, Israel and the West as
unrelenting enemies hellbent on toppling the Islamic Republic and depriving Iran of the economic and scientific wherewithal to take
its rightful place among the world’s great nations. They see resistance to the West as the core of Iran’s national identity. And they
view economic self-reliance and the acquisition of a one-turn-of-the-screwdriver-away “threshold” nuclear capability or actual
nuclear weapons as the only means of deterring Western aggression and realizing Iran’s regional ambitions. For this group,
international threats and sanctions simply vindicate their worldview, encouraging them to escalate their own provocative counterreactions. In this clash of perspectives, Khamenei appears closer to the hardliners’ camp. But Khamenei is also concerned about
the legitimacy and survival of the system as a whole, which was badly damaged by the rigged 2009 elections and
the mishandling of foreign and economic policy during Ahmadinejad’s tenure. Rouhani's sweeping election
victory thus mattered not only because of the new president’s own preferences, but because the election itself signaled to
Khamemei that some policy shift was required in order to maintain domestic legitimacy. Anxious to
shore up the system , Khamenei appears willing to give Rouhani a chance to resolve the nuclear impasse,
but only so long as the president and his negotiating team do not cross the leader’s red lines, especially as it relates to defending
Iran’s asserted right to enrichment. If Rouhani can maintain sufficient elite consensus, Khamenei may ultimately agree to
meaningfully roll back Iran’s program as an act of “heroic flexibility” to relieve the economic
pressure created by sanctions.
But he will not support total capitulation. Give
n the significant financial investment—estimated to be at least $100 billion—and political capital the regime has expended to master
uranium enrichment, the supreme leader will not agree to completely dismantle Iran’s program as many in Congress demand.
Indeed, Khamenei probably fears such a humiliation more than he fears economic collapse or targeted military strikes
against his nuclear facilities. If Khamenei senses Rouhani and Zarif are headed in that direction, he will likely pull the rug out from
under continued negotiations, regardless of U.S. threats to escalate the pressure further. And cognizant of this fact, Iranian
hardliners will seize on any sign that Rouhani is being suckered by the West to try to sway the leader's decision. What does all this
mean for the current debate in the Senate over new Iran sanctions? It means that any member of Congress truly
committed to a diplomatic outcome should recognize America’s acute interest to ensuring that Iranian
moderates maintain their fragile momentum within Iran’s political system. The Revolutionary Guard and
other hardliners are already fighting a rearguard action against the Geneva agreement, with a war of words breaking out in recent
weeks between Zarif and the Guards’ top commander, Major General Mohammad Jafari, over the course of Iran’s nuclear and
foreign policy. These same forces would undoubtedly seize on Congressional legislation threatening new sanctions and
demanding de facto nuclear surrender as the latest example of American perfidy, using it to rebut Rouhani’s claim that an
accommodation with the West that protects core Iranian interests is possible. Hardliners have consistently argued that Iranian
compromise is just a prelude to greater U.S. pressure. Khamenei suspects this too. Threatening new sanctions in the immediate
aftermath of the first meaningful Iranian concessions in a decade, as the proposed Senate legislation does, risks validating that
view. The Senate bill could also lead to provocative Iranian counter-reactions at an extraordinarily delicate moment for diplomacy.
Indeed, nearly one hundred hardline Iranian parliamentarians have already drafted legislation that would mandate escalating
enrichment to the nearly-bomb-grade 60 percent level if more U.S. sanctions are imposed. Given thirty-five years of distrust
between Tehran and Washington, it would not take much perceived bad faith by either party to reverse the modicum of
confidence built at Geneva. It is difficult to imagine negotiations surviving such a tit-for-tat retaliatory cycle. Finally, Rouhani’s
ability to forge elite consensus for the additional concessions required for a final nuclear deal hinges on his ability to deliver
meaningful sanctions relief, not just avoid an increase in sanctions. Yet by imposing demands that Iran completely dismantle its
enrichment program—which Khamenei, hardliners and the majority of the Iranian public view as unacceptable capitulation—prior to
lifting U.S. sanctions, the proposed Senate legislation will make it extremely difficult for Rouhani to build a coalition in favor of further
compromise. The net effect will be to make a comprehensive, peaceful resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis more difficult to
achieve. In 2005, the last time Iran and the West had an opportunity for a nuclear breakthrough, Iran walked away from negotiations
on a comprehensive accord because moderates were discredited. Hardliners came to dominate the Iranian political scene and the
nuclear threat grew. History is not doomed to repeat itself, but it easily could if Congress inadvertently helps the forces of
confrontation regain lost ground.
