While Washington, DC, steps in to take over responsibility for determining just how much and what kind of medical insurance we should buy, the states march, instead, towards personal responsibility, defending a right to self-medication.

More than a dozen states have enacted medical marijuana laws, in defiance of Congress and Executive Branch nannies.

Now, California’s initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana, or cannabis, has garnered enough signatures to qualify for November’s ballot. Oregon has a measure in the works, too, as do other, less bellwether-worthy states. You can follow the story as it develops on Ballotpedia.org.

California, the state most addicted to politicians (having the highest citizen-to-representative ratio in the union) also has one of the union’s most severely messed-up budgets. Barring cuts, the state needs money. Legalizing and taxing Americans’ favorite weed might help out, some advocates think. No wonder the initiative is popularly known as the “Tax Cannabis Act.”

We’ve heard this story before. The Great Depression allowed the repeal of the 18th Amendment. The Progressive Era’s crowning achievement in social control, the prohibition of alcohol, was seen by the world as weird, and by those who admired the original Constitution of the United States as rubbing against the grain of American liberty.

But it wasn’t freedom advocates who ended Prohibition. It was the separate states seeking revenue from selling booze.

Ah, politics. Nasty when going wrong. Messy when going right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

By hook and by crook — ignoring the constitution and twisting parliamentary rules — the president and his congressional allies are succeeding in imposing command-and-control health care on all Americans.

If the new law is allowed to stand, the scraps of freedom we still enjoy in matters of health care will dwindle as provisions of the bill kick in. And that’s only the prequel. Pelosi and other Democrats promise to introduce even more constrictive legislation once Obamacare Round One has been rammed through.

Friends of freedom aren’t giving up. There’s an election in 2010, for one thing. But many state governments aren’t waiting for that. The Idaho legislature just passed the Idaho Health Care Freedom Act, which states, in part, that “every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty.” Governor Otter is signing the Act because, in his view, health care laws should treat people as individuals “rather than as an amorphous mass whose only purpose in this world is to obey federal mandates.”

Idaho is the first state to pass such a measure, but similar legislation has been proposed in 22 others. Such declarations will most likely have only symbolic significance if Obamacare remains in effect and other legal challenges on the grounds of federalism get beaten down. But those are two big ifs. Americans aren’t ready to surrender to the health care commissars just yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Say it with me: We told you so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to help citizens regain control over their prodigal representatives. Sometimes I got called a radical for these activities. An extremist. But I think of myself as a moderate, as someone promoting moderation.

In government spending, for example.

Among the most moderate of these many statewide initiatives have been what are sometimes called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, initiatives. These proposals are designed to limit spending increases to a formula of population growth-plus-inflation.

Sometimes we succeeded. Too often we failed.

The consequence of our failures, of each defeat at the hands and promotional budgets of groups that called us, of all people, extremists?

Now, state after state has become what Reason magazine dubs “Failed States.” They did what politicians demanded, spent at rates far greater than moderation would allow. And now that we’ve hit hard times, and state revenues have drastically fallen, how the politicians whine! Indeed, they demand bailouts.

Say it with me, you who’ve voted for TABOR in the past: “We told you so. Lacking our measures, the states have become part of the out-of-control federal deficits and ballooning debt.”

And remember, you who opposed our moderate measures to limit state spending: You are the radicals. You are the ones who helped set our country on its current, self-destructive course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

When Sarah Palin announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, she caused quite a stir. Both Palin haters and Palin lovers united in their inability to talk about much of anything else.

Then, a week later, she had an op-ed on environmental policy published in the Washington Post.

And then, not long after that, she signed a resolution declaring the state of Alaska sovereign under the Tenth Amendment, and telling the federal government to back off from engaging in activities not delegated to it in the United States Constitution.

This sounds weird to lovers of big government, to Palin haters in general. But even some Palin lovers misconstrued the event.

It was not about Sarah Palin. She was not the only governor to sign such a resolution. Tennessee’s Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, had done the same thing, earlier.

In fact, it’s not about governors at all. Other states, like Oklahoma and New Hampshire, have passed similar resolutions. As I wrote recently at Townhall.com, “[a]ll these resolutions have passed state legislatures. It’s not just lone ‘whacko’ governors doing the deed. Deliberative bodies have decided these measures.”

What’s happening is the re-emergence of the original idea of our federation: A central power limited in scope, and states with different sets of powers and responsibilities.

And people’s rights and powers limiting both.

Yes, folks, there are signs of hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Last week, former Congressman and presidential candidate Bob Barr sent out a simple admonishment to his Twitter list: “Let’s have a real debate on Judge Sotomayor, not hysterics. . . .”

Unlikely. Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor is precisely the kind of jurist to divide us. She’s said things that seem racist and sexist and absurd. But, then, if I criticize her for those things, her supporters will call what I say racist or sexist or absurd.

And none of us want racism, or sexism, much less absurdity.

Let’s try sympathy, instead. It’s not easy to promote a constitutional philosophy consistent and widely acceptable at a time when much of what the federal government does belies — abridges — repudiates! — the Constitution itself.

Take the First Amendment. It begins, “Congress shall make no law . . .” No ambiguity. And yet Congress makes all sorts of law regarding speech, including regulating speech about politics, negating the whole point of the First Amendment.

What part of “no law” don’t today’s jurists understand? In many cases it’s the part where the states have power to fashion their own solutions to problems. It’s called the Tenth Amendment. And it’ usually ignored by all mainstream legal experts, along with the Ninth.

I’d like to have a quiet debate on this. Sotto voce, you might say. The opposite of hysterically loud.

That would be more important, even, than a debate about Judge Sotomayor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.