Good, concise summary of what’s going on.

The Founders understood this proclivity toward tyranny among men; it’s why ours is a Constitution of negative liberties. The Left doesn’t like this and (obviously) is willing to destroy freedom and liberty in service to their totalitarian ideology. They know best – just ask them.

Being no more a fan of men and women in Black Robes as the “deciders” on whether my family and I are free, I object to being put – to my country being put – in this position, from which we await word from on-high as to our future liberty.

The robed ones can go one way, the Constitutional way – or the other. I doubt that Americans will go the other. Leftists, sure. But real Americans, lovers of liberty, will not sit quietly by as the Left tries to destroy America.

The Declaration of Independence, of course, tells us what to do when governments no longer have the consent of the governed. And they gave us to the tools via the 2nd Amendment to protect our Constitution and the Rule of Law.

They also gave us a military whose ONLY Constitutional duty is to defend the Constitution. Not to defend the President. Not to defend the Congress. To defend the Constitution.

Now I took that oath as an officer cadet at USAFA on 3 JUL 72. 1100 others joined me. At USMA and USNA another 1100 young men did the same (this was prior to the inclusion of women at the Academies). That makes about 3300 Americans, in the Academies alone – not counting ROTC, OTS/OTC and enlisted – who took the oath that year.

At the rate of 3300 annually since 1972 (not counting those who came before), and though some have died, we have about 122,000 men and women – from the Academies ALONE – who have given their oath to defend the Constitution.

Frankly, I’m awaiting the military speaking up and doing their job. And if they aren’t going to defend the Constitution, why am I paying them?

regarding this quote: “It is “you go buy insurance. You go buy this type of light bulb. You go buy this type of food. You go get this type of job, whether you want it or not. You work in a certain way. You don’t get to choose.” Congress makes a determination of what benefits interstate commerce and compels you to act accordingly.”

Don’t forget the other side of the equation: “You forgive this much principal, mortgage company… You take this much bigger of a haircut on your corporate bond, Chrysler debt holders…”

the birds are still chirping . . . and so what if those who we elected to serve us treat us like serfs.

We are near a point where the Constitution is worth less than a warm bucket of spit. We better engage these statists or we’ll spend our end days telling our grandkids about the way it was and how we failed to leave them the legacy of our Founders. Who can bear the thought of that?
_______

“The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals … it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government … it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.”
–Ayn Rand

where someone was saying why can’t they make us buy a GM car.

The question that I can’t quite understand is where do the American people stand on this? I think I could have accepted Obamacare a little easier if the American People weren’t in majority opposition. The scene of Nancy Pelosi walking with that gavel past the protesters was chilling for me.

Even more frightening is watching the republicans get weak in the knees when it comes to standing up for the will of the people. Corker today stated that efforts to repeal this legislation are futile. Who is on my side?

Everyone keeps saying we only have so long to stop Obamacare, That frightens me too. Why is that? When do we go back from where we came. A free people?

Is there any case law actually saying that insurance is outside the interstate commerce clause? The fact that it has been left to the states to regulate doesn’t mean only the states can regulate it. In fact, it seems like insurance very often has interstate elements to it:

1) My health insurance covers me where ever I travel, so the contract has interstate coverage.

2) On the business side, insurance covers claims made anywhere in the US and property policies cover properties in multiple states.

And on health insurance, one of the changes that has been pushed by Republicans is to permit the purchase of insurance contracts across state lines. Presumably the only Constitutional authority for Congress to do that is the Commerce Clause.

How to get folks to understand that the 50 States are not just administrative districts to the central government? Sovereign entities all, who have ceded only those 18 elements. Various of the State Governors giving voice to that issue are immediately and viciously tagged as “separatists”, rather than the Constitutionalists that they are trying to be.

I could weep, for my children are old enough to understand what they are inheriting.

While I agree this violates the commerce clause, that is unlikely a winning issue. At most you get four votes . . . and maybe three.

The “assessable penalty” which is neither a civil nor a criminal penalty is an unconstitutional Capitation tax. For that, I believe you can get five or perhaps seven votes.

It is a tax. It is not a fee (which is really another word for an excise tax). It is not a charge under the commerce clause – that argument is ridiculous.

It is not an excise tax, which merely must be uniform. Excise taxes involve levies on acts or the use of property. See the Hyland decision and the Knowland decision.

it is not an income tax on income derived, as required by the 16th Amendment. See Macomber, Bruun, Kirby Lumber, Sanford & Brooks, and Glenshaw Glass.

