Posted on 03/28/2012 2:05:38 PM PDT by RobinMasters
Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia humorously invoked the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids cruel and unusual punishments, when discussing the Obamacare legislation during oral argument today at the Supreme Court.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?
(Laughter.)
JUSTICE SCALIA: And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to — to give this function to our law clerks?
Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?
MR. KNEEDLER: Well -
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
“There ought to be a constitutional amendment capping any bill to 30 (or some other arbitrary number) pages or less with the clear understanding that any bill longer than that is automatically unconstitutional.”
Congress might find it difficult to pack in enough corrupt backroom bargons selling out our liberty within just 30 pages.
With Kagan not recusing herself or the other Justices not demanding she recuse herself, there's concern many Americans already have about the Justices as whole regarding pre-determined bias by Kagan. Kagan would not be permitted on any jury in the country, let alone to judge a case in which she was writing up opinons pre-law, at least in my part of the nation.
Secondly, wouldn't it be prudent for judges / justices to have read whatever it is they are ruling upon? The decision they make will affect Americans and America itself for decades to come. Since virtually no one has read the law in question, including those responsible for writing and passing it, it should be negated promptly.
Yes to both your great points, MD. The Kagan point is obvious to me; the second one, less so. I thought they’d only be required to read it in excruciating detail after they formally opened the case, and not before. (Who could even cogently read that info-deluge and still be modestly sane, afterward?) Thanks for the legal lesson.
I just read the transcripts of today’s hearings and quite frankly it looks as if the court may rule 7-2 or 8-1 to declare the whole act void. Whether the mandate is constitutional appears to be a closer vote than whether or not the whole act needs to be tossed if the mandate is unconstitutional. I think the court is leaning 5-4 in favor of voiding the mandate, but there really is no legitimate argument for the rest of the bill to be upheld if the mandate is tossed. The only judge who appeared to be favoring the government’s position today was Ginsberg. Even Breyer and Sotomayor were beating up on the government’s position.
Nobody’s really ever read it. We need a make a law, take a law (off the books) federal legislation system. They can use words or pages, but they need to reduce the number of federal laws on the books. You cannot legislate every single possibility.
One of the worst (of many) things about this horrible law is that there are so many abdications of responsibility: there are many, many points which only say “the Secretary will determine later.”. In other words, these parts of the law are whatever the bureaucrats say it is.
I will never ever respect a person who has argued for the right to have sex with 12 year olds. if that isn’t a moron, I don’t know what is... Don’t care if they wear black robes or not. Not to even mention how they feel about the life of the unborn. There IS higher court than SCOTUS and a higher judge than them.
Black robed blowhards
Plenty of judges are hacks. Political appointees like Sotamayor to placate ethnic pressure groups. In some major corrupt cities you have to pay $5000 on up for a judgeship and you gotta know someone to get it. Calling them black robed morons is accurate for 50% on up of our judges
OTOH—If I were Kagan, I’m not sure that I’d want to be there for the deliberations—if the justices have a question about any part of the law, she would be the natural one to ask what does this mean, and if she doesn’t have a ready answer, it would look bad both for her and the law.
Agreed.
Although your Constitution can only protect the rights you fight for, otherwise it's just a piece of paper.
The US Constitution was written for people who contribute. I worry it can't survive when 50% don't pay taxes, or as Obama would say, "have any skin in the game".
I’m so jaded I don’t know what to think. If it’s 7-2 or 8-1 or even 9-0 I’ll think “they did this so they can get a single payer system”.
Either way there are justices who are in on the fix. And I’m afraid there are more than 4.
I have no problem with that. The more pages, the more possibility they can sneak stuff into a bill that nobody wants to spend the time to read -- and then one morning we wake up slaves to a bunch of self-serving bureaucrats.
Wow! Thanks you just made my day. I'm still pretty sure the libs on the court will circle the wagons, but if the whole law is voided it will make living with obama for 4 more yrs tolerable.
Wash your mouth out with soap. Obama and 4 more years will destroy our Constitution.
That's about five and a half reams of photocopy paper.
Someone should construct a maze and paper every inch of it with that bill. You're not allowed out until you've read the whole thing. ;)
If it would stop obama I would in a second.
I try to be realistic. I don't see any way Romney beats obama. I don't see Santorum beating Romney. I'm giving what I can to Sen DeMint's "Senate Conservative Fund" and individual House candidates. It looks to me the best we can do is fight for divided govt.
If gas remains where it is or God forbid goes to 5 or 6, Obama is toast. The economy will tank and inflation will keep rocketing north. Printing fiat money is causing all of this.
Everything you're saying makes sense to a rational person. However, most voters will vote based on emotion and Romney is not trustworthy or likeable. Also, the libs will blame Congress and especially conservatives for doing nothing. The media will reinforce this view and it will only be conservative talk radio that counters.
The Pub party has negated the passion of the Tea Party and with redistricting the more out spoken conservatives are being pushed into tougher districts. Obama will get 98% of the Black vote. Obama will get 65-70% of the Hispanic vote. If Obama gets a majority of single White women and a majority of Roman Catholics he wins.
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