Posted on 06/28/2012 1:48:52 PM PDT by Hunton Peck
Conservatives won a substantial victory Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has served this cause.
The health-care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the Framers’ design for limited government. Conservatives distraught about the survival of the individual mandate are missing the considerable consolation prize they won when the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional rationale for the mandate — Congress’s rationale — that was pregnant with rampant statism.
The case challenged the court to fashion a judicially administrable principle that limits Congress’s power to act on the mere pretense of regulating interstate commerce. At least Roberts got the court to embrace emphatic language rejecting the Commerce Clause rationale for penalizing the inactivity of not buying insurance:
“The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. . . . The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. . . . Allowing Congress to justify federal regulation by pointing to the effect of inaction on commerce would bring countless decisions an individual could potentially make within the scope of federal regulation, and — under the government’s theory — empower Congress to make those decisions for him.”
If the mandate had been upheld under the Commerce Clause, the Supreme Court would have decisively construed this clause so permissively...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The consolation prize is stricter interpretation of the Commerce Clause?
Why?
The Leftist judges will just invent new laws or new interpretations to get around it.
The campaign will now be about:
0bamacare & The Economy.
Make every election everywhere about those two things.
I think Americans will decide correctly.
Too bad the Supremes had to validate Slavery, though.
It is what you get when you keep drinking the gop koolaide of voting for the lesser of 2 evils. No matter how it adds up EVIL IS EVIL. Remember that when Nov rolls around..and that 0’rombana only wants to ‘tweak’ this UNconstitutional piece of crap.
IF they can order you to buy health ins. they can order you to take drugs that your body cannot tolerate...all in the name of health care. Or have treatments you might not want.
As a person with multiple bad reactions to side effect riddled drugs I don’t want to be forced to take anything my body has rejected as worse than the disease it is treating.
There were no victories.
I agree with that. Now, thanks to Roberts’ court, the Supremes can change a mandate into a tax, and can decide what is a tax and what isn’t. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, they can change its name to a cardinal. It can be argued that Congress can pass a bill mandating that everyone must purchase toothpaste (it’s good for the People’s teeth), then the Court can force us to purchase it, even purchase it for others. So now, if Congress passes a faulty bill, the court can just change its nature in order to get it passed. That is what Roberts did, for who knows what reason.
Perfect! I caught a few minutes of the “news” stations this afternoon, and even from Fox I got the sense that the election is now considered a mere formality. Obama really is the ONE.
I think Roberts did pretty d@mn good with the pile of BS he was handed:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2900395/posts?page=41#41
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2900395/posts?page=71#71
Now the word 'tax' can be substituted as a blatant and unethical subterfuge to effect control, as in mind control and control of the subject populace, us. Do this or we tax you, is a statist's wet dream of control. Just as a blind man became visually-challenged and a racist is now one who only wants a law enforced, we have toyed with man and the language i.e., the mutual cognition of meaning which is the basis of any free civilization. 'Roberts Rules of Order' now has a new meaning as well.
Will’s mind is no longer working well.
This is an unmitigated disaster and paves the way for Fascism.
The Commerce Clause ruling will be overturned the next time it comes up, with several more Obama justices on the Court.
I don’t like the ruling, but let’s be clear, it’s a narrow and rather hollow Obama victory that actually helps our side to argue it is a tax after all to then come back later and repeal it.
It would have been much worse if either of these two events transpired: the court upheld it based on Commerce Clause grounds OR the court stuck the mandate but not the law.
In fact, the left-wing siate has a good article up about how this frankly in the long-term benefits the conservative side more based upon the Commerce Clause issue. The tax issue is a really small argument and frankly isn’t a major expansion of federal power since it can be easily fixed in later rulings. If they had upheld it based on Commerce Clause grounds, it would have been such.
IT’S STILL A BAD RULING!!!! But, about the least bad it could be upholding the law with much good for our side as well.
It’s far from over. Don’t give up hope.
I truly do understand your concern, but at some point ‘government’ has to assume human form and that GS-whatever has to communicate intent. That’s when the rest of us get to make a choice and communicate back.
I don’t know how you can claim a victory on the Commerce Clause, probably one of the biggest Constitutional issues out there and one of the top three issues dividing liberals and conservatives is crumbs.
It sucks we lost.
But damn it, that’s a huge precedent-setting win for our side that this law is NOT authorized by interstate commerce.
some consolation prize.
The commerce clause has run its course and now the left - through Roberts - has moved to phase two which is even more onerous.
Consolation prizes aren't worth a bucket of spit!
Maybe you are right. Maybe Roberts did pretty d@mn good as you say. I was just under the impression that the justices are being paid to interpret the law not to dodge or twist it.
Either the Constitution is a matter of right vs wrong or it isn’t. How will Congress ever learn how to draft and pass laws that are faithful to the Constitution if the laws just gets sent back to them?
We now have a definition of the new Living Constitution. Keep sending laws back to Congress and learn to live under their laws - not the Constitution’s.
So many are angry today because the thought the issue would be settled - today.
What Roberts settled today was that congress CANNOT use the commerce clause to force us to buy a product. This is huge!
What wasn’t settled today was the hard work - getting congress to do THEIR job - which is scrapping obamacare. Roberts did not deny congress the power to impose a tax. As much as we wanted him to, it is not HIS job to create tax policy.
What Roberts did do brilliantly was point out that congress in fact DID have their grubby little hands in the taxing “cookie jar”. And as much as BO and the rest of the dems wanted it to appear otherwise, it is a huge tax increase - and this will be it’s undoing.
It would have been nice to get the easy out today. However, if the right can get the electorate to see what a horrid behemoth of a tax increase is obamacare, the work to truly fixing health-care can begin...
Why is that "huge"? So they call it a tax instead - the result is identical. You're telling me to be happy with horsesh*t because it's not bullsh*t?
Yeah, that's much better.
We are NOT putting Republicans in office. We had a bunch kids throwing temper tantrums abour rather not voting than voting for RINOs. We were one RINO short of defeating Obamacare in the Senate.
Has the bill to repeal Obamacare been introduced yet?
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