Medical Marijuana Post Mortem

As I mentioned Monday, the Supreme Court heard a major case this week dealing, at least on the surface, with the issue of medical marijuana. From all the accounts I've read (except for one by an involved party), it did not go particularly well for the pot users. Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick provides her typically warped view of the proceedings. It seems to track what I've read elsewhere. Meanwhile, over at National Review Online, Jonathan Adler cuts through the surface pot veneer and gets down to the real issue (as I said the other day):

Despite its apparent importance to drug warriors, Ashcroft v. Raich is not about medical marijuana or drug prohibition. Nor is it about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of allowing chronically ill individuals to smoke weed for medicinal purposes. Rather, it concerns the limits of federal power under the Constitution. Federalism does not play favorites. It limits the scope of federal power to pursue liberal and conservative ends alike. If a majority of the Court remembers this lesson, Angel Raich will get to keep her medicine. More important, the nation will keep the constitutional limits on federal power.

Will the Court bite the bullet and follow through on its own precedents and not follow the anti-drug path? We'll see next summer.