Is there not film of Sotomayor's Duke conference remark that the "court of appeals is where policy is made," and then adding, "I know I shouldn't have said that, but . . . ."?
If the Justices get "into the weeds" of the so-called "Affordable Health Care" legislation by such suppositions, ignorant or informed, then they are not adhering to their constitutional assignment as interpreters of the principles of the Constitution.
The Framers of America's Constitution would understand that such an act is not, and never was, about health care. It is about accumulations of power in the hands of arbitrary "rulers," including elected officials, bureaucrats and others whose role is to exert coercive power over the citizens.
Today's Justices should have understood that when the Trojan Horse called "health care reform" and various other appealing titles was introduced.
They are citizens, as well as Justices, and if they want future generations to honor them as advocates for liberty, their opinions must not insult the lofty aims of the Constitution's Preamble.
Hopefully, they will value the opinions of future generations more than accolades from a faction of so-called "progressives" who wish to separate America from its foundations in the enduring ideas of liberty, "changing" it back into Old World ideas from which it came.
For every page of a law, several pages of regulations are written to implement the provisions of the law, and federal regulations carry the weight of law once they are promulgated... if on average there are 5 pages of regulations to implement every 1 page of legislation, the total pages of “law” amounts to over 12,000 pages.
Then, each state must write implementing state regulations that are based on the 12,000 pages of federal law/regulation, which would amount to another 36,000 pages if the state wrote 3 pages of state “policy” for each page of federal “policy”. This amounts conservatively to 48,000 pages in law, federal and state regulations that will result, or the equivalent of 96 500-page books.
If you read 1 500-page book a week, it would take you almost two years to finish all 96 volumes. This would accomplish the actual reading of the material, but much more would be required in order to actually have a good working knowledge and understanding of the material.
I kind of like the idea of putting all legislators who voted for this monstrosity under house arrest until they have both read and passed an exam on their proficiency and understanding of the material...and that until a majority of legislators have finished their house arrest, the law is put on immediate “hold”.
Newt said he likes about 300 pages of Obamacare.
If we want to elect Congressmen who will read all the legislation they vote on, we will have to redo the qualifications required to run for office. Anyone who has graduated from an Ivy league school, especially law school, is automatically disqualified. Anyone who has not spent at least five years working at a real job, or running a real business is disqualified. Anyone who has spent more than ten years holding elected offices is disqualified. Anyone who has never worked in anything but government and bureaucratic jobs is disqualified. If such candidates can’t be found by the parties, random drawings will be held, and candidates will be selected like jurors. There is room for fine tuning, etc, but this would be better than what we are doing.
I certainly don’t blame the justices for not wanting to read the bill, but if they are to rule on it, they should know what is in it.
The individual mandate seems to be drawing all the attention, but the bill likely contains many other unconstitutional provisions that will go unnoticed. If the court strikes down the mandate, but leaves the rest of the bill on the books, many of its illegal provisions will be law as approved by the court. All the kickbacks, payoffs, & cronyism will be the law of the land.
In 2700 pages, written by Socialists, most of it is probably unconstitutional. If the court refuses to read it, then it must not be worth reading, therefore it should be entirely rejected, not partially rejected.
All this may be moot, as the court may rule it constitutional, which would be the ultimate travesty, given they don’t know what the bill actually says. We call that “rubber stamping” where I come from.