Free Republic

In a lawsuit brought by 26 state attorneys general, including Michigan’s, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Florida has ruled that the “individual mandate” provision of Obamacare is unconstitutional, and so the entire law “must be declared void.” The constitutionally defective provision mandates that every American must purchase a health insurance policy or be subject to penalties. Initially there was some confusion on whether the ruling meant the federal government and states including Michigan must now cease actions to implement the law, whose provisions go into effect gradually over several years. Judge Vinson did not impose an “injunction” on implementation,...

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told members of a Senate committee that Obamacare is helping millions of Americans, including those who are allowed to be on their parent’s health insurance policy until they are 26. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) - A federal judge in Florida recently ruled that the entire health care law is unconstitutional – a ruling Judge Roger Vinson described as “the functional equivalent of an injunction.” But that hasn't stopped the Obama administration from spending hundreds of millions of dollars authorized by the disputed law.On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a $750 million investment...

Have you ever noticed the way liberals love judges who arbitrarily rule in their favor, without regard to the will of the people or the rule of law, but detest judges who use the Constitution as their guide to decisions? It's really quite interesting – and can best be illustrated by the reaction to the ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. Vinson ruled the law unconstitutional and offered a declaratory judgment calling on the executive branch of government to adhere to his decision – in other...

Check out the MASSIVE billboard front page shot of "Republican" Chris Lee in suit and nude from the waist up bookend shots. As contrast, I noticed when Obamacare got shot down as unconstitutional last week, abcnews.com NEVER carried it even as line mention anywhere on their front page. You had to go the politics page to find it. But just LOOK at the prime FRONT PAGE, mile high, web site real estate they are giving this little known 2nd term "REPUBLICAN" (called out in the headline)congressman. There must be a special place in hell for such charlatan hypocrites. The jacks...

Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School, wrote an op-ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times regarding Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling striking down ObamaCare because the individual mandate is unconstitutional. The tone was sneering, saying “first-year law students” understand constitutional law better than Judge Vinson. But that was just a warm-up to comparing the ObamaCare ruling to the infamous pro-slavery Dred Scott decision:

Constitutional showdownA Florida judge distorted the law in striking down healthcare reform. By Akhil Reed Amar February 6, 2011 Earlier this week, after grading student papers from my Yale Law School class on constitutional law, I began reading federal District Judge Roger Vinson's recent opinion declaring "Obamacare" unconstitutional. One thing was immediately clear: My students understand the Constitution better than the judge. I strive to be apolitical in evaluating students and judges alike. Over the years, many of my favorite students have been proud conservatives, while others have been flaming liberals. The Constitution belongs to neither party. As every first-year...

Ever need an ongoing, steady supply of Marxist-type material, delivered fresh from the Capital of the freest nation on earth? Then check out the White House blog, it supplies frequent posts written by a variety of White House staff types, and it’s chock full of freedom-choking twaddle that would make Karl Marx proud. I just finished reading the White House blog post titled “Judicial Activism and the Affordable Care Act.” It’s written in response to Senior United States District Judge Roger Vinson’s January 31 ruling that ObamaCare is unconstutitional in its entirety, which I blogged about here. In the wake...

This week saw a showdown between the man whose most significant achievement before 2008 was that he very nearly got the asbestos removed from the Altgeld Gardens tenements in Chicago and the third-longest-ruling head of Egypt since the Pharaoh Ramses, whose reign lasted 67 years. The Egyptian, an 82-year-old with terminal cancer, easily bested the community organizer, the man elected by people who quite clearly confused the last presidential election with an American idol contest. While many who elected the American president probably do not yet realize it, it is lucky for them that he lost the showdown, for had...

Although ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, Democrats plan to continue implementating the health care law known as Obamacare. “It is as though the Constitution doesn't matter,” Rush Limbaugh said on his Thursday radio program. Newsbusters reports Friday that radio talk show host Mark Levin – himself an attorney - had harsh words for the Obama administration: I said that if the administration failed to follow the law, then it was lawless. (I said that) it was violating the constitution, that this was a serious as Watergate. ... There it is on Page 75. He voided the law. It's dust....

Federal Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that President Obama’s health care law is unconstitutional need not be obeyed says Senator Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill). “The Courts aren’t the only ones authorized to decide the Constitutionality of the laws,” Durbin insisted. “We all—Congress and President, alike—take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Just because the Court has a different opinion doesn’t mean the President must accept it.” “This wouldn’t be the first time a President ignored a Court decision,” Durbin observed. “Back in the 1830s, President Jackson chose to ignore a Supreme Court decision—telling then Chief Justice John Marshall...

