Funny how the original 10 pages of the Constitution became "Constitutional Law," which seems to mean whatever law professors like BO think it means, and keeps getting bigger.
Posted on 11/12/2009 4:59:09 AM PST by markomalley
When asked where specifically the Constitution authorized Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance, Sen. Jack Reed (D.-R.I.) said that he “would have to check the specific sections” but said that it was like making people “sign up for the draft.”
“Specifically where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?” CNSNews.com asked Reed.
“Let me see,” said Reed. “I would have to check the specific sections, so I’ll have to get back to you on the specific section. But it is not unusual that the Congress has required individuals to do things, like sign up for the draft and do many other things too, which I don’t think are explicitly contained [in the Constitution]. It gives Congress a right to raise an army, but it doesn’t say you can take people and draft them. But since that was something necessary for the functioning of the government over the past several years, the practice on the books, it’s been recognized, the authority to do that.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Using Reed’s logic, couldn’t they force everyone to buy electric cars?
For the Lefties the answer should be easy. The general welfare clause and the commerce clause are the left’s all in one wonder clauses of the Constitution. Next they will use the commerce clause to force every family to buy a GM car.
Well then just do that now and skip the bill!
Yes they can. Just outlaw gasoline and diesel.
Sen. Jack Reed (D.-R.I.) said that he “would have to check the specific sections”
Right Sen. Libtard. The healthcare provisions in the US Constitution are next to the sections:
1) Free school lunch, midnight basketball, and cellular phone service.
2) Funding of ACORN.
3) Use of tax dollars for funding overseas abortions.
4) Exclusion of cell phone use while driving (I think Hamilton twittered that to the Constitional convention).
This does makes me wonder. How did Congress manage to mandate participation in Social Security and Medicare?
Their logic is simple:
“Since we’ve screwed you before, now it’s an accepted practice, and we can screw you whenever we want. And screw your constitution too”.
Just remember that the "general welfare" clause is not actually a clause in the constitution confering responsibility or power. It is in the preamble, providing a justification for the powers granted to the federal government by the operative clauses of the constitution.
In other words, it is a goal, a goal that the founders believed could be acheived by granting limited powers to the government.
The commerce clause is an actual operative clause.
I do recall reading on FR (I don't have a link) that SS was first designed as insurance to be purchased, but they couldn't get required purchase to pass Constitutional muster, so they made it a tax.
““Since we’ve screwed you before, now it’s an accepted practice, and we can screw you whenever we want. And screw your constitution too”.”
Hard to improve this one.
I’ve always felt the draft was on the hairy edge of government power. But on the other hand, I’ve used the draft as an argument against abortion. If we have the right to force men to spend 2 years of their life in danger of being killed, away from their families, in order to protect human life, why shouldn’t the government have the power to force women to spend 9 months of their life inconvenienced by pregnancy in order to protect human life?
Still, requiring people to pay taxes, or fight in a war, are fundamentally different concepts than forcing someone to buy the product of a private business, a product that has no direct value (insurance does nothing for you, except indirectly providing money to buy health care).
Now Deathcare™ is something to help Big Gubmint function. That should make headlines.
Yep......and they have their own constitution they go by up on Crapitol Hill.......obviously. :(
Using Reed’s logic, couldn’t they force everyone to buy electric cars?
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Using his “logic” they could force everyone to buy a Teddy bear or force them to stand on their heads and whistle Dixie. He don’t know logic from loggin’!
Someone needs to remind him that a war was fought over less than this healcare bill.
All 20 million should leave a copy of the constitution
on the steps of congress and white house, with demands that they obey it.
If our leaders, our government refuses to live by it, we should express our outrage. They should shudder with fear.
The next Tea party to DC should shake the ground they walk on.
Congress does in fact have the right ‘To raise and support armies’ and it does not explicitly endorse or bar a draft.
But, try as i might I don’t find that article that allows them to make money from one person and give it to another in order to benefit a third party.
Congress does in fact have the right ‘To raise and support armies’ and it does not explicitly endorse or bar a draft.
But, try as i might I don’t find that article that allows them to make money from one person and give it to another in order to benefit a third party.
He has a JD from Harvard and nneds to consult the Constitution ? Do they still teach constitutional law at Harvard ? Not that it's used much in DC.
I think this will be the most effective way to challenge the Health care bill. A class action suit of all 56% of those who don't want the Feds to run healthcare.
Authority to do to you not for you.
Funny how the original 10 pages of the Constitution became "Constitutional Law," which seems to mean whatever law professors like BO think it means, and keeps getting bigger.
“We need a 20 million man march to DC.”
I totally agree. And some could even come unarmed.
Fixed it for ya — What a group of geniuses we have elected to the Senate.
Remember gang they’re a problem of our own making.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
He just goes to show that RI could have skipped being the 13th state to ratify the Constitution, and no one would have known. People in RI don’t seem to have much political understanding.
That would be less than a third the size of Obama’s popular “people’s army” of true believers.
