Category Archives: Law

Grounds For A Constitutional Challenge Of H.R.4872

Constitution, Fascism, Federalism, Healthcare, Law, Regulation, States' Rights

In an interview with NewsMax.com, Judge Andrew Napolitano outlined the grounds upon which the Supreme Court of the United States ought to repeal major portions of Obama’s overweening health care legislation:

“The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state governments,” Napolitano says. “Nevertheless, in this piece of legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants it done. …

That’s called commandeering the legislature,” he says. “That’s the Congress taking away the discretion of the legislature with respect to regulation, and spending taxpayer dollars. That’s prohibited in a couple of Supreme Court cases. So on that argument, the attorneys general have a pretty strong case and I think they will prevail.” …

The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can’t simply move in there,” Napolitano says. “And the states for 230 years have had near exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license healthcare providers whether they’re doctors, nurses, or pharmacists. The feds have had nothing to do with it.

“The Congress can’t simply wake up one day and decide that it wants to regulate this. I predict that the Supreme Court will invalidate major portions of what the president just signed into law.”…

Napolitano believes the federal government lacks the legal authority to order citizens to purchase healthcare insurance. The Congress [is] ordering human beings to purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not be able to afford, and might not want — that’s never happened in our history before,” Napolitano says. “My gut tells me that too is unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution.”

The sweetheart deals in the healthcare reform bill used that persuaded Democrats to vote for it – the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatorade Exception and others – create “a very unique and tricky constitutional problem” for Democrats, because they treat citizens differently based on which state they live in, running afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause according to Napolitano. “So these bennies or bribes, whatever you want, or horse trading as it used to be called, clearly violate equal protection by forcing people in the other states to pay the bills of the states that don’t have to pay what the rest of us do,” Napolitano says.

Exempting union members from the so-called “Cadillac tax” on expensive health insurance policies, while imposing that tax on other citizens, is outright discrimination according to Napolitano. “The government cannot draw a bright line, with fidelity to the Constitution and the law, on the one side of which everybody pays, and the other side of which some people pay. It can’t say, ‘Here’s a tax, but we’re only going to apply it to nonunion people. Here’s a tax, and we’re only going to apply it to graduates of Ivy League institutions.’ The Constitution does not permit that type of discrimination.” …

[SNIP]

In this televised interview, the Judge laid out more clearly the test for a constitutional challenge, namely that one is harmed by the legislation.

Note the comment on the impossibility of reading and making sense of H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 (my experience) each section of which amends and alludes to other laws in the US Code, which in itself is large enough to fill a house with paper stacked to the ceilings.

Update II: Canadian Anti-Coulter Cretins Crave ‘Positive Space’

Ann Coulter, Canada, Christianity, Fascism, Free Speech, Individual Rights, Judaism & Jews, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Political Philosophy

I’m so very pleased that Ann Coulter has, by necessity, turned her wrath on one of the most oppressive instruments in the Canadian state, the Human Rights apparatus. The Human Rights Commission, a Kangaroo court, operates outside the Canadian courts, affording its victims none of the defenses or due process the courts afford. For example, mens rea, or criminal intention: the absence of the intent to harm is no defense in this “court.” Neither is truth.

The apparatchiks of this machine have designated certain groups as protected species. Thus, the bedrock of western law, the rights of the individual, is turned on its head. Based on your membership in a group, you get to claim protected species rights—and acquire a lien on the property of other groups, who become prime potential offenders. The quasi-judicial Tribunal then acts on these definitions in the substance of its decisions. It’s all great for social cohesion.

And the designations keep growing. Last I covered the quasi-courts, it was deliberating as to whether to extend protection against discrimination on the grounds of “social conditions.” In other words, much like in the US, you do not posses absolute rights to your property. However, over and above the infraction against freedom of association and property that is American Civil Rights law, the Canadian kangaroo code would make it an offense to refuse to rent your apartment, for example, to a welfare recipient.

Devastating complaints have been launched against individuals whose speech the protected species dislike, often bankrupting and destroying innocent individuals guilty of exercising property rights or expressing politically incorrect thoughts.

In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Simple. So long as your mitts stop at my mug, you ought to be free to do as you wish. (Including ingesting drugs and ending one’s life, for vices are not crimes. “If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”) People ought to be arrested only for crimes they perpetrate against another’s person or property.

Particularly apt is Ann’s swipe, in “Oh Canada,” at the mob mentality and congenital stupidity issuing from the free-thinking Millennials (whom I’ve described at length in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”):

the Ottawa University Student Federation met for seven and a half hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste seven and a half hours on something silly, like their studies.

