The White House/Media Cocoon on ObamaCare
As evidence for their scoffing, they pointed out how that great constitutional scholar Nancy Pelosi was incredulous at the notion that there could possibly be an issue with it, or the more honest Democrat congressman (who somehow inexplicably later lost his election) who didn’t even think that it mattered. They also pointed out the sophisticated legal argument that it must be constitutional, otherwise its proponents would have actually put forth legal arguments supporting the case:
That the law is constitutional is best illustrated by the fact that — until recently — the Obama administration expended almost no energy defending it.
Could there be a more airtight defense? Perhaps, if one had a sieve.
All of this is evidence of the media/academic cocoon in which so many of these commentators live. It is a world in which it is unimaginable that Wickard v. Filburn may have been wrongly decided, in which there may actually be limits to federal power. It is unimaginable that the great solons on the Hill — Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank — could possibly write a bill which might actually be unconstitutional despite its hundreds of pages that not one person read, and that we couldn’t possibly know what was in it until they passed it.
As a specific example of how completely gobsmacked they were, read “legal analyst” Jeffrey Toobin’s reaction to the hearing:
“This law looks like it’s going to be struck down,” he said. “I’m telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.”
Shocking, Jeffrey, we know. Just shocking.
Shocking, that is, to anyone completely unfamiliar with the founding document and the intent of the Founders. Sadly, this includes most people in the traditional media, on which too many continue to rely for their analysis. The White House could have avoided, or at least mitigated, this disaster by hiring the smartest opponents of the law to come in and do a moot court exercise against them, in order to prepare their advocate in advance. But, whether due to arrogance, incompetence, or both, it did not.
This week’s events at the Supreme Court should be a torpedo below the waterline to the credibility of those who have been telling us about the Constitution, and those who determine the constitutionality of the swill that is generated in Congress. A media organization that wanted to survive the coming tsunami of fact-checking from those in the know, who with social media are increasingly becoming more known, might want to hire a “red team” to give them the bitter truths they need to survive.
But because both they, and the administration that they protect, remain cocooned, it may take another few hits.
Delenda est Wickard!
Korematsu v. US is the precedent for an individual mandate. In that case the Solicitor General withheld information from Fred Korematsu, and so, based on that denial of due process grounds, Fred Korematsu, born in the US and guilty of no crime, was able to have his conviction for NOT REPORTING TO A CONCENTRATION CAMP expunged.
I would have hoped that the SCOTUS would overturn Korematsu v. US, but it was not, to my mind, mentioned.
Huh?
Korematsu was not a Commerce Clause case.
et Kelo!
It’s not over yet.
There is a point I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere.
I’m betting that at least the conservative Justices (including Kennedy, for argument’s sake) were unhappy with Kagan for not recusing herself. I mean, it was a slam-dunk that she should have and they know it. It reflects on the whole court.
Her failure to do so taints her certain vote to uphold and would taint the Court’s decision to uphold, and the Court itself, should that happen. Maybe that ultimately figures into Kennedy’s reasoning.
No Kagan and maybe he goes with the liberals: deadlock–upheld, but clean. With Kagan he goes with the conservatives; the PPACA goes down 5-4. Still clean. So the question: will Kagan’s insistence on hearing the case help to alter the outcome from a 4/4 deadlock to a 5-4 loss?
Other thing that I have seen: Kennedy was sitting in front of Obama during that SOTU when Obama blasted the court on the campaign finance decision–the one Kennedy authored. Back atcha–maybe.
Interesting point. It might be that Kagan’s lack of judicial experience makes her failure to recuse herself even more egregious in the eyes of some of the justices.
And it may permanently diminish her standing with the other Justices.
I think Kagan’s incompetence both when she was Solicitor General during the period that birthed the abomination of ObamaCare and her demonstrated incompetence during oral arguments may have done more to reduce this twat’s stature than anything else.
Remember,civility, try tw@t next time.
Can she still recuse herself from the vote … and encourage Justice Kennedy to initiate the deadlock you describe by doing so? If she wants this law to stand, that would serve her purposes.
Then again, the point about the SCOTUS being talked down to by the Law Student-in-Chief is a good one.
I doubt it.
