In the debate over the legal status of marijuana, one of the major obstacles to more lenient federal treatment is the Drug Enforcement Administration’s classification of cannabis as a dangerous drug with no medical use. A federal appeals panel declined Tuesday to change that classification, finding that the DEA’s decision not to reschedule marijuana was not so improper that it warranted court invalidation:

On the merits, the question before the court is not whether marijuana could have some medical benefits. Rather, the limited question that we address is whether the DEA’s decision declining to initiate proceedings to reschedule marijuana under the CSA was arbitrary and capricious. [...]

Petitioners … are left with the difficult task of showing that the DEA has misapplied its own regulations. [...]

[W]e are obliged to defer to the agency’s interpretation of “adequate and well-controlled studies.” Judged against the DEA’s standard, we find nothing in the record that could move us to conclude that the agency failed to prove by substantial evidence that such studies confirming marijuana’s medical efficacy do not exist.

Since the Controlled Substances Act was first passed in 1970, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, the most restrictive of the five schedules. The initial House of Representatives report recommended that Congress classify marijuana as Schedule I at least temporarily “until the completion of certain studies now underway to resolve the issue,” reasoning that uncertainty remained about the effects of the drug. But multiple requests that the DEA reconsider its decision have failed, on the grounds that there is still insufficient research to make a determination.

Plaintiffs in this case had cited more than 200 peer-reviewed studies, and argued that larger-scale studies are precluded precisely because the government doesn’t support research on Schedule I drugs. The Schedule I designation also means no prescriptions can be written for the drug, and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee cited the designation as the reason for blocking that state’s medical marijuana law. Both Chafee and Washington Gov. Christie Gregoire have called for the drug to be rescheduled.

In a deferential and unsurprising ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said it was bound by the DEA’s determination about what types of studies constitute “adequate and well-controlled.” But as the court explains, this decision represents courts’ extreme hesitance to disturb the determinations that agencies make, rather than any assessment of the medical benefits of the drug.

Nonetheless, it signifies the intractable battle to remove one of the major hurdles in reforming federal marijuana law. The classification of marijuana as a drug with no medical value appears increasingly at odds with the opinions of many doctors who attest to the medical benefits of the drug, and of patients, who take advantage of dispensaries in the 18 states where they are now legal.

A number of highly addictive and potent drugs, such as cocaine, opium poppy, morphine and codeine, are listed as Schedule II, designated for those drugs that have a high potential for abuse and dependence, but which have “a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions.” And the synthetic version of THC, known as dronabinol, is listed as Schedule III, even though THC is the ingredient in cannabis that causes psychoactive effects.

Virginia Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment defended Monday’s GOP sneaky maneuver to subvert majority rule and gerrymander the Senate maps as nothing more than politics. And, even though he voted for the current bipartisan maps, he blamed Senate Democrats for having employed an unfair process two years ago.

Norment conceded that the sneak attack “may have been annoying, painful, and even strained some friendships,” but attacked Senate Democrats for being sanctimonious:

NORMENT: I would remind those who have been so critical of what happened yesterday: redistricting is always a combination of politics and policy and that is what was dealt with yesterday. When the original redistricting plan came through, there can be cries of how collaborative it was and how inclusive. And it was so inclusive that originally it ran me almost from the North Carolina line to the outskirts of Richmond. … and [that 2011 initial bill] was voted out, strictly on a partisan line. In other words, the will of the majority was invoked against the will of the minority, and that is the process.

But Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) vetoed that initial bill. And the amended bill he signed, establishing the current maps, passed the Senate on a 32-5 bipartisan vote with Norment’s own vote in support as well as the majority of Norment’s Republican colleagues.

Seemingly forgetting his own support for the existing maps — and the Department of Justice’s pre-clearance of those maps as acceptable under the Voting Rights Act — Norment defended the GOP re-redistricting as necessary to fix an inadequate map. “It corrects the egregious and gratuitous splits of localities which existed under those boundaries,” he explained, “Deliberately, intentionally, and with calculation, they split towns, they split precincts, and they did it for one reason.” That reason, he added, was “trying to maintain a Democratic majority for years to come.”

