Posted on 02/16/2014 2:22:29 PM PST by Kaslin
America’s Founding Fathers fiercely held to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—values which Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) claimed align seamlessly with Obamacare.
Pelosi explained why the law is “very sound policy” during a press conference Friday:
To go to back to our founders once again, they sacrificed it all for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This law, the affordable care act, is about a healthier life, the liberty to pursue your happiness. That is solid policy, and the mandate is central to that.
This argument should be added to the montage of lies being promulgated by the Obama administration.
More than half of Americans oppose Obamacare and 56% claim the law is more about bolstering government control than it is about helping individuals get health care.
The millions kicked off their insurance certainly do not find the policy freeing, neither do millennials forced to pay for healthcare feel liberated.
Obamacare is precisely the type of overbearing government policy that the Founders would have fought against:
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." - James MadisonPelosi really ought to know her history better. Perhaps this way she could help protect rather than destroy the values for which the Founders fought.
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security." - Benjamin Franklin
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition." - Thomas Jefferson
The founding fathers would have had traitors like Pelosi hung.
Yeah...just when I think Nazi Pelousy couldn’t say anything any more stupid than whatever she said last, she goes and surprises the hell out of me.
Pelosi’s wheel may still be turning, but her hamster is dead.
“Slavery is freedom”
Right about now, someone would be doing the “off her meds” line, but, as we know, there is still no suitable treatment for Alzheimer’s Syndrome. So, there are no medicines from which she can be “off”.
This woman makes a brick look like brilliant.
At least the brick knows when to shut up.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Looks to me as if the Founders believed that these RIGHTS came from our Creator, not from government.
If Nancy would read a little further she would find out that when government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to ABOLISH it. I think Nancy needs to be abolished.
She knows that if she says the most outrageous things often enough, people will believe it.
She also knows that the more outrageous the statement, the more believable it will become by the masses.
-PJ
Shut up Nancy, you goofy ditz.
Maybe she wants her facelifts paid by the taxpayers. :-)
I thought Jackson-Lee was. Nancy gives her a run for the title thou.
Since Pelosi is the Democrat leader she gets number 1 ranking. Jackson-lee can be the 2nd stupidest woman in the House.
I was going to say - She thinks the Founding Fathers are Marx and Lenin!
IMHO the Founding Fathers would march on DC and hang em high from the cheery trees.
The Founding Fathers would have traded pelosi to the indians in exchange for recycled trinkets and beads.
To begin with, although Pelosi had initially based her argument that Obamacare Democratcare is constitutional on the unreasonably wide interpretation of the Commerce Clause by FDR's activist justices in Wickard v. Filburn, please note the following. Former Rep. Jessie Jackson Jr, had repeatedly proposed a resolution for Congress to petition the states for a healthcare amendment to the Constitution. And if the states had ultimately chosen to ratify such an amendment, it would have granted Congress the specific power that it needs to establish Democratcare.
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States regarding the right of citizens of the United States to health care of equal high quality. —H. J. Res. 30.
Note that Rep. Jackson Jr. had repeatedly proposed this resolution years, both before and after, Speaker Pelosi had irresponsibly rammed Democratcare through the HoR.
Next, here are excerpts from the writings of constitutional experts, people probably like you and me, who were not only contemporaries of the Founding Fathers, but had indicated that the Founders had trusted only the states, not the federal government, with the care of the people.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress. (emphases added)” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Note that, in stark contrast to Nancy Pelosi hiding behind the Commerce Clause to justify Democratcare, the excerpt from the Gibbons v. Ogden opinion above not only clarifies in a single sentence that Congress has no constitutional authority to regulate intrastate commerce, but indicates health laws as an example!
Next, note that the excerpt below is not from the writings of a contemporary of the Founding Fathers, but from the post Civil War congressional record. In this excerpt, John Bingham, the constitutional lawmaker who authored Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, had also officially clarified that the Founding States had reserved government power to care for the people uniquely to the states, not the federal government,
Simply this, that the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Constitution, is in the States and not in the federal government (emphases added). I have sought to effect no change in that respect in the Constitution of the country.” —John Bingham, Congressional. Globe. 1866, page 1292 (see top half of third column)
So regarding what the Founding States would have approved of concerning the federal government's constituitionally limited powers, where was Nancy Pelosi when Judge Andrew Napolitano read Section 8 to a national audience more than a month before the HoR, under Speaker Pelosi's "leadership," passed Democratcare, Napolitano noting that public healthcare is not one of Congress's Section 8 powers.
Judge Napolitano & the Constitution
But what if Pelosi argues that the Constitution doesn't say that Congress cannot establish a national healthcare program? The reality is that, not only is it well-known that the federal government has only those few powers which the states have expressly delegated to the feds via the Constitution, but the following excerpt from a Supreme Court case opinion officially clarified, in terms of the 10th Amendment nonetheless, that powers not delegated are prohibited.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited (emphasis added). None to regulate agricultural production is given, and therefore legislation by Congress for that purpose is forbidden.” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Finally, note that the excerpt from United States v. Butler was made years before Pelosi's hero, Constitution-ignoring socialist FDR, had had an opportunity to nominate an activist justice majority. And when FDR finally had his activist majority on the Supreme Court, using terms like "concept" and "implicit," they seized the opportunity provided by Wickard v. Filburn to "nuke" the 10th Amendment as follows.
“In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was “necessary and proper” to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept of sovereignty thought to be implicit (emphases added) in the status of statehood. Certain activities such as “production,” “manufacturing,” and “mining” were occasionally said to be within the province of state governments and beyond the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause.”—Wickard v. Filburn, 1942.
FDR's puppet justices had essentially reduced the 10th Amendment to a wives' tale imo. And I have yet to find a reference to United States v. Butler in Wickard v. Filburn; corrections welcome.
The bottom line is that by supporting constitutionally indefensible Democratcare, Nancy Pelosi wrongly ignored Congress's Article I, Section 8-limited powers which she had sworn to protect and defend.
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.