Judges are a clanish lot and tend to circle the wagons anytime their power is attacked.
Protection of the judges “right” to decide for themselves whether to recuse or not to recuse will surely trump any ideology or facts in this case.
Merely being told that Kagen should recuse is enough for the judges to form ranks and do the opposite just because no-one tells a judge what to do.
Failure to recluse damages all of their legitimacy (re: power). Naked or open power moves help people to not take them seriously.
The Justice’s have already made up their minds. The process is just for show, going through the motions. The decision to overturn, and not sever could be written in one paragraph. That is how simple this case is constitutionally.
These proceedings never actually change minds, they reinforce already held opinions.
Charles Lane of the Washington Post made that point about Kennedy and the SOTU address.
Justices are people too. And if the President and Dems went out of their way to humiliate Kennedy, he probably isn’t feeling really generous towards them right now. Payback can be a b****.
A Constitutional Awakening A bad day for unlimited government at the High Court.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304636404577295883378953596.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The WH is the ‘red team’.
That the SG couldn’t figure out what questions would be asked by SCOTUS is absurd. That’s why there are lower courts. All the arguments in this case were known for the last two years.
CORRECTION:
The White House is the ‘Christmas Team’. It’s both ‘red’ and ‘green’.
For those on the receiving end of wealth redistribution, every day is Christmas.
Actually, the WH team is the “watermelon team” .. you know the rest.
They shouldn’t bother actually hearing the case if they’re just going to vote along party lines anyway.
Those of us in the reality based community know that PPACA is blatantly unconstitutional on its face. That it passed in the first place is a tragedy. Anyone upholding it should be prosecuted for treason.
I agree. Anyone with a modicum of education and a love of liberty knows this STUPID, incoherent law is unConstitutional. It’s ridiculous that the Supreme Court needs to take months and years to pronounce judgment on the obvious. If Owebama, that witch Pelosi, and the damnable Dems pull this off, the only option left is war.
You might be interested to know that Homeland Security is purchasing…
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office is getting an “indefinite delivery” of an “indefinite quantity” of .40 caliber ammunition from defense contractor ATK.
U.S. agents will receive a maximum of 450 million rounds over five years, according to a press release on the deal.
The high performance HST bullets are designed for law enforcement and ATK says they offer “optimum penetration for terminal performance.”
This refers to the the bullet’s hollow-point tip that passes through barriers and expands for a bigger impact without the rest of the bullet getting warped out of shape: “this bullet holds its jacket in the toughest conditions.”
We’ve also learned that the Department has an open bid for a stockpile of rifle ammo. Listed on the federal business opportunities network, they’re looking for up to 175 million rounds of .223 caliber ammo to be exact. The .223 is almost exactly the same round used by NATO forces, the 5.56 x 45mm.
The deadline for earlier this month was extended because the right contractor just hadn’t come along.
Looks like the Department of Homeland Security means business.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-immigration-agents-are-loading-up-on-as-many-as-450-million-new-rounds-of-ammo-2012-3#ixzz1qYwllM1i
The political elite and the leftstream media live in an echo chamber of their own making. So, of course, they were surprised that their assumption that Obamacare is perfectly fine was challenged. As usual, they are shocked that there is another point of view.
They are shocked and soon they will be angry. The election seems like a long way away.
The comments section from the Toobin HuffPuff post is an irreplaceable “learning opportunity” in just how far into dark-ages murk and stupidity the average America liberal has sunk. I’d sooner attempt a discussion with a tree and would have higher expectations on the outcome than with the festering mental lepers who flock to AOL’s toothless viper pit.
May I take that? I’ve been using ‘fetid cesspool’ but that’s old now and I like yours better. I promise to credit .Goin Medieval with each use.
For two years since passage of this monstrosity I have fretted that the last vestiges of the Founders great work was going to be eaten away by Obama, Pelosi, Reid. It may still happen and we may be too far gone for resurection, too virtueless to recover, but the last several days have been deliciously enjoyable.
The Court may yet rule that the mandate passes muster under the Commerce Clause and that precedent doesn’t matter when severability is being considered, but it has been really fun to watch people like little Jeffy Toobin go slack jawed while simultaneously squirming as people who actually have some understanding of the Founders intentions put some serious logic on public display. Can you imagine how tight his sphincter muscles were at about noon March 27th 2012?
