Steven Pearlstein of Washington Post: Eat your broccoli, Justice Scalia

Washington (Com)Post ^ | 03/31/2012 | Steve Pearlstein

[SeekAndFind]

If the law is an ass, as Mr. Bumble declares in “Oliver Twist,” then constitutional law must surely be the entire wagon train.

Like most Washington policy wonks, I spent too much of last week reading transcripts of the Supreme Court arguments over the constitutionality of the new health reform law. This was to be a “teaching moment” for the country, an opportunity to see the best and the brightest engage in a reasoned debate on the limits of federal power. Instead, what we got too often was political posturing, Jesuitical hair-splitting and absurd hypotheticals.

My first thought on perusing the briefs filed in the combined cases was to notice what wasn’t there: any involvement on the part of Corporate America.

For the past 20 years, big business has complained endlessly about escalating health-care premiums, which they correctly blamed on “cost-shifting,” including paying indirectly for the free care provided to the workers at firms that did not provide health benefits. They wanted an end to fee-for-service medicine that rewarded doctors for providing more care than necessary. Some even talked of reforms that would begin to move the country away from an employer-based insurance system.

Yet despite the fact that “Obamacare” did all of those things and more, there was not a single brief in support of the law from an organization representing big business.

Small businesses have spent the past two decades complaining that the reason they don’t offer coverage is that it’s too expensive because they don’t get the large-group and community rating advantage. So how did the National Federation of Independent Businesses respond to a law that assured small businesses the benefits of large-group purchasing and community rating and threw in billions of dollars in subsidies to boot? It signed up as one of the named plaintiffs

[Redleg Duke]

A Compost Pinhead Elite bloviates.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

We are no longer a nation of laws, but a nation of demagogues.

[MIchaelTArchangel]

Mr. Perlstein, remember that pork is the other white meat. Wait until someone forces that down your throat.

[Dr. Sivana]

The author of this piece gets it wrong from the first line. The quotation is "The law is a ass." The use of "a" and not "an" as the article is quite deliberate, and ought not be corrected.

[trappedincanuckistan]

“political posturing”

I wonder how he feels about Kagan’s and Ginsburg’s performances. They were blatantly political. Kagan was even leading the Solicitor General.

[WashingtonSource]

Mr. Pearlstein, ESAD.

[Maceman]

If the law is an ass,

The law may be an ass, but the Washington Post is a far, far bigger one.

[Dr. Sivana]

I only read part of the way through, but the author seems to be confusing the legislative and judicial branches. If the legislature wants to try a corrected Obamacare that is constitutional, it is the Congress’ job to decide whether that is a good idea.

[pogo101]

The writer’s basic point is this: “Come on, the Supreme Court ALREADY gave up on any meaningful limit on the Commerce Clause in the New Deal. The new limit is entirely political: Congress can’t go too far or it will be voted out.”

But that simply isn’t what the Framers proposed. They wanted a federal government that could only do enumerated things — EVEN IF IT WERE POPULAR to do OTHER things at a given point in time.

Frankly, his argument only proves how wrong the Wickard v. Filburn Commerce-Clause jurisprudence is. Congress is empowered to regulate actual interstate commerce, not individual intRAstate acts that, “in the aggregate,” “have a substantial IMPACT ON” interstate commerce. Because EVERYTHING “in the aggregate” has some effect on interstate commerce.

[wordsofearnest]

What a maroon.

[GilesB]

Misuse of quotes irk me mightily:
“...innocent until proven guilty” says something quite different than “...pressumed innocent until proven guilty”

“...money is the root of all evil” as opposed to “the love of money is the root of all evil”

and the one here - Mr Bumble does not declare the law to be an ass, he states, after being told that the law supposes him to be in control of his wife, he states: “If the law supposes that, then the law is a ass, a idiot”

[William Tell]

From the article: "... absurd hypotheticals"

Yet another article which fails to answer Scalia's question.

Evidently there is nothing "absurd" about the federal government dictating how much water flows through my toilet when I flush it. It isn't absurd when the federal government dictates that I may no longer purchase a 100 watt incandescent light bulb. It isn't absurd when the federal government dictates that my shotgun barrel must be at least 18 inches long.

"Absurd" is nowhere near descriptive enough for laws that are already on the books. The liberals are too hypocritical to admit that THEIR CONSTITUTION probably MANDATES that people be forced to buy broccoli.