The only thing left is either a direct tax or a Capitation or head tax. These are constitutional, but they must be apportioned according to the census. This is not.

I wish Commerce clause and Tenth Amendment arguments could win; however, I do not believe they can.

The Capitation argument can win. I encourage you to look into it further.

I too have made the slavery observation. As a physician, this bill leads directly to enslavement. Of me. If health care is a “right”, why, my labor is somebody elses “right”. And so is the property of others (in the form of tax revenue). This is the entire problem with positive rights. To provide those “rights”, the property and liberty of others are forfeit.

Since the Federal Government required hospitals to treat people who could not pay for emergency care.

Excellent summary of the situation.

If we cannot turn this around, whether in the courts, in the elections (and thereby the courts eventually), or *otherwise*, then we no longer live in a free country. We are in fact enslaved, whether it immediately impacts our creature comforts or not, and sooner or later it will impact our lives and the lives of our children immensely.

At the end of the day, while the legal details are important, they will may not save us. Regardless of how any legal argument unfolds, the issues here are bigger than most of the discussion surrounding it. We either see this clearly and act to determine the outcome, or we succumb to articulation over substance.

It boils down to this. If we cannot stop this, then we will never stop anything again, and at some point in the future, it will turn from a generally benign oligarchy to one that is not nearly so benign. Examples from history are many. The horrors that ensue are beyond comprehension by those that have not experienced them or witnessed them.

I know that most take this seriously. I just wish that more had visited Auschwitz or a Gulag. Tends to focus one on the possibilities of malevolence, which I am of the opinion escape many.

It can’t happen here, right ?

But why should I trust Republicans with republicanism/federalism?

States’ rights is only genuinely argued by politicians when it’s convenient. But it means nothing if it doesn’t apply to all cases, including those of social questions (gay marriage, etc.) that Republicans in days of yore were all to eager to answer decisively at the federal level.

Okay folks I’ve come up with a line of argument for the courts. Some of us at Red State might not like it, but lets consider it.

The premise of Roe Vs Wade is that a woman because she has the right to privacy can have an abortion. Doesn’t this mean the following:

* If because of privacy a woman has the right to chose to have an abortion doesn’t that give a woman let alone a man the right for the privacy to chose their own health coverage.

* If because of privacy a woman has the right to chose their future (carrying a baby causes a committment to be a mother for the next twenty years) doesn’t that give a man or a woman the right to chose their own future health care costs.

* If because of privacy a woman has the right to chose an abortion and can’t have some restrictions on abortions doesn’t that mean a man or a woman can’t be restricted on what they must do for their health care.

It’s an interesting argument, but groups in the Democrat coalition will have to support us. After all if there is no privacy right then the government can regulate abortion. If there is no privacy option than there is a right for government to regulate gay behavior.

What do you folks think?

Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN

What this will do is place more money in the hands of the Government, and congress just loves funds that they can use for their own, this is going to be another incidents of the congress dipping into the coffers to fund their pet projects nothing like the pay as you go rhetoric they have been telling us that they are going to do. And if the program is so great why have they exempted themselves from participating? Are they a separate class of citizen?
“The truth is more important than the facts.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” — Ronald Reagan
ID 10 T error in the administration

about the Constitution or law beyond the most elemental “behavioral” laws. The last general election graphically demonstrates that at least 52% of the electorate will believe ANYTHING.

I sat next to a high-level manager for a West Coast healthcare provider from Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco a couple of days ago. That’s a long ride so we had plenty of time to talk. He lives in a notoriously liberal West Coast city, though not SFO, and was a doctrinaire liberal Democrat. I heard the VP for HR/LR of his company talk at a conference a few years back where she was extolling the virtues of the “partnership” the company had with SEIU which enabled them to tap the union’s political influence to secure better healthcare benefits in the states the company operates in. That should give you a pretty good idea of what’s wrong with nationalized healthcare in and of itself.

There simply was NO talking to this man about how the federal government couldn’t do much of what it does on Constitutional grounds and shouldn’t do much of what it does on practical and moral grounds. To him expediency and “feelings” were justification for pretty much anything and he showed no recognition of a difference in the rights, powers, and duties of a state versus those of the federal government. The government schools and the government run media have done a good job of obliterating the states and causing them to be viewed as at most political subdivisions of the federal government.

Now this guy was no twenty-something mind-numbed robot, recent college graduate type. He was late forties, early fifties, college educated, and from what I coulld garner about his lifestyle probably made $200K plus. He had responsibility for a large division of a large company and had direct supervisory authority over a large staff and indirect authority over many hundreds of people. This is the kind of person who in the true private sector and even in much of the public sector would have been long ago been mugged by reality. But, he was just a Democrat talkingpoint-O-matic. He isn’t a political activist, just a voter, but everything he thinks he knows could have been written by the DNC and Bill Maher; in fact there was a LOT of Bill Maher in his vocabulary and attitudes. I suspect that were I not somewhat formidable in conversation/argument, he would have evidenced the same sneering condescension towards me that Maher evidences to the Right generally. Everything was about BlameBush, Eeeeevul Corporation, and Right Wing Theocrats; the guy believes this stuff.

He really is the first one I’ve ever talked to that seems to really believe all the Democrat crap who wasn’t either a kid or involved in Democrat politics or Democrat constituecies such as non-profits or unions. Nothing he said would have surprised me coming from a union leader or a Democrat officeholder, but this guy is a so-called manager for a major corporation. It stayed mostly civil but that’s mostly because I succeed by mighty struggles to resist the almost insuperable urge to reach over and just shake the life out of the fool.

I fear for the future of my children and my Country!

I think that your Red State Radio gig may be the best opportunity yet for you. While I don’t dislike Boortz, I can only take him in small doses. You, as a recovering lawyer and, perhaps soon a recovering politician, make better arguments grounded in real life experience – an insider’s view, if you will.

Cumulus and WMAC would be well advised to watch their web traffic and see just how wide an audience you can draw and consider syndicating you. You have the youthful good looks of Sean Hannity, the grasp of the issues of Rush Limbaugh and the listen-ability and sense of humor of, say, Mark Steyn, but without the British accent.

The synergy of your web presence, your past Hannity appearances and your current CNN gig will draw a crowd and you will have a tremendous opportunity to undo the great harm done by our government run school system. You will be able to, in the words of the Great Walter Williams, “Push back the frontiers of ignorance” to which I would add “and misinformation”.

This piece on the Constitution should not only be required reading for every person seeking employment in the public sector but on every voter registration as well.

Dream BIG, Live LARGE.

Actually, the SCOTUS ruled in United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association, 322 U.S. 533 (1944) that insurance was interstate commerce, overturning Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. (8 Wall) 168 (1869).

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the Constitution states, “Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

No amount of barrister’s wordplay could construe the above to mean compel individual citizens to purchase goods.

Even the way the Dems got to 60 was unconstitutional with Gov. Duval Patrick’s unconstitutional temporary appointment of Sen. Kirk.

It is the middle class who get screwed. All day long I am hearing that Obama & Biden are trying to help the middle class by giving them the same advantage that the wealthy have enjoyed….

What a croc.

It is the middle class who will pay for this travesty.
Higher insurance rates, medical bills, and lost jobs.
The wealthy will just have to not take a longer vacation.

Most of my clients are “wealthy” independent business people.
They will cut out some of my services and some have already.

“Over time though, we have evolved legally without amending the constitution according and we have flipped around this notion and now Congress can do everything and states can do very little, except when they can do a great deal from crime to education to fixing roads to general welfare issues. That goes against our constitutional set up. ”

Correct. A. Lincoln, in attacking the Confederate States of America, stomped on the Constitution and forever destroyed the notion of limited federal power. When a government can initiate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people because of the egotistical power lust of one man, it is lost. The U.S. has been on a downward spiral ever since. TR, WW, FDR, JFK (don’t give me any crap about him being a “conservative”), LBJ (the worst?), and now BHO. . . these are Lincolnites–ultimately Radically Left, Statist, Socialist, power-hungry monsters.

Now, all along the way, WE, THE PEOPLE, did this. WE voted for a creepy man like FDR. WE even elected him to a kingly reign of over a decade. WE allowed LBJ to shut borders to Europeans and open them to THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS. WE allowed him to use subterfuge to enter Vietnam and kill not only 58,000 Americans, but hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. WE allowed him to throw away the treasure of this nation on welfare programs that merely enslaved the poor and destroyed the black family. WE elected BHO, and a supermajority Congress, essentially telling them to do what they pleased. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE. If you really want to do anything do reverse this horrible descent, soon to become irreversible, YOU must be in the streets, shouting from rooftops, and fighting the LEFT. I must, as well. WE, THE PEOPLE, are responsible for this. If we really want to restore a Constitutional Republic, WE MUST DO IT.