Watch Norment’s speech:

While Norment concluded by admitting, “I understand that yesterday was not one of the finest days in the Senate,” he admonished Democrats not to attempt to block future legislation because they had their “feelings hurt on a political move.” But should this bill become law, he will have done exactly what he attempts to scold the Democrats for.

A freshman Republican congressman is arguing that the 2nd Amendment could be interpreted broadly enough to allow ordinary citizens access to the same equipment that the military uses.

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL), who unseated longtime Rep. Cliff Stearns last year thanks in large part to Tea Party support, sat down with Florida political blog The Shark Tank over the weekend to discuss gun violence. The freshman GOPer said he’d spoken with a number of constituents recently and approvingly relayed their sentiment: “when you read the Second Amendment,” Yoho said, “the militia had the same equipment as the military to protect them against the tyrannical government.” Preserving those protections, he argued, is “more important today than ever”:

YOHO: On guns, [my constituents] were saying that the sentiment, when you read the Second Amendment, is that the militia had the same equipment as the military to protect them against the tyrannical government. I think it’s more important today than ever, that we uphold our Second Amendment.

Watch it:

Military weapon technology is considerably more advanced today than when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, and so is U.S. military structure. Back then, the pinnacle of firearm technology was cannons and muskets, and citizens joining the military were expected to supply their own weapons. Nowadays, hydrogen bombs and tanks exist. The Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by originalist Justice Antonin Scalia, sensibly ruled that Congress may prohibit citizens from carrying “dangerous and unusual weapons.” After all, we all know at least a few people who we’d prefer not to possess nuclear arms.

This is why Yoho’s declaration is a dangerous one. When single-shot guns that took a long time to reload were the most advanced gun available, there was less to fear in citizens having the same access to weapons as soldiers. To hold that same standard in the nuclear age is naive and alarming.

Nevada Assemblyman Steven Brooks (D) was arrested on Sunday after he threatened to assassinate newly elected Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick (D). Brooks was driving with a loaded gun when police took him into custody. The day before, he had told other lawmakers that Kirkpatrick’s “first day as speaker would be her last.”

According to his colleagues, Brooks was apparently upset that Kirkpatrick did not give him the chairmanship of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, growing more erratic and obsessive:

Instead, the chair job went to Assembly­woman Maggie Carlton. One lawmaker said Brooks seemed agitated during a recent Interim Finance Committee meeting that Carlton chaired. “He kept getting up and down and walking in and out of the meeting,” said the lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He was acting a little strangely.”

About three weeks ago, Brooks began approaching other Assembly members, soliciting help in ousting Kirkpatrick as leader of the lower house, the lawmaker said. He didn’t get much support and “seemed to accept” that she would remain as leader, though Brooks remained troubled by his situation, the lawmaker said.

“He said, ‘She’s out to get me,’ ” the lawmaker said.

Nevada has some of the nation’s most lenient firearms laws — and one of the highest gun homicide rates. While North Las Vegas, where Brooks was arrested with his gun, has a city ordinance against carrying a deadly weapon in vehicles, Nevada gave itself the power to override all local regulation of firearms. As state law allows open carry in cars, Brooks would probably not be charged with a crime for carrying a loaded gun.

It was not clear if Brooks explicitly threatened to kill Kirkpatrick, and the assemblyman was only charged with making threats against a public official. He was released on Monday with a court date on January 28.

After losing nearly the entire minority vote in the 2012 election, Republicans held a sensitivity training last week instructing candidates in “successful communication with minorities and women.” Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (R) blasted his party for ducking real policy change, pointing to the GOP’s widespread voter suppression tactics as a cause of their unpopularity.

Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Inauguration Day, Powell said more minority-friendly messaging was not enough and called for meaningful policy changes:

When you see that 73 percent of Asian Americans, 73 percent of Hispanic Americans, 94 percent of African Americans voted for the president and not the party, you have to ask yourself, do we have to do something about immigration? Should we tone down some of the things we’ve been doing? Should we really have gone after reducing the turnout of voters in those places where we thought it would make a difference? The Republican Party should be a party that says, ‘We want everybody to vote,’ and make it easier to vote and give them a reason to vote for the party, not to find ways to keep them from voting at all. [...] You can’t just say, ‘Well, we’ll fix our message.’ It’s not the message. You have to appeal with policies and programs to these people who are going to be the leaders of our country in a generation.