TOD/Thumper Frontline
Iran vote first
The Tower, 1-4 ["Senator: Congress Looks to Start 2015 by Demanding Up or Down Vote on Any Iran Nuke Deal,"
www.thetower.org/1484-senator-congress-looks-to-start-2015-by-demanding-up-or-down-vote-on-any-iran-nuke-deal/]
Senator: Congress Looks to Start 2015 by Demanding Up or Down Vote on Any Iran Nuke Deal
In a year-end interview with Steve Inskeep of NPR, Sen. Marco Rubio said that he expected legislation forcing an up or down
Congressional vote on any deal with Iran to come up early in this legislative session: Al-Monitor reports: Probably the first vote in
my sense will be something that will require any deal to come before Congress for approval, the way a treaty would,” Rubio told the
“Morning Edition” program in a year-end interview scheduled to run on New Year’s Day. “That’s my sense of where we would initially
go.” … “Some of my colleagues certainly have expressed to me that they would rather pass a bill that does two things: One, it
requires congressional approval, which I also support; and two, would trigger sanctions upon a failure of a deal some point over the
next six months,” Rubio said. “Additional sanctions would probably be triggered as being put in by a failure to reach an ultimate
agreement.”
MUST READ (UQ, PC, A2 Thumpers/WW) – 1NR
Obama has just enough PC to keep dems in line- their thumpers are already priced in,
every issue now just bolsters unity- BUT new distractions like the plan can still de-rail
Sink, 12-19 -- The Hill White House correspondent
[Justin, "Obama seeks to prolong power," The Hill, 12-19-14, thehill.com/homenews/administration/227628-obama-seeks-toprolong-power, accessed 12-30-14]
And Obama's success in winning over members of his caucus on the funding bill underscored that he can still effectively
twist Democratic arms toward his policy priorities. That leverage will be crucial headed into a series of deadlines for mustpass legislative business, including securing funding for the Department of Homeland Security, raising the debt ceiling, and
renewing the charter for the Export-Import bank. “There are a whole bunch of these speed bumps that will really require the
administration to thread
the needle,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (DNev.). And the White House appears confident that it can maintain sway on the left , despite
the recent fissures . While progressives felt betrayed by provisions in the spending bill that rolled back rules
included in the Wall Street reform bill, they are elated over the Cuba news. And the White House has other recent victories
that it sees as building a reservoir of support with progressives. Obama’s support for net neutrality regulations,
announced in a blog post days after the midterms, helped repair his standing with both tech-savvy millennials and Silicon
Valley donors. And the confirmation of Surgeon General Vivek Murthy — who faced fierce opposition from the right over his
support for gun control — gave liberals a rare victory on that issue. The president’s immigration plan has boosted his
standing 10 points among Hispanics, according to an NBC / Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday. But aides also acknowledge
that the president's achievements wouldn't be gaining notice if they were still battling some of the crises that dominated headlines
over the summer — including the Ebola crisis and the flood of unaccompanied minors over the southern border. One official argued
the effective resolution of those situations helped enable the president's work on other issues to gain resonance. White House
officials are also optimistic after a generally successful second ObamaCare enrollment period, and believe the confirmation of a
dozen judicial nominees in the lame duck will pay additional dividends down the road. In his final two years in office, Obama hopes
to use dozens of new officials confirmed in the Senate’s final days to both protect his first-term accomplishments and build upon
them. Some executive action will also look to shore up the president’s standing on the issue of financial reform. “I do anticipate that
we’re going to expend some time and energy next year and the year after trying to counter the efforts of Wall Street firms and their
lobbyists,” Earnest said earlier this week. And the White House is thought to be preparing additional action to help blue-collar
workers, including a new regulation forcing employers to make more workers eligible for overtime pay. Earnest and other White
House officials have also acknowledged that they’re preparing for the president to much more aggressively use his veto pen in the
coming months. Republicans have indicated they plan to pass legislation on a slew of hot-button issues, from the Keystone XL
pipeline to ObamaCare to repealing Obama’s immigration reform actions. Each instance is certain to offer red meat to
Republicans, but also give the president and congressional Democrats the opportunity to stand unified against the rollback of
their policy priorities.