Ruling that the ObamaCare insurance mandate is unconstitutional is like saying that water is wet. Of course it's an unconstitutional abuse of federal power. If the feds can force people to buy health insurance there is virtually no limit to the reach of federal meddling into the affairs of life. In a sense, it's fortunate that the unmitigated arrogance of Obama, Reid and Pelosi -- as witnessed in the healthcare "reform" debacle -- is pushing even postmodern constitutional jurisprudence to its very limits. Two federal district court judges have concluded that ObamaCare is constitutional. In doing so, they wandered into...

Several top Democratic strategists are in the early stages of forming a new initiative to coordinate messaging in support of health care reform, POLITICO has learned. The messaging effort is designed to counter the Republican momentum to repeal or undermine the health care law. The efforts are in the early stages, according to several sources familiar with the matter, so few concrete details were available, but it will be a public relations initiative focused on the benefits of the law and what repeal would mean for those benefits.

Bloomberg News link only - White House Wants Obamacare on Slow Legal Track

Tennessee's ranking Republican politicos reacted swiftly earlier this week when Florida U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled the Obama administration's health care reform law is, in its totality, unconstitutional. "(Judge Vinson's) ruling was a crucial step in our fight against President Obama's unaffordable health care mandate," said Gov. Bill Haslam. "I declared this law an 'intolerable expansion of federal power' when the bill was passed by Congress last March, and Judge Vinson's ruling is yet another confirmation that the federal government significantly overstepped its authority." ...Corker's concerns apparently aren't shared by Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper, Jr. Ignoring the...

Health reform alive and wellBy Jay MacDonald Friday, February 4 Posted: 10 am ET As expected, Florida U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruled this week in favor of a Florida-led lawsuit filed by 26 states to block health care reform. Vinson's ruling, like that of Virginia Judge and fellow Republican appointee Henry Hudson in December, found unconstitutional the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, that requires all Americans to obtain health insurance beginning in 2014. Unlike Hudson, Vinson ruled that the individual mandate was not severable, and therefore voided the entire act. Two Democratically-appointed judges previously upheld...

I don’t like the fact that under the present president the third Branch of our government has became increasingly polarized and increasingly politicized. Justice is supposed to be blind and there is supposed to be the rule of law in this country. But no more. Not since the Obama justice department dismissed a case where clear violations of voter intimidation was won by U.S. Attorneys yet the case was dropped before judgment why, because the defendants who were the intimidators where Black and the voters being intimidated were White. Dismissing the case against the New Black Panthers is a clear...

Conservative thinkers could see this coming before President Obama was even elected. Obama’s perspective on the Constitution made it easy to forecast events such as what happened Monday, when Judge Roger Vinson, a federal district judge in Pensacola, ruled that the federal health care reform bill (“Obamacare”) unconstitutional. In a campaign speech, Obama criticized the Bill of Rights for being “negative rights.” That is, it states only what the federal government cannot do. Obama’s concern was that we should be governed by a bill of rights which includes what the government can do to its citizens. The most obnoxious part...

Judge Roger Vinson's ruling striking down the health-care law's individual mandate and, with it, the rest of the statute, may or may not stand up in higher courts. But it's more convincing than some arguments I've read on the other side. My colleague Ezra Klein, for example, argues that "whatever the legal argument about the individual mandate is about, it's not, as some of its detractors would have it, a question of liberty." The individual mandate involves less intrusion in private markets and more personal choice than alternatives such as a single-payer system, Ezra notes -- borrowing the point from...

Following a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the constitutionality of the new health care law, Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told CNSNews.com that the Obama administration should continue enforcing the health care law despite federal judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that it is unconstitutional.

Roger Vinson, a U.S. District Court judge in Florida, laid down the gauntlet Monday. He ruled Obamacare is unconstitutional from top to bottom. Unlike, say, the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance abomination, which the courts have chipped around the edges but largely left in place, Obamacare faces a real threat to its survival. In essence, Judge Vinson concluded the individual mandate is unconstitutional because it penalizes people for choosing not to partake of a consumer product, health insurance. In his view, the constitutional language empowering Congress to regulate "Commerce ... among the several States," does not extend to regulating avoidance of commerce by...