Sen. Chuck Grassley, who can always be counted on to stick the federal government’s nose where it doesn’t belong, is criticizing Attorney General Eric Holder’s teeny-tiny steps toward a less oppressive enforcement of drug prohibition. Holder said on Wednesday “that federal agents will target marijuana distributors only when they violate both federal and state law. This is a departure from policy under the Bush administration, which targeted dispensaries under federal law even if they complied with the state’s law allowing sales of medical marijuana.”

Grassley says that marijuana is a “gateway” drug to the use of harder drugs and that Holder “is not doing health care reform any good.”

As Tim Lynch and I wrote in the Cato Handbook for Policymakers:

President Bush … has spoken of the importance of the constitutional principle of federalism. Shortly after his inauguration, Bush said, “I’m going to make respect for federalism a priority in this administration.” Unfortunately, the president’s actions have not matched his words. Federal police agents and prosecutors continue to raid medical marijuana clubs in California and Arizona.

And as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in dissenting from the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the power of the federal government to regulate medical marijuana:

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything — and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

That’s the principle that Chuck Grassley defends. Republicans claim to be the small-government party — and President Obama’s policies on taxes, spending, and regulation certainly justify a view that the GOP is, if not a small-government party, at least the smaller-government party — but they forget those principles when it comes to imposing their social values through federal force.