The elitist journalists and pundits who have poo pooed originalists and conservatives may yet find that liberal sophistry is exposed as bunk for all to see in June. These psuedo intellectuals may yet find out that the fancy Ivy league socialist interpretaion of reality they hold so dearly to has limits and that Marx, Fabian, Atlee, Wilson, Roosevelt and Obama were all dreadfully wrong.
Yeah, not likely I know, they’re all too self absorbed; but if the Court delivers a rebuke and finds a limit these little people are going to be exposed for the gas bags that they are.
Here’s to the Constitution still being a power limiting document. Now lets get about dismatling the rest of the Leviathan.
Well said. Regardless of the decision, the Justices clearly demonstrated an appreciation of the core issues. I suspect our socialist comrades still don’t get it, though.
Too bloody right, mate. Schadenfreude is yummy.
But, but, Obama is a constitutional scholar and one of the smartest men to ever hold office anywhere.. How is it possible that the SMITR (smartest man in the room) missed these arguments? I’m shocked..
It might be due to the admirer’s IQ is only a tad lower than that of Obama’s? A moron admiring another moron, what a hoot!
This is sarcasm, buddy. Relax a bit.
Perhaps because it is politically desirable to lose this argument now. The majority of people polled wanted to see the law struck down. This way he won’t be held accountable for the huge and spiraling expense of “Obamacare”. He no longer needs to worry about accusations of deceit in the timing of the provisions to gain a favorable CBO rating. And yet for the minority who supported it he can blame the Supreme Court and the GOP state governors that brought the challenge. Win-Win except for Verrilli who sounded like a fool.
Genius is often overlooked. One day everyone will recognize him as a true constitution master.
I am surprised that the most intelligent President and administration in history could not craft a law that was constitutional! I thought the President was a constitutional scholar. I thought his administration was filled with such scholars. The constitution boils down to a couple of pages of text, and these scholars, who presumably actually studied it for many years, apparently don’t understand a single word in it.
Yes Obama is indeed a Constitutional scholar, just not the US Constitution.
Actually, to be fair, Obama was against the individual mandate before he was for it, and Romney was for the individual mandate at the federal level before he was against it. Apparently Obama and team relied on Romney and team’s kind input and high fives regarding the individual mandate, extrapolating the Romney care state model in Mass. to the federal level. Yikes! What a failure. I think Romney set Obama up. It’s obviously a rich white racist plot to deny poor black folks single payer federal health care.
Perhaps the reason that it has been on the table for 20 years but never actually proposed is its questionable Constitutionality? For Democrats to try to spin this is ridiculous. Obviously they supported it because they passed it. To try to suggest that because GOP Congressmen once supported it but now they don’t simply to limit the President’s success is illogical. If there was once such bi-partisan support, it would have been passed 20 years ago when Congress could still work in a bi-partisan fashion. Obviously it did not enjoy the support of a majority of Republicans even then or it wouldn’t have taken 20 years and a Democratic majority in two houses to get it done.
I just love that new “argument” that because some GOPer supported it in the past means that they are hypocrites to oppose it now. Because, you know *hairflip*, being a hypocrite is the worst thing you can possibly be.
Have they ever had any traction with the “Well, Bush did this..” argument before? No. Are they just slow or do they have no ability to learn?
I’ve written and said this many times, but have yet to find more than 1 liberal that understands it. Their logic is thus:
1. I don’t support President Obama on issue A.
2. President Bush took a similar stance on issue B, which is close to issue A.
3. Therefore I am a hypocrite for not supporting President Obama on issue A.
It just doesn’t enter their mind that I could possibly ever have disagreed with President Bush on any issue because I now oppose President Obama on this issue.
My head spins…
In defense of Obama, only 26 state Attorney Generals went to court to overturn his law. This means, according to his Constitutional Scholarhood, that 31 states had no problem with it. In a democracy that is a clear majority. Why Verrilli did not wow the Court with this argument, I will never know.
