Posted on 03/27/2012 9:05:53 AM PDT by Bill Buckner
Kennedy apprears to be very critical of Mandate provision. LA times headline "Justices signal possible trouble ahead for health insurance mandate," they note:
Are there any limits, asked Justice Anthony Kennedy...
If the government can do this, what else can it do, Scalia asked?
Politico headline, "No Fifth Vote Yet to Uphold," ...
"The conservatives all express skepticism, some significant. They doubt that there is any limiting principle.
And this from a USA today source: “Ginsburg asked whether the mandate was necessary to keep the uninsured from passing off the costs of their health care on others. “It’s not your free choice just to do something for yourself. What you do is going to affect others, affect them in very negative ways,” she said.
“You could say the same thing about not buying cars,” Scalia replied.
[what a maroon she is ]
My question: is Obamacare dead without the mandate? I’m not so sure.
If the government can do this, what else can it do, Scalia asked?
See commerce clause. Yes they can and did.
The better question would have been If the government can do this, what can't it do?
It should be 9-0 in a normal world but leftists don’t live in our reality. Everything is politics to the left, everything. These leftist judges would decide the Constitution is unconstitutional if they could get away with it.
My wife and I dumped tv in 1997. We are no longer Consumers. I’ve joked that if the whole country started spending the way we do the economy would collapse overnight.
So, will they mandate that i buy big macs, GM trucks and Viagra so there is no adverse affect on the ecaonomy.
And more to the point, Scalia is talking about constitutionality while Ginsburg is talking economic impact. One belongs on the court. The other is asking the wrong questions.
Yeah, until Sandra Day O’Connor gives him a call or he hears from one of his foreign pals.
8-1 overturning the mandate, 5-4 killing the entire beast, is about the best outcome that can be imagined here.
Reading about this in the IBD this morning,
it appears this “limiting clause”
simply means -
“how can we allow this particular instance pass constitutional muster without saying that everything is allowed?”
Jefferson, that great intellectual who was chosen to write a people's Declaration of Independence from a government which assumed powers to spend, tax, and overpower citizens, in his "Notes on Religion," made an observation which, while it was directed toward oppressive ecclesiastical rules, seems to be pertinent to the current matter involving coercive government "rules":
"Notes on Religion, 1776 (Ford 2: 252-68)
"The care of every mans soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or estate, which more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he shall not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills
"
Apparently, "progressives" believe they should, and therein lies a great disparity between the Founders' ideas of liberty for individuals and the so-called "progressives'" ideas of rule and control over individuals. No wonder the President views the Constitution as a document of "negative liberties." In order to fulfill the goals of its Preamble, it does place a negative on unlimited coercive government power.
Amen
Ginsberg's only following her own advice:"I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa." She is obviously not looking to the U.S. constitution.
I heard someone (I think Mark Levin) say Obamacare is NOT dead without the mandate....but, it puts a hole in it, and makes questioning the whole law begin....
My question: is Obamacare dead without the mandate? Im not so sure.
Judge Vinson, in what I thought was a very competent opinion, decided that there was no severability, so the whole bill was unconstitutional. Also, he pointed out that he would have to completely rewrite the bill without severability, and that was the legislature’s job, not his.
I believe that the 11th Court of appeals found otherwise.
My question: is Obamacare dead without the mandate? Im not so sure.
Judge Vinson, in what I thought was a very competent opinion, decided that there was no severability, so the whole bill was unconstitutional. Also, he pointed out that he would have to completely rewrite the bill without severability, and that was the legislature’s job, not his.
I believe that the 11th Court of appeals found otherwise.
I wonder how these observations of a Justice’s questions/demeanor/reaction actually play out? I never have had the discipline to see a decision and then go back and see if there was any reaction to a particular Justice’s questioning.
I doubt many others have, either...but...if anyone out there has any experience or knowledge of how predictive the questioning is, that would be interesting to know at this stage.
It will not be dead but it will have no food and water to sustain itself... so it will die.
LLS
It can’t even work under the left’s view of it without the mandate
because it still has the “pre-existing condition” coverage mandate in it for the insurance companies.
Basically, without the mandate to buy, folks can wait to get sick, then buy insurance.
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