Is the Obama-Reid health reform plan unconstitutional?
The answer to that should be obvious: the Reid-Obama plan may be unwise, unsound, and unaffordable ... but it is unquestionably constitutional.
The federal government already requires every American to purchase health insurance. That's what Medicare does. The difference now is that everyone will be required to buy a private plan to cover them up to age 65 in addition to the government-run plan they are compelled to buy to cover them after 65.
So, what Frum is saying in his moronacy is: because the gov't does 1 unconstitutional thing it can do any unconstitutional thing.
If I had my conservative druthers I'd kill Medicare because its is ruining the market just like any other gov't run program...
...and it is unconstitutional.
I don’t hear anyone in Congress suggesting that Medicare violates the Constitution. So how can the new plan be unconstitutional if the old plan is OK?
No. It's become too ingrained in the public's mind. This is exactly the thing we are trying to thwart with ObamaCare. To speak thusly is to tempt electoral disaster until the political tides change.
But I repeat: two unconstitutional wrongs do not make a constitutional right. I wish the conservatives could speak up on this and get it struck from law ESPECIALLY on constitutional grounds.
Yet two Republican senators — Jim DeMint of South Carolina and John Ensign of Nevada — are arguing the opposite, and will try to force a to vote on that question.
Good on them. May they lay the groundwork for many more fights along these lines.
To what end? The Ensign-DeMint exercise will not stop the Reid-Obama plan. Nor will it much impress the courts. Since the challenges to Social Security were rejected by the Supreme Court in 1937, the courts have consistently held that the general welfare clause of the Constitution empowers Congress to create social welfare plans based on compulsory contribution. (Helvering v. Davis is the most relevant case.)
And this is why we need to stop listening to RINOs like you. People like you undercut Sarah Palin and let this new monstrosity into the WH where we will get a generation of Sonia Sotomayors. But just like Plessy V Ferguson was overturned so can the BS judgment of 1937.
Precisely because of the vote's futility, many Republican senators may perceive it as a base-pandering freebie and cast a posturing "aye."
Yet this seemingly free vote may have costly consequences.
DeMint's and Ensign's argument against the constitutionality of the Obama-Reid health reform rests upon the ancient theory of enumerated powers. Under this theory, Congress may do only what the Constitution specifically authorizes Congress to do. Since (for example) the Constitution speaks only of a Supreme Court, Congress has no power to create lower federal courts. Since the Constitution does not mention a national bank, Congress may not charter banks.
And Washington DC banned gun ownership until THAT was struck down. What's your point?
The theory exerted a lively influence upon the politics of the 1790s, when it was enthusiastically promoted by the party led by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. The heart went out of the theory in 1805, when then President Jefferson purchased Louisiana from the French in 1805. The Constitution had said nothing about THAT either.
You window-licker. The president has the power to negotiate treaties with senatorial ratification...which is what Jefferson's senate did and congress as a whole provided the purchase funds.
The Civil War finished off the theory for all practical political purposes. Since 1865, the doctrine of enumerated power has subsisted at the remote margins of American politics. Are Republicans proposing now to resurrect the constitutional theories of Roger Taney?
Ever hear of
abusum non tollit usum (abuse does not abolish the use). Taney abused enumerated powers at the expense of human liberty but that abuse did not invalidate the plainly written language of the constitution.
Get it? If you believe in enumerated powers you MUST agree to the Dred Scott decision.
When all else fails scream "RACIST!"
In fairness to the senatorial GOP, let it be acknowledged that almost every one of the votes cast in favor of the DeMint-Ensign motion will be cast without conviction. The modern Republican party is not seeking to relitigate the controversies of the 1790s. It does not doubt the constitutional validity of the Federal Reserve.
Congress gets to print the money. I can only presume that means they get to decide how much and how it is distributed.
But will the voters recognize that what looks like an attempt to reverse 200 years of constitutional history is really just an exercise in blowing off steam? That conservatives — after denouncing judicial activism for 35 years — are not now ourselves looking to the courts to fight our battles for us?
It was aggressive liberal legalists who tried to use the Constitution to win fights that they could not or would not contest in the court of public opinion. Conservative jurists used to understand, with Robert Bork and Oliver Wendell Holmes, that laws can be unwise without being unconstitutional. As Holmes wrote in his legendary dissent in the Lochner case: "my [judicial] agreement or disagreement has nothing to do with the right of a majority to embody their opinions in law."
Another false dichotomy: if you file suit you're just as bad as the ACLU...so don't EVER use the court system to protect yourself, just shut-up and take it!
Are we suddenly to align ourselves with the Brennans against the Borks, with the authors of Roe v. Wade against the constitutionalism of Alexander Hamilton? Even if it’s just a one-day stunt, that’s the wrong place to stand.
Um-m-m....Dipshit-in-Chief...if federalism were alive today Roe v Wade would not be a fact because the states would be passing their own abortion regulations.
http://www.theweek.com/bullpen/column/104493/Health_reform_Unwise_not_unconstitutionalDead Gawd! This is the man that gave the liberals the ammunition to call Sarah Palin a half-wit. He criticized her so bad during the campaign and his words were rebroadcast over and over again. This twit should stop licking windows and start chewing on power cords.