As a lawyer I don’t buy this attitude from the Left that the Court by its questions already telegraphed their opinions. Even judges play devil’s advocate not to fool anyone but to look at it from all sides. They do keep open minds, on the Right at least, and are capable of being persuaded in the private, closed doors give and take among themselves. So why throw in the towel now? Well anything can happen in a court and it usually will.
Correction. That should be 26 State Attorneys General. Looks better. Sorry.
No,Mr. Burke, 31 plus 26 equals all 57 states. The smartest man in the room said he’s been to all of them, didn’t he?
Nick, Mr. Burke was not apologizing for his math. He corrected the pluralization of “Attorneys General”. Everybody knows there are 57 states. Dear Leader told us so.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Obama were laying awake at 3:00 in the morning, endlessly playing and replaying his State of the Union speech a couple of years ago, where he publicly snarked the Supreme Court? It seems to me that this is a perfect time and place to administer an ear-cuffing from the Supremes to That Person, educating him on exactly what separation of powers means, and that the Supreme Court is every bit as powerful as a podunk community organizer from Chicago. Surely even the liberal foursome might want to make that point clear to the Executive Branch.
I don’t think 0bama and his goons ever considered the Constitution while writing the healthcare ‘law’. They probably figured, ‘we have Congress, we have the White House, we have the press- who’s going to challenge us?’
26 state AGs stepped forward.
And to ‘Edmund Burke’ above, the fact that ‘only’ 26 state AGs filed suit is evidence of nothing more than 24 state AGs did not.
Your math is wrong since 57-26=31. To say anything else is to doubt The Won. Such heresy must be extirpated.
50 states delenda est. Also sprach Obama.
“Gobsmacked.” Love it. Heard Kagan today. She sounded pretty low IQ to me. It’s hard to believe it can be this easy. Something evil is lurking in the woodwork. I hope the Justices are safe. I know some unpleasant shock is coming.
Gee, I wonder who ‘something’ would be blamed on?
Poor Verrilli was shaking and quaking for good reason, I believe.
Hope we don’t read about a traffic accident on page D16 of the WaPost.
On her worst day, Justice Kagan is borderline brilliant.
Unfortunately, she suffers from the same common functional overlay that afflicts many otherwise intelligent people who buy whole-heartedly into a very left-wing set of social paradigms. This channels her intellectual capabilities into one single and constant direction, and never allows her to fully analyze both sides of a competing political question.
She tried her best to help Breyer out today in formulating an argument for the Medicare expansion, but you could see both of them butt up against that mental wall that won’t allow them to see the evils of the current administration. Sebilius’s letter to Arizona (threatening to remove ALL health care funding if Arizona doesn’t toe the line) is one of the exhibits, and yet neither Breyer nor Kagan seem able to give up arguing that there’s no coercion because the government simply never would yank all of that funding “for the ill and the poor” just to get their way. It wouldn’t be reasonable, they both said, and so it won’t ever happen. Trust this government. Really.
You could just about hear Clement’s eyes rolling at that point. And Scalia – who will normally challenge such efforts by other Justices – pretty much stayed silent during this display, showing that he agrees with Napoleon that you should never interrupt your enemy when they’re making a mistake.
Karma. When BHO stood before Congress at The State of the Union address and ridiculed the Supreme Court for their decision on campaign financing, I thought to myself, “Barry, you just stepped on a political and historical IED. This Court will have the final say on what you think is your legacy, Obamacare.” Chief Justice John Roberts, the classy guy he is, did not move a muscle or express any sign as this child-like and bully President mocked them. He knew the Potus was Left, far Left of the Constitution, and that They would bring it Right, right back to its founding. The very legislation the Pelosi and Reid congress flaunted would be their messiah’s failure, and contribute to his election defeat. When BHO comes to grips with this, it will be then, that he, the Left and the media will become even more dangerous. Buckle up people, it’s going to get really ugly. Stay calm and stay cool, they will self-implode and seal their own fate, because they are all about feelings and feelings come from the heart and the heart is a deceitful and wicked thing, or so the Bible says, but they, the left, don’t believe it, even though they are proof of it. Karma.
A 5-4 decision against the mandate or all of Obamacare in general will not pierce the media/pundit/intellectual class cocoon, because it simply further conforms to their prejudices about the Court’s conservative wing.