Status quo is Goldilocks- Obama looks badass but isn’t actually doing anything really
controversial. He’s uniting the party, not pushing the envelope- plan reverses
Cohen, 12-27 – Century Foundation fellow
[Michael, "The Honey Badger Presidency," Boston Globe, 12-27-14, www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/12/26/obama-honeybadger-presidency/RQC0zWwE7g6bQKLC8LBk4L/story.html?p1=Article_InThisSection_Bottom, accessed 12-29-14]
Yet, last week when Obama gave his end-of-the-year press conference, he very much appeared to be a man without a care in the
world — energetic, confident, and seemingly liberated. With two years left in his presidency, Obama should be a lame duck. Instead,
he looks more like the honey badger. In a popular and hilarious YouTube clip, the honey badger has been immortalized as a bold,
fearless, and undaunted creature who doesn’t care. That’s pretty much been Obama’s modus operandi since the midterm elections.
First there was Obama’s trip to China, in which the two nations reached a historic agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
paving the way for a possible climate deal in 2015. Next came Obama’s executive order on immigration that will provide temporary
legal status and forestall deportation for millions of illegal immigrants. Then there was the move earlier this month to restore
diplomatic ties with Cuba, ending a failed five-decade policy of political and economic isolation. In between, Obama endorsed
tougher rules for companies that provide broadband access, to the benefit of consumers; issued an executive order protecting the
Bristol Bay salmon fishery in Alaska; and upended a tax bill in Congress — supported by prominent Democrats, including Senator
Harry Reid — that he said wouldn’t do enough to help working families. He’s even used the symbolic elements of the bully pulpit. In
last week’s press conference, he purposely called only on female journalists; and at a Toys for Tots event this week he made a point
to put traditional toys for boys — like sports equipment and Legos — in the bin for girls. When questioned about the move, the
president asked derisively, “Girls don’t like toys?” In the past, one could imagine the often hyper-cautious Obama unwilling to risk
the wrath of Republicans or taking positions that easily typecast him as not just a Democrat, but heaven forbid, a liberal. But just like
the honey badger, Obama doesn’t care. So what’s going on here? First and foremost, the current 113th Congress is the second
least productive in history. What was the least productive Congress? That would be the 112th Congress. With the GOP now in
control of the Senate, the chances of anything getting done in Washington over the next two years has gone from about highly
unlikely to “you’re joking, right?” So if Obama wants to accomplish anything in his last two years as president he’s going to have to
do it himself. Second, with no more elections to wage, Obama can afford to throw political caution to the wind and push forward with
his agenda, secure in the knowledge that he won’t be facing the voters again.
The irony, however, is that Obama
really isn’t taking huge political risks . Everything that he’s done in the past six weeks — from immigration
and the environment to opening relations with Cuba — is not only popular, but stands to help his party — in 2016 and in the
years beyond. For example, Democrats already had a stranglehold on the nation’s Hispanic vote — Obama’s immigration order will
only strengthen it. There’s another understated political benefit: It’s making Republicans crazy. The one thing that truly unites the
GOP these days is an emotional and irrational dislike of the president. So every time Obama does something the Republicans don’t
like, it not only makes them mad but gets them talking about impeachment and other loopy political ideas. In other words, it
encourages Republicans to act even more extreme than they have for the past six years. That might not necessarily be great for the
Obama’s
boldness is a fairly constricted one. He is pushing the envelope within the well-established boundaries of
country, but in heightening the contrast between the two parties, it’s a pretty good deal for Democrats. To be sure,
American politics — and certainly not as far as some of his liberal critics would prefer. Still, by sharpening the broad
differences between Democrats and Republicans, he is providing Americans with a much clearer sense of the stark choices they
face from the two parties. The candidate who ran as a post-partisan uniter in 2008 has pretty much given up the dream of
bipartisanship. To quote Phyllis Schlafly, Americans will be given “a choice, not an echo.’’ So while Obama might be a lame duck,
his willingness to act unilaterally and take steps that bolster his party’s political base — and inflame Republicans — are helping
ensure that he remains the most relevant figure in American politics. In short, welcome to the honey badger presidency.
