Category: Health Care

by Smitty

Big Government links SCOTUSblog, and then BG concludes, emphasis mine:

Apparently, both Justices Scalia and Kennedy didn’t trust that Congress might be able to work out a new law that was actually Constitutional; Kennedy stated that asking Congress to do its job would be unrealistic unless the Court was speaking about “the hypothetical Congress.”
This, of course, is what the Obama Administration had in mind the entire time they were constructing a nearly 3,000 page bill. Nobody in Congress knew what was in it; the American public doesn’t know what’s in it; and now the Supreme Court seems wary of determining just what’s in it. If the Supreme Court rules the individual mandate constitutional, it won’t do so because the mandate is actually constitutional – it will do so because it believes that its coequal branch of government, Congress, must be forced to uphold its own constitutional duty and take an axe to this thicket of complexity. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen.

In software terms, that seems like saying: “Well, the SQL Injection compromised the LAMP stack out in the DMZ, so we might as well give the attackers the rest of the network, too.”

A few quick points:

• ObamaCare is an anti-American, un-Constitutional pile of hooey.
• Its passage represented, at all points, such a dereliction of duty that any member of the House who voted ‘Yes’ on it, and hasn’t already been impeached at the ballot box by their constituents, merits impeachment. Also, any ideological tool on the Court that somehow writes an anti-Constitutional dissent in favor of ObamaCare merits impeachment; they must have been telling a ‘Made in Zambiniland’ form of truth when they testified before Congress.*
• The SCOTUS should tell the 113^th Congress to review the job the 111^th Congress so disastrously punted. Also, Federalist 62, especially the part where Madison said It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. Surely, Madison wrote that precisely with creeps like the Wicked Witch of the West in mind. Turning Nancy’s ObamaCare abortion into something that doesn’t suck with an unholy vacuum is not the task of the SCOTUS.

Protein Wisdom sounds an ominous note here:

Again, to the left — the ideological ruling class left, as opposed to the useful idiots they keep about screeching for “social justice” in lieu of having to actually reach into pocket and pay for such things voluntarily — this battle was never over health care. That was but the facade. This was an attempt to fundamentally redefine the relationship between citizen and government. It was an attempt to build on the already flimsy sham that was Wickard in order to assert federal control over every aspect of our lives — and to do so while (perversely) claiming a Constitutional basis for doing so.
If it fails, we shouldn’t rejoice so much as begin asking how we ever got this close to living under soft tyranny in a country built on a foundation meant to protect us from what has become — and will remain — a predatory federal authority always looking for ways to expand.
And it seems that’s the case regardless of which Party establishment holds office.
The battle to retake the US is only beginning. And the truth is, it may already be lost.

Yes, the pre-Progressive Age America is indeed lost. Indeed, it may be that the Federal government has become as odious as the Parliament we held the Revolution to escape. May our second, pro-Constitutional revolution remain peaceful.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy.

*OK, clearly I’m spun up about this. We wouldn’t want an environment where the merest dissent triggers impeachment. However, as the Administration’s Solicitor General correctly points out, this is a Special Case. 😉

Update II: POH Diaries links, reporting that Nancy Pelosi is as certain of the outcome of the SCOTUS review as she is about the contents of her legislative progeny.

by Smitty

Here is a short clip, via Breitbart, of two modern Liberal sophists trying to dance around the un-Constitutionality of their puropse:

What is the proper way for them to achieve the aim?

Article 5 – Amendment
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

We’ve had the bulk of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights as a slow-motion suppository over the last four score years. It has, perversely, proven unaffordable. The real aim of the SCOTUS, I predict, will prove to be rejecting ObamaCare, while leaving as little opportunity for further restoration of liberty through rejection of the rest of the New Deal/Great Society/Bogus Idea parade of the last century.

The only correct way to pull off an idea of the scope of this Second Bill of Rights is to have a Constitutional convention. The last 80 years in this country, and the cratering of the Social Democratic state in Europe, are evidence that these ideas are too big and to complex to be rammed through over a weekend in the form of unread legislation, or shenanigans such as FDR’s infamous court packing scheme. When your cause is just, you don’t have to resort to tomfoolery. Conversely, the kind of circumlocution we see with all of these shiny Progressive ideas, their enactment, and their subsequent economic fallout is a clear indicator that the Progressives are full of hooey.

Also, nice Jonathan Edwards reference by Erickson, “Sinners In the Hands of Anthony Kennedy“.

by Smitty

Via the comments at Breitbart:

Justice Elena Kagan asked whether refusing to buy insurance would constitute breaking the law, to which Verrilli responded that if people “pay the tax, then they are in compliance with the law.” That caught the attention of Justice Stephen Breyer.
“Why do you keep saying tax?” Breyer interjected, to more laughs.

At a high enough level of abstraction, this guy is an Administration comic unable to keep it straight while delivering his lines. In his decadence, he  recalls Stefon on SNL.

What this pack of jackwagons are about is tantamount to an Article V re-write of the Constitution. And the stare decisis argument is hogwash. If George Clooney personifies Progress, then the Constitution is a sweet young thing that has been pushed just a little too far over these last years, IYKWIMAITYD. Does stare decisis mean a pass for George to do whatever? I think not.

A Professor Randy Barnett audio of day 1 is available here. Right-clicking and downloading the .mp3 worked better for me.

Virginia AG Cuccinelli’s commentary is here.

After listening to the audio, I think that the Administration’s Postmodern attempt to argue that ObamaCare isn’t a tax, except for when it is, gets right to the heart of the diabolical falsehood in question here.

Update: linked by That Mr. G Guy