Strike the law down, and there will be no soul-searching, just boilerplate rhetoric that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito are evil and Kennedy is untrustworthy (can’t lump him in with the others because you don’t want to demonize the potential swing vote on future cases). It would take at 6-3, or more likely, a 7-2 vote to trigger any reason for soul searching among liberals on why they ended up in the same place as Paulean Kael after the 1972 presidential election (and even Ms. Kael seemed more self-award of McGovern’s chances than some of the talking heads did on Obamacare prior to Tuesday’s Court session).
Hell, even 7-2 might not penetrate.
It didn’t in 2000, when 7-2 the court said selective recounting to cherry pick votes in Florida was complete B.S. They stuck with the ‘selected not elected’ crap on the basis of the 5-4 vote that put a stop to the ongoing three ring circus and have the vote certified.
… and even though the comprehensive recounts done later by several different groups including a consortium of the big newspapers found Bush did in fact win.
Liberty is at most one generation away fron extinction. So is tyranny, if it becomes necessary.
Remember the Battle of Athens!
Trying to predict the Supreme Court’s final decision on Obamacare is rather like reading tea leaves or sacrificing a goat and “reading” the entrails. After the oral arguments are completed, a whole lot of legal thinking, advocacy, and horse trading will go on behind closed doors at the court.
At an ideal libertarian extreme, not only would Obamacare be overthrown as unconstitutional, but Wickard v. Filburn would also be overturned. At the other extreme, the law would be sustained in full. The horrifying compromise would be that the individual mandate is overturned, but the remainder of the statute remains in place. God forbid.
It isn’t over until it is over—at some time in the months to come—when the written opinions are issued.
Be assured that if Obamacare is overturned, Obama will fan the flames of mob sentiment by portraying the Supreme Court as obstructionist and not “forward looking”. He will also go from one campaign stop to another proclaiming the need to re-elect him so that he can fill the next court vacancy with a liberal—-one who has “empathy”.
“Be assured that if Obamacare is overturned, Obama will fan the flames of mob sentiment by portraying the Supreme Court as obstructionist and not “forward looking”. He will also go from one campaign stop to another proclaiming the need to re-elect him so that he can fill the next court vacancy with a liberal—-one who has “empathy”.”
I am suspicious that Obama decided upon this very strategy months ago. Remember that it was BHO that encouraged SCOTUS to take up this case so soon (before the election). Now with a performance from Verrilli that appears no difference from what he’d have done if told to throw the case…
After watching him stumble and mumble around for three years, do you still *really* think he’s smart enough to (1) think up a plan like that, (2) implement a plan like that, (3) hire people around him to help him in the implementation, or (4)keep both the plan and the implementation a secret?
I think you’re being overly paranoid. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and the story is that the dog did NOT bark in the night.
“After watching him stumble and mumble around for three years, do you still *really* think he’s smart enough to (1) think up a plan like that, (2) implement a plan like that, (3) hire people around him to help him in the implementation, or (4)keep both the plan and the implementation a secret?”
I do, yes.
I mean, look at his entire career prior to winning the presidency. This is what the man DOES. He’s a manipulative schemer. He knows for sure and for certain that his end goals are the end goals of all right-thinking people .He knows his is the True And Correct Path, it so it justifies any means he can conceive which might help him follow that path.
Make fun of him if you want, but keep in mind that this guy, born a poor mixed-race kid to a single mother, won the financial and political support of some very heavy dudes at a very early age, got people to set him up at some heady schools, got those heavy dudes to set him up lecturing on con law at U of C Law (where he was for twelve years, somehow also able to find the time to do all of his famous organizing and representing simultaneously with his teaching job), got them to set him up with the Chicago powerset, got them to finance his local elections and his elections for three terms as a state senator, followed by his U.S. Senate win, all the way through challenging and beating HRC for the Dem nomination and eventual win of the presidency.
The guy’s no slouch.
He may be completely without morals or honor. He may be the absolute worst president this country has ever experienced. He may be a thieving, double-crossing, arrogant racist who aspires to the powers and the character of Stalin.
But let’s not ever make the supreme mistake of thinking that we’ve got him confused and disillusioned and overmatched. Let’s not underestimate him.
Think of it this way:
He’s not Sarumen.