A2 Keystone
Dems unified on Keystone
Easley, 1-4 [Jason, "Senator Announces Democrats Have Enough Votes To Sustain An Obama Veto Of Keystone XL,"
Politics USA, 1-4-15, www.politicususa.com/2015/01/04/senator-announces-democrats-votes-sustain-obama-veto-keystone-xl.html,
accessed 1-5-15]
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on CBS’s Face The Nation that Senate Democrats have enough votes to sustain the
widely expected veto that President Obama will issue after Republicans pass a bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL
pipeline. Schumer said, “I think there will be enough Democratic votes to sustain the president’s veto…Our Republican colleagues
say that this is a jobs bill but that really is not true at all. By most estimates it would create several thousand temporary construction
jobs and only 35 permanent jobs…Why create very few jobs with the dirtiest of energy from tar sands when you can create tens of
thousands more clean jobs using wind and solar? Our Republican colleagues are doing what they always do: they’re appeasing a
few special interests — in this case oil companies and pipeline companies and not really doing what’s good for the average middle
class family in terms of creating jobs.” Senate Republicans won’t get anywhere near the 67 votes that they will need to override a
presidential veto of the bill to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama made it clear that he was
leaning towards vetoing the bill during his final press conference of 2014. When the president was asked about Keystone XL,
Obama said, At issue in Keystone is not American oil. It is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is
being shipped out through rail or trucks and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous
amount of money if they could simply pipe it through the United States and all the way down to the Gulf. Once that oil gets to Gulf, it
is then entering into the world market, and it would be sold all around the world. So there is no. I won’t say no. There is very little
impact, nominal impact on US gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come though.
And sometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil, and it’s going to come here and the implication is that it’s going to lower
gas prices here in the United States. It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for
the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to US consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to US
consumers. President Obama is going to veto whatever bill the Republicans pass that would authorize the construction of the
Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans are going to try to spin this veto as the president being against job creation, but enough Senate
Democrats will stand with the president to sustain his veto. Republicans better get used to it, because they don’t have enough votes
to pass anything on their own. Congressional Democrats and President Obama are going to present a
against Republicans giving Big Oil the gift of Keystone XL.
unified front
Not top of the agenda – it will be done in the next three months.
Howard, St. Louis Public Radio, 1-1-15
[Jim, “GOP-Led Congress Likely To Flex New Muscles With Keystone Pipeline Vote” http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/gop-ledcongress-likely-flex-new-muscles-keystone-pipeline-vote, accessed 1-2-15, TAP]
Eager to assert their policy differences with the president once they have control of both gavels on Capitol Hill come Jan. 6,
Republicans say they plan to advance legislation backing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, by TransCanada. U.S. Sen.
Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the GOP leadership, says the president will likely have a pipeline bill "on his desk in the first three
months” of the year.
TPA: Won’t Pass—1AR
Kick in first—no TPA action until April
Inside U.S. Trade, 12/12/14 (“TRADE COMMITTEE AIDES RESTART WORK ON PENDING TPA BILL, WITHOUT
LEVIN STAFF” factiva)
Republican aides for the congressional trade committees last week resumed working with staff for outgoing Senate Finance
Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) to change a pending Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) bill, but without the participation of
staff for House Ways & Means Committee Ranking Member Sander Levin (D-MI), according to informed sources.
The staff working on the TPA bill are hoping to unveil the revised legislation as early as January
or February, although that is an ambitious timeline. One pro-TPA lobbyist said that he did not expect
committee action on a fast-track bill until mid-April .
Issues only cost capital once they reach the finish line
Drum, 3/10/10 (Kevin – political blogger for Mother Jones, Immigration coming off the back burner?, Mother Jones, p.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/03/immigration-coming-back-burner)
this attitude betrays a surprisingly common misconception about
political issues in general. The fact is that political dogs never bark until an issue becomes an active
one. Opposition to Social Security privatization was pretty mild until 2005, when George Bush
turned it into an active issue. Opposition to healthcare reform was mild until 2009, when Barack Obama turned it into an
active issue. Etc. I only bring this up because we often take a look at polls and think they tell us what the
public thinks about something. But for the most part, they don't.1 That is, they don't until the issue in
question is squarely on the table and both sides have spent a couple of months filling the
airwaves with their best agitprop. Polling data about gays in the military, for example, hasn't changed a lot over the past
Not to pick on Ezra or anything, but
year or two, but once Congress takes up the issue in earnest and the Focus on the Family newsletters go out, the push polling
starts, Rush Limbaugh picks it up, and Fox News creates an incendiary graphic to go with its saturation coverage — well, that's
when the polling will tell you something. And it will probably tell you something different from what it tells you now. Immigration
was bubbling along as sort of a background issue during the Bush administration too until 2007,
when he tried to move an actual bill. Then all hell broke loose. The same thing will happen this time, and
without even a John McCain to act as a conservative point man for a moderate solution. The political environment is worse now than
it was in 2007, and I'll be very surprised if it's possible to make any serious progress on immigration reform. "Love 'em or hate 'em,"
says Ezra, illegal immigrants "aren't at the forefront of people's minds." Maybe not. But they will be soon.