Watch it:

Before the election, many Republican-controlled state legislatures passed contentious voter ID laws and restricted voting hours that targeted urban and minority voters who tend to support Democrats. Since the election, the Florida GOP even admitted voter suppression was the goal of their election laws. Laws in other states, such as Texas, were struck down by courts for their disproportionate impact on minorities.

Powell’s tough advice built on his recent condemnation of the Republican Party for embracing “a dark vein of intolerance”. On Monday, he noted that other Republicans privately thanked him for his comments but were too afraid to speak out for fear of Tea Party vengeance in the 2014 midterm elections.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) expressed displeasure Monday with the Republican Senate’s sneaky maneuver to subvert majority rule and gerrymander the Senate in such a way that could give themselves a super-majority — but has not yet said whether he would veto the bill. But to live up to his previous promises, he will have to do just that.

Yesterday, with civil rights legend Sen. Henry Marsh (D) attending the inauguration, Senate Republicans rammed through new maps on a party-lines 20-19 plurality. Republican Lt. Governor Bill Bolling, who can break ties in the Senate, would have voted against the plan had the vote been tied. The maps were not considered in committee nor available for public comment — rather, Sen. John Watkins (R) offered them as a surprise floor amendment to House Bill 259 — and the Republican plurality limited floor debate to just minutes before forcing a vote on final passage. As Blue Virginia notes, it is unclear whether this mid-decade redistricting is even constitutional, as the Virginia constitution calls for new maps only once every decade.

Assuming the measure passes the Republican-controlled House of Delegates, it will be up to Gov. McDonnell to decide whether to sign the bill — setting up a likely court fight — or veto. But just two years ago, he demanded a bipartisan plan and a transparent process.

In January 2011, McDonnell created an Independent Bipartisan Redistricting Committee to suggest and review new district maps, saying:

As Virginia redraws its legislative districts later this year, the process should take place in a manner that is fair and open. Legislative districts should be drawn in a way that reflects commonsense geographic boundaries and communities of interests as required by law. This Bipartisan Redistricting Commission will contribute to public involvement, openness, and fairness in the redistricting process.”

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Since the shooting in Newton, Connecticut, some lawmakers have introduced legislation to allow teachers and school officials to carry firearms. But one South Carolina lawmaker is taking the NRA’s “more guns will keep schools safe” argument even further, with a new bill that would teach teenagers how to shoot.

Sen. Lee Bright (R), the sponsor of the legislation, argues that “the more guns we have the safer we are.” “[H]ad there been someone in Newtown with a weapon, had it been a teacher, they could have stopped it early,” Bright explained. His bill would allow schools to offer gun training at an off-site location:

Bright says he got the idea after hearing from older constituents who “remembered the days” when students could join a rifle team or learn about shooting during a school day. “We’ve got football, we’ve got basketball, and we’ve got baseball,” says Bright. “I think if they had a hunting team, it would be a great idea.”

The class, dubbed the “South Carolina Gun Safety Program” course, would focus on learning how to properly use a firearm, safety techniques, and the history of the 2nd amendment and the right to bear arms, according to Bright. “The more training we can get on the history of our nation, the founding of our nation, the better,” he says.

Gun violence experts agree that the argument for arming citizens is “fantasy thinking” and a bad idea. But Bright’s bill is not a huge surprise since it comes from the same lawmaker who introduced the “Firearms Freedom Act” to exempt firearms and ammunition from anti-gun violence rules in the days following the Newtown shooting.

The Roberts Court does not much care for America’s obligations to other nations. Five years ago, in a case argued by future Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the Court held that Texas could simply ignore an international treaty ensuring that foreign nationals arrested in the United States are informed of their right “to request assistance from the consul of [their own state.] Even North Korea honored this treaty when two American journalists were held captive by that country for five months in 2009.