He’s Sauron.
Not only do I think he’s a slouch, but I also think he’s a dupe. I think he was bought and paid for by the Saudis / Russia / China — who-ever from abroad poured money into his campaign to buy him the Presidency of the United States. I think he was groomed for the position and agreed to it ahead of time, which is why all his educational and birth records have been sealed.
I think now he’s performed *so* poorly in crashing the world’s economy as well as America’s, that even his overseas Masters are pissed off at him, and in punishing him have raised the price of oil so that we’re paying $5 a gallon, with no end in sight.
I sincerely hope I’m still around to watch his karma catch up with him.
Looking at the poll numbers for O-Care, I’d like to see Teh Won on the campaign trail making the argument, ‘Re-elect me so that I can put more Justices like Kagan and Sotomayor on the Court’. I’d welcome that debate all day long.
The Solicitor General’s performance was completely in line with that of Obama and the rest of the White House Occupiers. Rememebr this from a few weeks ago:
“Energy was a particular obsession of the president-elect’s, and therefore a particular source of frustration. Week after week, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. “I don’t get it,” he’d say. “We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean, there are no jobs?” But the numbers rarely budged.”
The Same Thing.
I’ve been having fun lurking the leftosphere and their frustration with Verrilli.
But here’s the thing: as much as they complain, they NEVER provide the obvious! and clear! defense he somehow missed. Yo, Mother Jones and Daily Kos, exactly what should Verrilli have said? Surely some lefty somewhere can tell us succinctly what the limiting principle is and why this precedent wouldn’t allow the federal government to force us to buy broccoli, joke dog poo, or Brylcreem.
It was not that he was unprepared, it was that he was defending the indefensible. Liberals on the left are stunned simply because if they really, really, REALLY want something, it is assumed it can get over the Constitutionality hump. You see, they are vituous and ther cause is what matters. I sincerely believe that a typical High School student could have figured this out two years ago. This is not rocket science. The Constitution is not 2700 pages. I am simply stunned that Liberals are even dumber that I have always made them out to be.
…….re your, “It was not that he was unprepared, it was that he was defending the indefensible.”
From what I’ve been reading here and there, I’m beginning to feel sorry for him as the scapegoat…..I wonder what Verrilli’s private thoughts are right now.
Liberals got accustomed to the ultra-liberal Earl Warren Supreme Court, which did a lot of things which seemed right but which had dubious constitutional justification. So they would often make up a justification out of thin air.
A good example is the case Daniel v. Paul (1969): The time had come in America for even private businesses (like restaurants) owned by white people to stop discriminating against black customers. But there was nothing obvious in the Constitution about that. So they used the Commerce Clause against the restaurant owner: Since he was serving meals that included foodstuffs he had bought from other states, he was engaging in interstate commerce! Gotcha! Now the Feds had the authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate his business and stop him from discriminating against black customers.
As Justice Thurgood Marshall said at the time: “Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.” That’s what liberals are accustomed to: Since Universal Health Care is The Right Thing To Do [according to them], just find or appoint a sympathetic judge who rules with his heart rather than his head, and get it done.
Some years ago, blogging with some journos about various items, I noted an article that said the NYT had reported that a wounded soldier was awarded the “Purple Star”.
I objected. The other journos made the point that the military, in these days of shrunken defense efforts, is so arcane and unabvailable to civilians that there is no reason to excoriate the journos for not knowing it. Nobody knows it, outside of the military.
And, the point is, everybody you know over the age of, say fourteen.
But the guys in the business, the journos, were so ignorant both of the subject and our culture at large that they didn’t have a clue how ignorant they were.
SURprise
I’m sure that none of our justices remember how Mr. Obama disrespectfully taunted and mocked the court en banc during his State of the Union Address. Why would they remember a little thing like that?
The media & the Democrats will blame the scary, unthinking “Conservative” Justices. Internally, Pelosi et all internally be blamed for the failure of Obamacare & thrown under the bus politically, though not overtly. If Reid loses the Senate, his successors will climb over his body.
There is a very simple reason, beyond ‘educated’ stupidity or cocoons, to explain why they could not make a concise argument as to why the mandate is inherently limited so it does not imply unlimited power via the commerce clause:
It is because they fundamentally *don’t* think there is a limit in the first place.