From national security to healthcare....yeah, that’s great logic there senator weed...ahh reed.
Great thread. Thanks to all posters. Tyranny is on the march.
Using Reed’s logic Govt. could tell you:
What to eat?
What to wear?
What to drive?
Where to go?
What to study?
Where to live?
Etc., etc., etc.,
ANYTHING that government decides is in the “best interests” of the U.S. could be imposed on us.
The following is excerpted from a Wall Street Journal article dated October 30, 2009.
FBI LETS BARRED TYCOON VISIT US
By EVAN PEREZ and GREGORY L. WHITE
One of Russia's most powerful tycoons -- barred entry to the U.S. for years due to U.S. government concerns about possible ties to organized crime -- visited the country twice this year under secret arrangements made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned.
Mr. Deripaska used the opportunity of his recent U.S. visits to meet with top executives of U.S. investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The aluminum giant he controls, UC Rusal, is preparing for an initial public offering, a vital part of Mr. Deripaska's efforts to save his debt-burdened business.
The U.S. trips came at an opportune moment to help reassure bankers his visa difficulties may be easing. Mr. Deripaska's visa troubles are a potentially sensitive issue for investors, bankers say.
Mr. Deripaska also stopped in Detroit to meet with top executives at General Motors Co. to discuss the sale of a stake in its Adam Opel AG unit to a Russian-backed consortium that includes Mr. Deripaska's AO GAZ auto maker, people familiar with the visit said.
The State Department, which rules on requests for U.S. visas, hasn't publicly said why it previously denied entry to Mr. Deripaska, and declined to comment on the recent visits.....read more.....
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125685578903317087.html
More on Mr. Deripaska
http://www.luxist.com/tag/Oleg+Deripaska/
Mr. Deripaska embodies Gorbachev's "Third Way".....
"Communism for the people, Capitalism for himself."
Wow, we really are at the mercy of these stiffs.
Freegards
The chain is
Deripaska:Marc Rich:Bill Clinton
Rich was pardoned for a cut in his aluminum hoard obtained from the Russian
Agreed. It's going to take an action of unprecedented magnitude on The People's part to stop the wholesale destruction of our country by the monsters in Washington.
I'm afraid that we've reached a point where we will have to present an overwhelming level of resistance to stop the traitors. That means many millions of bodies showing up in protest.
And it can't just be a one day event. We're in as much danger as any banana republic that has undergone a Marxist coup. We need to recognize it as such, and begin mobilizing for a sustained occupation of Washington DC. A one day march won't phase the vermin. We've got to clog the capitol with millions of loud and boisterous patriots until our demands are met.
In my opinion, the whole left-liberal-Democrat establishment needs to be fired by The People, in order to save the nation.
Surround all the big buildings-—Fed, FBI, Treasury, WH, Senate/Congress—just clog up the works for 3 days. Outnumber the police, nat’l guard and Secret Service agents.
Reid is a Traitor as well as an asshat.
Enumerated Powers of Congress: (And the draft IS listed, Health care insurance is NOT)
* To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
* To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
* To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
* To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
* To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;
* To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States;
* To establish post offices and post roads;
* To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;
* To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
* To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
* To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
* To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
* To provide and maintain a navy;
* To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
* To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
* To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
* To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten miles (16 km) square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.
They are out of control with phony power.
CNS has been doing a good job asking various members of Congress about the constitutionality of this health care reform bill. The fact is, it isn’t. Forcing people to buy health care of any kind is not in the enumerated powers of the federal government. These elected officials are absolutlely clueless or simply do not care about following our Constitution.
It’s a crying damn shame.
I’ve heard over and over that they have no Constitutional powers to impose this on us, yet I don’t see any Republicans or any other group fighting the legalities.
For this cretin to compare mandatory health insurance to the draft just proves his idiocy, and worse, his belief that we are all idiots.
“and worse, his belief that we are all idiots.”
Face it......40% of us ARE!
I’m in.
Yeah, all of the leftist liberals at least.
Sad, very sad. May as well turn it into toilet paper.
Exactly, but take the time limit off of it. The campaign to remove the entrenched forces of tyranny in Washington needs to be sustained until we have forced a complete surrender and resignation of all of the traitors and radicals now infesting our government.
In my opinion, The People need to force an unprecedented reboot of our constitutional government. I don't want our government overthrown. I want it restored, and so do millions upon millions of like-minded American patriots.
It will take a degree of force of equal magnitude to that which now threatens the survival of our republic, to defeat this. The People have far more force than what is required to accomplish this. It simply needs to be applied.
The problem with fighting the legalities is that it ISN’T A LAW YET, and you have to have an “injured party” to have standing to bring this to the courts.
Agreed...”Let me see...” Reading past that made me think I was reading something a 4th grader would have written.
I am in complete agreement,and I didn’t feel that way ten years ago-but it is definitely warranted.I love my country and would do whatever it takes to keep it free,and,like you,I know there are millions more who are willing to fight as well.
Cheez whiz, I'm living in some bizarro world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.