http://www.salon.com/2014/04/10/tea_partys_reefer_hypocrisy_why_states_rights_is_a_situational_sham/

Some days you wonder how much Eric Holder can really like his job. Like last week when the A.G. testified before Congress and got it coming and going on the subject of legalized marijuana. If he were a toking man (and I’m sure he isn’t) he’d have been justified in going home and sparking up a spliff the size of Colorado. After all, he, an African-American, had to sit there and listen politely to a bunch of white conservatives criticize “states’ rights” and insist that he deploy his jack-booted federal thugs to put a stop to it.

You heard that right. The party that has made a fetish of states’ rights ever since … well, ever since about 1776 … attacked the big bad federal government for failing to uphold federal law against the express wishes of the citizens of the sovereign states who went to the ballot box to legalize marijuana. It seems we’ve misunderstood all these years: The states are only sovereign when they’re denying equal rights to their citizens. If they think that individuals have a right to use a reasonably harmless substance that brings both pleasure and pain relief, the federal government has an obligation to intervene. Good to know.

On the other hand, one might try to make the argument that Democrats on the committee were being hypocritical as well in defending the states’ right to legalize pot. But that would be wrong. Their argument was perfectly consistent with the prevailing view that all citizens, regardless of the state they live in, should be allowed to use marijuana, particularly for medical use. Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen pointedly asked the attorney general why the administration hasn’t used its executive power to fix the absurd designation of marijuana as a Schedule I drug, which likens it to morphine and methamphetamine.

(Digby goes on to talk about the rationale for some Democrats regarding the legal cannabis issue (i.e. re-fighting the Nixon years)

...All of which is to say that Democratic congressmen like Steve Cohen (from that bastion of liberalism Tennessee) really do deserve some accolades from progressive Democrats. He took a rational, sane, decent public position on a hot issue — a position that happens to be shared by the vast majority of the people in his party and a majority of people in the country. That practically makes him a unicorn in Democratic Party politics.