So apparently the man is trying to run for President, after all: “After calling for an end to the federal prohibition of marijuana last week, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders introduced a bill Wednesday to remove marijuana from the federal government’s list of Schedule I drugs.” As the Buzzfeed article notes, this varies from previous medical marijuana Senate bills in that it would leave in-state marijuana use legality up to the individual states; you still couldn’t sell it across state lines, but it would get the feds out of the business of Colorado marijuana sales. Although ‘would’ might be the wrong word to use; I’m not sure that English has a word that can convey the utter impossibility of this legislation ever making it to Barack Obama’s desk for him to veto. Which is a shame.

Seriously: I think that the GOP should let Bernie Sanders’ bill come up for a full vote. Fast-track that sucker. Then I think that the GOP should announce that ten of our Senators will be sitting out this one, or whatever the number ends up being to have Joe Biden break the hypothetical tie*.  Seriously, let’s get the Democratic party leadership really on the record about how they feel about pot.  Honestly, it’d be a hoot and a half.

I need hardly tell you, of course, that Senator Bernie Sanders is well-aware that there’s not going to be any sort of pot legalization legislation coming out of Congress in the near future. There’s also not much of a chance that this particular legislation will blow up in [mc_name name=’Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’S000033′ ]’ face, either – which is a shame and a blunder. I suppose that our party’s legislators have to be dignified about this sort of thing, but it’s still faintly ridiculous.  Pretty futile, too: young voters might be interested in having a hassle-free joint, but I suspect that they’re even more interested in getting a job.  Then again, Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be able to secure them that, either.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

(Image found here; title is “bernie-sanders-franklin-nh-20150802-DSC02620 (Modified).” Copyright Marc Nozell and used under a Creative Commons license.)

PS: You will note, by the way, that there is no discussion of the merits of this particular bill, largely because I see no particular reason to analyze the legislative viability of PR stunts done by the Other Side. I also know how this sort of thing goes: somebody frightfully earnest will start insisting that this bill must be taken up, and then will proceed to waste everybody’s time on the subject until either the thread peters out, or the sun expands into a red dwarf.  And, at the end of either event, that bill of Bernie Sanders’ will still be sitting around.

*Hypothetical because there’s no way that the entire Democratic caucus will vote to make pot use a state’s-right issue. Of course, there’s also no way that Joe “War on Some Drugs” Biden will vote for decriminalization, either. Which is why I want to put the Democratic party on the spot like this.