Right you are, newscaper.
I can only conclude that such a concept — testing their arguments against those of their political opponents — not only never occurred to the solicitor general or his defenders in the media, but that the very notion that their arguments had any flaws never crossed their minds.
Of course not … after all, they are So. Much. Smarter. than we are …
With the “severability factor”, we can add a ship-sinking and complete the Trifecta structural failure that this TITANIC Obamacare legislation has been.
+1. You put that one in the clout.
Charlie
I’m not convinced by anything that was said in the last three days. Remember, essentially the same SCOTUS managed to twist the meaning of imminent domain to include the government confiscating your property for the expressed purpose of selling it to any other party, so long as it can be shown that tax revenues from said property will be increased. This because increased tax revenues for the government are an overriding public need. I will wait to see what our black robbed pillars actually decide, and I won’t hold my breath either. My best guess: We end up with Medicare expanded to include everyone and the government controls between 17 and 20% of our means of production in one fell swoop. Hello once again to the death squads and really long lines for emergency surgeries performed by poorly educated and unconcerned medical bureaucrats working in appalling conditions where ten patients get crammed into two patient rooms….etc. What is left of our rich people will have to go to Mexico to get real health care, since our ER rooms will always be crammed with shooting victims wearing hoodies and pants too low, and with drug addicts who pose as victims wearing hoodies and pants too low and looking like fools, and with ignorant teenaged girls hunting for some of that free stuff that prevents babies. But that is okay because the posters on the bus always say someone has their back, or some such. There is a lot to clean up in this country, and I am not betting SCOTUS will ever find any of the fathers of our children or fix any of our problems by merely slapping the hand of a treasonous Communist administration once every blue moon. Well, that’s about it for now.
“Remember, essentially the same SCOTUS managed to twist the meaning of imminent domain to include the government confiscating your property for the expressed purpose of selling it to any other party, so long as it can be shown that tax revenues from said property will be increased.”
But, on the optimistic side, if you listened to the oral argument of Kelo, you knew from the questions that that was coming. And, while their ruling in Kelo struck most of us as an outrageous attack on property rights, it actually was the correct ruling given their role in the process.
The ruling offended our senses of decency and right and justice, but it complied with what the Constitution required, and that was the only determination that the Court was empowered to make. Did the property owners receive fair compensation? If they did, the Court’s role is over.
The “decency and right and justice” part of the equation was the responsibility of the state legislature and the governor, and they clearly punted on all three principles. But the Supreme Court is only empowered to examine whether a law complies with the U.S. Constitution. They can’t overturn stupidity if it’s done in accordance with the Constitution.
“Madam, God himself could not sink this ship.”
– J. Bruce Ismay
(aka Barack Obama)
Why would you need a “red team” if you have one of the most respected Constitutional scholars in the known world: Elena Kagan? I’m sure you recall the Dean of Harvard Law School, former Solicitor General, and now Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Yeah, she of great Constitutional thinking built the foundation for Verrilli’s arguments. It was going to be a slam dunk, the current Solicitor General presenting the arguments of a former Solicitor General who was elevated to the highest court in the land by virtue of her brilliance. Sadly, you can hear the chant starting… “Air Ball!, Air Ball!, Air Ball!”.
It ain’t over by the longest of stretches. Even if the mandate were to pass muster under the Commerce Clause, you may be sure that some bright boy will be back to the Court the very first time somebody actually signs up for one of these new mandated policies. To wit:
In the amicus briefs, the Institute for Justice makes the unassailable point that compelling a party to enter into a contract renders that contract null and void. ACA doubles down on this: not only am I to be forced to sign a contract with a private third-party insurance company, that insurance company is to be forced to sell it to me. This violates centuries of common law, ably outlined in their brief. Furthermore, the States are in charge of insurance company regulation and the new “exchanges.” But Article I, Sec 10 of the Constitution states, in part:
“No State shall … pass any … Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts …”
By definition, forcing me to sign one impairs the Obligation of the Contract. If the mandate gets past the Commerce Clause (which I increasingly doubt), the follow-on litigation will take years. It ain’t over.
