Transcript...@Supreme Court: The Health Care Law And The Individual Mandate
It's got this little number in it...
The legislative history is replete with members of Congress explaining that this law is constitutional as an exercise of the taxing power. It was attacked as a tax by its opponents. So I don't think this is a situation where you can say that Congress was avoiding any mention of the tax power.
It would be one thing if Congress explicitly disavowed an exercise of the tax power. But given that it hasn't done so, it seems to me that it's not only is it fair to read this as an exercise of the tax power, but this Court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power, if it can be upheld on that basis.
Sounds to me like Congress knew it was a tax during debate.
@It Was Always a Tax
In part...Mr. President, the bill before us is clearly an appropriate exercise of the commerce clause. We further believe Congress has power to enact this legislation pursuant to the taxing and spending powers.
Snip...House Democrats likewise argued that Obamacare is constitutionally justified as an exercise of Congresss power to levy taxes and spend money. Thus, Rep. George Miller of California said:
A really good article, IMO.
Be sure to read this...
I rather liked this towards the end...
But!
I object!
How dare you object to my objection!
I am wiser than thee.
nah! but I am the fool.
.. or am I?
Who know-est? Not I!
Cast your dispersions I am prepared.
.. prepared for what I ask?
.. I know-est not for I am no more sure of myself and my very thoughts that I flounder in them.
I am DOOMED.
Nay! We are ALL doomed!
And it is my own device which I created that doomed myself and thee with me........!
A pox on Roberts and Hamlet - imbecilic (idiotic) both.
Another piece of literature which now captures the essence of the “new”, devoid of integrity and principles John Roberts—courtesy of T.S. Eliot:
The Hollow Men
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer —
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
I have to say that I wish I had thought this up. It is brilliant. Hamlet was Shakespeare’s great forray into and exploration of the consequences of nihilism (a concept to be attributed to the great Harold Bloom - and no, I don’t believe that Shakespeare is a nihilist). But now we know that Roberts is.