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.
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.
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.
I don’t see how they can find the mandate constitutional. It simply isn’t a program based on Congress’ taxing authority.
What it boils down to is an order. We are ordered to go out and take an affirmative action. Congress has had the authority to outlaw things they say we cannot do, robbing banks, murder, etc. It has the authority to regulate things that we do do. But, I simply can’t think of any Constitutional power it has to order us to take a particular action.
They write regulations, which are orders, for the military, but I don’t see that power against civilians, except as it concerns calling forth the militia. (Again the military).
To grant Congress the power to order behavior is an extremely dangerous precedent.
This attack on personal freedom is light-years worse than allowing agents to listen to possible terrorist phone calls, and that had the national media up in arms.