Bloodless Coup

Kennedy? Soaring rhetoric? No way. So this means Barnett won, right?

Yeah, the clerks might change from year to year, but if an opinion is described as featuring "soaring rhetoric" is likely it's come out of AMK's chambers (much like "scathing rhetoric" is obviously most likely to come from Justice Scalia). Was Barnett involved in this case? I thought Clint Bolick was the man behind it.

maybe i'm mixing this up with raich. that was barnett, right? it was barnett who wrote extensively on it at volokh, no?

i mean, it was barnett who wrote extensively on the wine cases, no?

I believe it was Todd Z. who wrote all those posts on their site, but I could be wrong. I forget when those ran or I'd check.

But yes, Raich is Barnett's baby.

Well, we shouldn't get all excited yet. I've heard at least one state (Michigan, as I recall) that said that they would ban ALL direct shipments rather than comply. You know, the health of children is at stake here, because they could be using their mommy's and daddy's credit cards to order $85 a bottle Chateauneuf du Pape. [GROAN]

Un-freaking-believeable. I figure some states will take their sweet time to change their laws, but that's an incredibly stupid reason. I know lots of people loathe lots of the traditional lobbies (urban types against the NRA, fundies against the NEA) but I think a strong case could be made for MADD being one of the most egregious political bodies in this country. The infantilization of the culture that they call for is grotesque. Anybody who says "think of the children" should take care of their own and leave the rest of us alone.

AAA is another one that has a history of supporting terrible (and energy inefficient) policies, but blithely going on with all its "supporters." Of course, many of them hardly know about AAA's lobby activity, and think they are just paying for road safety. What is it about driving that makes for these interest groups? I know, I know, "they hate our freedom." ;)

Just for the record, most of the anti-shipping money and lobbying has come from the beer/wine/liquor distributors organizations, not MADD or anything else. This is purely an economic fight: the local distributors will lose business (and money) if people, stores or restaurants order their alcohol directly from wineries/breweries rather than through them. Hence, the distributor lobbyists dreamed up this "The kids will order wine and get drunk; we must save them" campaign. As Binky notes, there really isn't any danger of kids getting booze through the mail: that takes too much foresight (and leaves too much of a trail for little Bobby to get in trouble later). The practical applications of the Supreme Court decision will have to wait to see what the individual states do. The distributor lobby is already talking about getting Congress to pass something more on point (a specific law banning direct sales), as they saw this Supreme Court loss coming down the pike a long time ago.

And since this gives the Republican Congress a chance to 1) oppose "sin" 2) regulate like there's no tomorrow and 3) rake in contributions from the distributors (since there is I presume no consumer organization with nearly as much pull) it would seem pretty likely they'll cave and pass such a law. Damn.

Oh, and just to be clear about the above comment - I don't mean that Republicans like all regulations (look at how they've eviscerated environmental protections for example) but they have shown a positively rapturous love of big government if they can make a buck or score a political point with a key constituency or two by doing it, and since that is the case here ...

At a guess, the Republican Congress will be too busy screwing up the budget and fighting about stem-cells or filibusters to mess about with wine shipments. I could be wrong (especially since they might just write in into a completely different bill in conference committee, and we'd never hear about it until W signed it into law), but I don't think it's something that will appear on the radar. That being said, I'm not following the details of this, so I could be wrong. I hope not.