ObamaCare and the Constitution

The Wall Street Journal ^ | April 2, 2010 | The Editors

[2ndDivisionVet]

If Congress can force you to buy insurance, Article I limits on federal power are a dead letter.

The constitutional challenges to ObamaCare have come quickly, and the media are portraying them mostly as hopeless gestures—the political equivalent of Civil War re-enactors. Discussion over: You lost, deal with it.

The press corps never dismissed the legal challenges to the war on terror so easily, but then liberals have long treated property rights and any limits on federal power to regulate commerce as 18th-century anachronisms. In fact, the legal challenges to ObamaCare are serious and carry enormous implications for the future of American liberty.

The most important legal challenge turns on the "individual mandate"—the new requirement that almost every U.S. citizen must buy government-approved health insurance. Failure to comply will be punished by an annual tax penalty that by 2016 will rise to $750 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. President Obama opposed this kind of coercion as a candidate but has become a convert. He even argued in a September interview that "I absolutely reject that notion" that this tax is a tax, because it is supposedly for your own good.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and 13 other state AGs—including Louisiana Democrat Buddy Caldwell—claim this is an unprecedented exercise of state power. Never before has Congress required people to buy a private product to qualify as a law-abiding citizen.(continued)

[Vendome]

Topper!

Touche’

Correcto

[ridesthemiles]

but would have to allow anyone with a demonstrable conviction that they cannot fund the murder of the unborn, which this bill certainly can be shown to require.””””

This issue is certainly troublesome enough, but for those of us who have been the victim of rape or had any kind of molestation issue in their families, the idea of funding Viagra for sex offenders which are known to the authorities is beyond the pale.

It is still a common statistic that less than 50% of actual rapes even get reported, so, IMO, the sex offenders lists are woefully inadequate.

Then, it is up to the counties to keep track of these creeps when they are released after ‘time served’ ( which is NEVER long enough for me)...and the registered offender goes his merry way and doesn’t properly report his location. It is a nightmare.

It has to be stopped.

[ridesthemiles]

What is the status on the AG lawsuits or any pending private lawsuits”

Here in Nevada, the Governor has ordered the AG to file suit against the health care bill.

She is refusing to do so, claiming that she has read it thoroughly and she sees nothing unconstitutional about the bill. She is a Democrat, and the Governor is Republican.
She is a total suck up to Dirty Harry Reid and to NObama. She is also up for re-election this year for another 4 year term.
Sure seems she is being quite cocky in defying the Governor and the voters of Nevada. There are a number of Nevada attorneys who have volunteered to file the suit since the AG is being a jerk.

This same AG still has NOT filed charges against ACORN for all their illegal actions connected to the Nov 2008 election. ACORN tried to register the entire Dallas Cowboy football team along with Mickey & Miccie Mouse in their ‘registration drive’. She says she ‘cannot comment about an ongoing investigation’.

Sje meeds tp be gone in the November election.

[Travis McGee]

Great quote!!

[haroldeveryman]

Somebody came with a great point on a previous thread (I don’t have time to find it right now). But he said that the “individual mandate” is unconstitutional because the Commerce Clause does not prohibit one from NOT engaging in commerce. Therefore one can’t be force to buy Obamacare if one doesn’t want to.

[Jacquerie]

The term “general welfare” is a common term one finds in many colonial charters, state constitutions written after independence in 1776, the Articles of Confederation and of course, our Constitution.

Also, Article 1 Section 8 is one sentence, one concept, one complete thought, where the enumerated powers detail how the new federal government is to provide for the common defense and general welfare.

From 1607 to 1937 the meaning was uncontested. By that time, FDR has sufficiently badgered Scotus into compliance with his New Deal Utopia.

[Travis McGee]

When words have no meaning, the Constitution has no meaning.

Which is the intention of the socialists.

[RipSawyer]

Amazingly we have a lot of people in this country who are convinced that THEY are smarter than the founders. Most of them wouldn’t qualify to shine Madison’s shoes.

[RipSawyer]

“When words have no meaning, the Constitution has no meaning.

Which is the intention of the socialists.”
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Amen! Ayn Rand warned about this, she said that one of the tools of the “collectivists” is to render language meaningless. I think they are doing a grand job of it. This is how they get away with pretending that the commerce clause and the welfare clause nullify all other restrictions in the constitution, people used to have better sense. The average sharecropping eighth grade dropout sixty years ago would have said, “That don’t make no kinda sense, iffen they’s gonna write two little sentences that kills all tha rest uv it they’d a not wrote all that other stuff to start with, they’d a jest said anythang goes and they wouldn’t a been no need to write nothin’ atall.”

[Brad from Tennessee]

I think the insurers were afraid to publicly oppose the bill because it would feed into Obama’s portrayal of them as ruthless profiteers. As the bills were written in secret the industry got the best deal they could get which was no public option and no price caps. Though health insurers know ObamaCare will ultimately lead to their federalization, they can survive if the program is repealed or gutted by a Republican Congress. The pharmaceutical makers made okay. They get 30 million more customers and the act prohibits the purchase of medications by individuals from offshore. Trial lawyers and their medical malpractice racket remain intact and unions got the tax on Cadillac plans deferred for six years.

[tacticalogic]

From Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution

"The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments. "

More here.