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case that could further undermine whether other nations can trust America’s word when we agree to certain obligations under a treaty.

On its surface, Bond v. United States is a case about a petty criminal who tried to poison her husband’s mistress. When Carol Anne Bond learned her neighbor was pregnant with Bond’s husband’s baby, she obtained several highly toxic chemicals from her job with a chemical manufacturing company, and then applied those chemicals to the neighbor’s mailbox, car door handles, and house doorknob. The mistress next door suffered chemical burns as a result.

As Bond soon discovered, however, the United States is a party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. In order to ensure that America meets its obligations under this treaty, Congress passed a law that makes it a criminal act “to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, transfer directly or indirectly, receive, stockpile, retain, own, possess, or use, or threaten to use, any chemical weapon” for a non-peaceful purpose. So Bond’s petty act of revenge quickly became a federal case.

As a general rule, the Constitution does not permit Congress to criminalize murder or assault or other non-economic crimes of violence, except in certain limited circumstances. But that does not mean that the chemical weapons law Bond ran afoul of is unconstitutional. Article II of the Constitution provides that the President “shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties;” and Article I of the Constitution permits Congress “[t]o make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.” So the president signed onto a valid treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which was then ratified by the Senate. Congress passed a law “carrying into execution” this valid treaty. As a textual matter, the constitutionality of Bond’s conviction is not a difficult case.

But, of course, it is now in front of the same Court that recently imposed implausible new limits on Congress’ power to carry into execution the federal government’s lawful authority in the challenge to the Affordable Care Act — ignoring a recent opinion by none other that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in order to do so. The justices that brought us that decision, not to mention the Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United and numerous other decisions ignoring the Constitution’s text and longstanding precedent, cannot exactly be trusted to follow the law in Bond either.

It’s worth noting that Bond is represented by Republican superlawyer Paul Clement, the same attorney behind the challenge to health care and the same lawyer that’s now charged the American taxpayer as much as $3 million to defend the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. It is highly doubtful that Ms. Bond can afford Clement’s legal fees on her own, suggesting that she has a wealthy benefactor with a deep ideological interest in undermining America’s ability to keep its treaty obligations — or in continuing the project Clement began in the health care case of dismantling America’s ability to solve national problems.

Laws that claim to exempt guns from all federal laws have been proposed in several states this week, “in response to national threats against our Second Amendment rights,” according to one Michigan legislator. The bills, which even supporters would concede will likely not pass constitutional muster, claim that guns manufactured and retained in one single state are not subject to federal law.

The Tenth Amendment Center, an extremist organization that supports state nullification of federal laws as one of its primary objectives, describes the Firearms Freedom Act this way:

Originally introduced and passed in Montana, the FFA declares that any firearms made and retained in-state are beyond the authority of Congress under its constitutional power to regulate commerce among the states. The FFA is primarily a Tenth Amendment challenge to the powers of Congress under the commerce clause, with firearms as the object.

On the day the first successfully passed Firearms Freedom Act went into effect in Montana in 2009, the author of the bill filed an affirmative lawsuit seeking to “challenge Congress’ commerce clause power to regulate a wide spectrum of in-state activities.” As expected, the lawsuit was dismissed by the federal district court, and even the plaintiffs expect a similarly negative outcome before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. This is because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress has definitive power to regulate even activity that occurs solely within one state, so long as it “substantially affect interstate commerce.”

In proposing a bill in the Michigan state senate this week, Sen. Rick Jones (R) said the proposal was intended both to ”let major gun companies in the U.S. know that we are open for business” and as an assertion of states’ rights. A similar bill was proposed this week in Oklahoma.

Gary Marbut, the author of the Montana law who sued in federal court, said even he advises individuals in the eight states that passed such laws not to change their behavior until the lawsuit has “cleared.” Of course, even under Chief Justice John Roberts, it is a pipe dream to imagine that the Supreme Court will reverse decades of decisions on the Commerce Clause. But that hasn’t stopped legislators in some 21 states from introducing versions of the Firearms Freedom Act, just as they have sought to nullify the Affordable Care Act and other major pieces of federal legislation.