Scalia To Student: If Taxes Go Too High ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’

Knoxville, Tenn. (CBS DC) – Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd of law school students that if taxes in the U.S. become too high then people “should revolt.”

Speaking at the University of Tennessee College of Law on Tuesday, the longest-serving justice currently on the bench was asked by a student about the constitutionality of the income tax, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports.

Scalia responded that the government has the right to implement the tax, “but if it reaches a certain point, perhaps you should revolt.”(continued)

Objection! Scalia is not an originalist; no originalist would say that it is ‘Foolish’ to have the supreme court decide if NSA wiretapping is unconstitutional.

Scalia is most definitely an originalist. The totality of his opinions support that description.

By the way, you've taken Scalia's comment completely out of context. Here is the context of what he said.

“The institution that will decide that is the institution least qualified to decide it. We know nothing about the degree of the risk. The executive knows. The Congress knows. We don’t know anything, and we’re going to be the one to decide that question?

When Kalb asked if data collected qualifies as "effects" under the 4th Amendment, Scalia said, "I think so."

Historically, Scalia has said - and I'm paraphrasing - that Congress should make clear the intent of its legislation so the Supreme Court can interpret whether or not the law is constitutional instead of what the court thinks Congress intended.

Congress had a duty to explicitly state that the NSA shall not collect the "effects" of American citizens without a proper warrant. When expanding the power of the Executive branch, Congress should do so narrowly. Unspecified scope always leads to broad interpetations.

In other words, since the states have never granted Congress the specific power, via the Constitution, to define public healthcare policy, Congress doesn't have the power to make laws which legislatively address healthcare issues any more than it has the power to regulate our 1st Amendment-protected rights. This is regardless if such legislation merely appropriates taxes or applies penalties in the name of healthcare as evidenced by Justice Marshall's official clarification of Congress's limited power to lay taxes.

You are talking about non-corporate human beings referenced by the term "the people" in the original Constitution.

However, the bottom line of "One Stone, Two Powers: How Chief Justice Roberts Saved America" is that Obamacare references people acting in a corporate capacity, known as many things, among them, "individuals" or "persons" or "taxpayers."

The difference between these two classifications, and their relevant jurisdictions, is the "two (government) powers" referenced by Roberts: non-corporate, and corporate.

The 14th Amendment has inclusions which contradict the original Constitution. Therefore, under the rules of legal construction, the 14th Amendment must be thrown out, unless a *different* application can be found for it than the original Constitution. That different application is corporations. The application of corporate capacity being applied to individual human beings was created in the 14th Amendment (and enacted most famously in the Emancipation Proclamation. But it was also the defining reference in the 16th Amendment, too - which allowed the income tax to be later ruled as "not adding any new tax." Why? Because corporations were already taxed. And, through the 14th Amendment, people acting in corporate capacities were included in that same tax.

Obamacare therefore merely adds to that 16th Amendment corporate capacity tax, by including healthcare provisions. And since corporations have no rights, literally anything can be added or subtracted to their privileges or lack thereof. Privilege means slavery - it means whatever is granted is at the pleasure of, and for the benefit of, the government - not the corporation. And that is what has been applied to the people without their understanding it.

Of course, the fact that they are not told it is being done has helped the mystery stay mysterious.

You are talking about non-corporate human beings referenced by the term "the people" in the original Constitution.

With all due respect Talisker, Justice John Marshall wasn't talking about people or corporations when he officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, essentially any issue which Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.

In fact, the states have always had the 10th Amendment-protected power to lay taxes for public healthcare purposes, depending on what the legal majority voters in a given state want.

As a side note to your mention of the Emancipation Proclomation, please consider the following. While I agree in principle with Lincoln's proclomation, it is regarded as an executive order. But the problem with executive orders is the following.

The Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide them from "leaders" like Lincoln (and Obama), to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches of government.

In fact, the Supreme Court had clarified in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952, that executive orders don't have the force of law unless they are legislatively supported by Congress. And since Lincoln signed his Emancipation Proclamation at least two years before the Civil War ended (corrections welcome), I can assure you that Lincoln did not have Congress's legislative support.

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