Jesus, you guys’ arms must get tired from all this frantic circle-jerking. Clicking your jackbooted heels over the postmortems of Jeff “where’s the TV camera” Toobin? Really?
Oral arguments make lousy tea leaves, but neither Clement nor Carvin was Clarence Darrow the past few days. The Justices, including Scalia, laughed AT Carvin for his lame attempts to suggest “commerce” is rightly to be considered only interactions among formally contracting parties. Carvin’s arrogant, clueless prattling was no help for the “congress has no business doing the people’s business” position.
Roberts may veer “conservative” (corporate lackey), but he’d much rather be remembered like Marshall (per Sotomayor’s reference to Gibbons) than Melville Fuller.
Sir, I applaud your ability to read through all these comments and come to the end no wiser, still convinced of your team’s invincibility.
I love your attempt at diversion, civisisus. An absolutely awful argument by the Solicitor General, and all you can say is “…neither Clement nor Carvin was Clarence Darrow…” or “..the justices laughed at Carvin?”
You cannot argue that the SG did an absolutely horrid job, can you? And while I don’t know if Clarence Darrow was on top of his game everyday, I do know that Paul Clement hit one out of the park so badly that the courts left-leaning justices had a hard time trying to help SG Verrilli out.
And about that matter of laughing at Carvin, try actually reading the transcript starting on page 81. You will find that the justices were laughing at a comment made by Justice Alito directed at Justice Bryer (p. 86), a humorous comment made by Justice Bryer himself (p. 88), and two self-deprecating comments made by Justice Kagen (p. 90).
Sadly, reading comprehension is not one of the strong suits exhibited by liberals. For a germane example of that, just look to Nance Pelosi’s “…you just have to read it to find out what’s in it…” comment.
I do not know what the final outcome will be, but oral arguments do give an insight into the direction the court is leaning. If they didn’t, nobody would pay a bit of attention to them.
Judging by many comments made here and elsewhere by our liberal “friends” (such as yourself), you all are indeed scared to death of what is coming down.
“It is unimaginable that the great solons on the Hill — Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank — could possibly write a bill which might actually be unconstitutional despite its hundreds of pages that not one person read, and that we couldn’t possibly know what was in it until they passed it.”
I would like to see an entire set of in-depth articles regarding exactly WHO IS writing legislation/bills, WHY they write them, HOW they get the power to do so, WHY the bills are never read, HOW are they initiated for consideration/writing to begin with, WHO pays their bills, WHO’s campaigns they donate to, how that relates to monies they receive from the gov’t(s), etc.
And about the lot of them being so called constitutional scholars, they only study it so they can later figure out how to implement their plans without it being a hindrance to what they are trying to do. In other words, they want to know how to get around it. That’s why they call it living breathing and all that. And if that’s the case, then we are basically a lawless nation, because no one would know because everyone would have a differing opinion of, just what the laws mean. Therefore it would be based solely on each one’s interpretation, from citizen to officer, attorney to judge, congress to justices, president to …egad…U.N. Lawlessness. We are pretty much there already, and this bill is just one more example of that fact.
Or if ObamaCare is struck down, the MSM will simply blame conservative Justices for its demise. Obviously it could not be the result of poor design or its unconstitutionality.
I have two posibilities I have not seen discussed, one my fondest hope, the other my worst fear.
Fondest hope: 9-0 decision striking down the whole law because it was never passed in congress by their own rules. “Deemed to have passed” has never been used before. The court has been known to do something like this when they cannot agree on the political issue, but can compromise to use a non-political issue to avoid a 5-4 split on a case with this much at stake.
Worst fear: A declaration that health care, like privacy, is a right that they just found in the constitution.
They’re victims of their own groupthink. Good.
All of you are missing the forest for the trees. Obamacare is unconstitutional because it violates the 13th(!) Amendment. Never heard of it? It reads like this:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The “individual mandate” is involuntary servitude, plain and simple. It is the first step to turning you, me and all of us into government-owned slaves. It is unconstitutional, totalitarian and evil. I will not live “under” such a tyrannical government. I DEMAND freedom!
One should not ignore the possibility that one of the conservative justices will be intimidated into voting the administration’s way by intimations of murder of family members. Anthony Kennedy has a wife and three children.