Update I (March 25): Where do you think “The Silly Sex?” would land this writer were she to return to Canada? Or “Women Who Wed the Wrong Wahhabi”? Or “‘Obsession’ By Muhammad”?

Update II: Coulter has never called for the conversion of Jews, as Myron (and lefties) contends. I’ve long since “Disentangled [That] Coulter/Deutsch Dust-Up”:

Although some Christian denominations have watered it down, a general filament of the Christian faith is the belief that salvation is predicated on accepting Christ. If Coulter were more than a brash, bonny (if bony) babe, she’d have explained that doctrine: To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

“But is belief in ‘perfection’ or ‘completion’ through Jesus tantamount to hostility to Jews?” asked Gabriel Sanders of the Jewish daily “Forward.” And he replied, quoting Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a specialist in Jewish-Evangelical ties: “A conservative, Jesus-oriented faith doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that people are anti-Jewish. Some of the more favorable attitudes toward Jews have developed in Evangelical circles.”

Police State Shaking In Its Goose-Stepping Boots

Democracy, Democrats, Fascism, Law, Terrorism, The State

It’s the leading story on just about every cable network. “House Democrats are concerned about their security due to increased threats since Sunday’s vote to pass the health care bill.”

A grim-faced House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer held a news conference, where he bemoaned that “a significant number, meaning over 10” Democrats “had reported either threats, vandalism or other incidents. Capitol Police officials have briefed House Democrats on reporting suspicious or threatening activity and taking precautions to avoid ‘subjecting themselves or their families to physical harm,’ said Hoyer, D-Maryland.”

Hoyer was flanked by a chap called Jim Clyburn who mouthed cliches about the lessons of history, and threw the kitchen sink of civil rights, holocaust, homophobia in for good measure.

Most other news outlets ran with this story, against a backdrop of besieged Democrats speaking about the need for security details to guard their homes and families and wallowing in horror stories about a handful of disenfranchised voters who seem to have lost faith in the vaunted American mobocracy. (Your wishes to be left alone are ignored in a democracy?! You don’t say.)

Good luck to you in trying to get a security detail should your family come under threat or should your boyfriend threaten to kill you. The sponger class has no perception of how rarefied and cloistered is its worthless, parasitic existence.

How ludicrous and contemptuous for the political class (and its media sycophants), backed as it is by the tanks that took out tots at WACO, to put on this show—aimed at depicting a tiny number of angry voters who dared to step out of line as Timothy McVeighs in the making.

Updated: “‘Deem and Pass’ Dead” (Pass Impending)

Democrats, Healthcare, Law, Liberty, Regulation, The State

“‘Deem and Pass’ is dead” reports FoxNews. This means that the Democrats will have to put their faces not only to “the ostensibly redeemable aspects of the bill—namely the amendments—in hope of hanging onto their jobs,” but to the complete hulking thing. It also means that the Democrats are confident they have the requisite 216 roach votes to pass what is an enormous expansion of government and debt. A sad development for the republic, RIP.

Meanwhile, tea party patriots make a last stand, egged on by the indomitable, much-maligned Michele Bachmann.

Update (March 21): PASS IMPENDING. “‘We have the votes now,’ Representative John Larson, head of the House Democratic Caucus, said on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ although other House leaders were more cautious in their assessment.”

“House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ the number of votes still needed for passage were in the “low single digits.'”

[SNIP]
The English language makes an appearance, in the main Bill, at “SUBDIVISION A,” SEC. 100. The Amendments are an affront; they are written in the legalese reserved for the Managerial State; evolved over time to ensure the people have not the faintest notion what’s upon them.

Here is an entirely representative excerpt from the Amendments portion of the Bill:

PREMIUM TAX CREDITS.—Section 36B of the In6
ternal Revenue Code of 1986, as added by section 1401
7 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and
8 amended by section 10105 of such Act, is amended—
9 (1) in subsection (b)(3)(A)—
10 (A) in clause (i), by striking ‘‘with respect
11 to any taxpayer’’ and all that follows up to the
12 end period and inserting ‘‘for any taxable year
13 shall be the percentage such that the applicable
14 percentage for any taxpayer whose household
15 income is within an income tier specified in the
16 following table shall increase, on a sliding scale
17 in a linear manner, from the initial premium
18 percentage to the final premium percentage
19 specified in such table for such income tier: ….

[SNIP]

What in bloody blue blazes is this? It’s an affront; an “eff you, little serf” if ever there was one.