The problem with the Commonwealth of Virgina’s pleasing legal victory in challenging the constitutionality of Obama’s “healthscare” is this: The individual mandate and much of the health care bill may be manifestly violative, but most of the limits the Constitution placed on the federales (and the courts themselves) are no longer upheld by the courts (or by Congress, that other co-equal branch of government), starting with the Tenth Amendment.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
So, as PBS’s News Hour reported, once again so well (appending as it always does a PDF document of the Decision), “Federal judge Henry Hudson ruled Monday afternoon that a major provision of the health care reform law is unconstitutional. In his decision, the judge sided with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who argued that the Congress does not have the authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance. ‘The Minimum Essential Coverage Provision is neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution,’ Judge Hudson wrote.”
But along could come the Supreme Court Justices and nullify the health-care preferences of the people of Virginia. That’s because the framers’ constitutional dispensation is now nothing but a sad joke. The Appellate Court could beat the SCOTUS to it.
I have a secret hope that due to self-interest, the Republicans may just tackle the 17th amendment, a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers. Why the renewed hope? If senators were elected by the respective state legislatures, as was the original intent, I somehow doubt the Democrats would have retained control of the upper chamber.
Fox News: “Republican candidates in more than a half-dozen states have called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators. Prior to the amendment, senators were designated by state legislatures.”
“‘People would be better off if senators, when they deliver their messages to Washington, remember the sovereignty of the states,’ Mike Lee, who supports repeal, told reporters recently. Mr. Lee is a Republican running for the U.S. Senate from Utah.”
“Proponents of repeal say the amendment wrecked the founding fathers’ balance between national and state governments, removing one of the last checks to unbridled power in Washington. Opponents counter that direct election of senators, long a goal of the Progressive movement of that era, expanded democracy.”
On the other hand, I think it’s plain that the newly elected Republican majority in the House will go ahead and raise the debt ceiling, even though they could take a stand and refuse to so do.
UPDATE: What else won’t the Republikeynsians do? “Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., likely the next chair of the House Education Committee, has already said that he’s not going to abolish the Department of Education.” John Stossel adds that the same people’s public “Pledge for America” “is modest. It promises no cuts in Medicare, Social Security or the military. That’s where most of the money is. Those programs account for 60 percent of the budget.”
“Divided government historically spends less than governments under one-party control,” observes Stossel, but in the absence of any “clear message on the biggest sources of government spending” from the Republicans, we’re going down.
Before Governor Janet Brewer of Arizona there was Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Born and bred. In 2007, I wrote about this much-loved local leader, who has legitimately and faithfully represented his constituents—Republican and Democratic—in attempting to salvage a community ravaged by unchecked immigration.
Unwilling to wait for Washington, Mayor Louis Barletta of Hazleton attempted to reclaim his town by passing local ordinances to crack down on those who employ or rent to illegals. Barletta’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act was found to conflict with the unenforced Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, and, therefore, to be in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. This, even though the Supreme Court itself has conceded that not every ‘state enactment …which deals with aliens is a regulation of immigration.’
As I said at the time, I am not thrilled that to defend his town a mayor has been forced to circumscribe renting and hiring. Still less am I enamored of the ACLU and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund usurping a beloved Hazleton home boy—in the past, Barletta has won both Republican and Democratic nominations overwhelmingly.
Having become aliens in their hometown, Hazleton residents imagined that the Constitution allowed them a measure of autonomy over how they lived their lives. How wrong they were.
“… Fifty five delegates convened in 1787 at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, to carve out the contours of this Constitution. Imagine those magnificent men making the case that the people of the colonies they represented ought to sit idle should their homesteads be overrun by trespassers and their families and friends imperiled. Imagine those very men arguing for a future central authority that acted as the sole arbiter in deciding who would breach the perimeters of their respective home patches.
Inconceivable.
If we lived in the old decentralized republic of absolute property rights, land owners in border communities would be policing and defending their properties and the commons. They’d have stopped the ongoing influx in its tracks. Whereas America’s modern-day community leader is suing Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for being a “bad gringo, a racist, and a bully”; community leaders in early America ? as historian David Hackett Fischer tells it ? often required an immigrant to furnish them with an affidavit from the Old Country, attesting to good character, before being permitted to settle among them.
UPDATE I (Sept. 4): As I mentioned in the column, “America’s modern-day community leader is suing Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for being a ‘bad gringo, a racist, and a bully.'” The sheriff has responded. Via Doug Powers, blogging for Michele Malkin:
“The Obama administration has filed three lawsuits against Arizona in the last few weeks … one against a college district, one against the state of Arizona and now one against my office. Each lawsuit centers on something to do with alleged racial discrimination.
These actions make it abundantly clear that Arizona, including this Sheriff, IS Washington’s new whipping boy. Now it’s time to take the gloves off. As for today’s lawsuit against my office: These people in Washington met with my attorneys only a few days ago. And in that meeting, Washington got our cooperation; they admitted they already have thousands of pages of the requested documents; and they were given access to interview my staff and get into my jails. They smiled in our faces and then stabbed us in the back with this lawsuit. The Obama administration intended to sue us all along, no matter what we did to try to avert it.
Washington isn’t playing fair and it’s time Americans everywhere wake up and see this administration for what it really is. Calculating, underhanded at times and certainly not looking out for the best interests of the legal citizens residing in this country.”
UPDATE II:We like the bright, plain-spoken Arizona state Sen. Frank Antenori:
