Update II: Unhealthy & Unconstitutional (The Baucus Edition)

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

“The power ‘to regulate’ interstate commerce … is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control,” writes Judge Andrew Napolitano, in a WSJ op-ed.

“James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept ‘regular.'” …

“Applying these principles to President Barack Obama’s health-care proposal, it’s clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one’s health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.”

“The same Congress that wants to tell family farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined ‘to keep regular’ the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state.”

“That’s right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person’s appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.”

Jonathan Turley—watch him mock the Tenth Amendment—would, no doubt, find Madison’s legal thought ever-so quaint.

Update I: My opinion of Turley’s latter day obsessions were reiterated in “To Bug Or Not To Bug Abu Zubaydah’s Cage”:

Forgotten in the faff over “enhanced interrogation” tactics is the invasion of Iraq. Of this war crime, most Democrats are as guilty as Republicans. The torture fracas is like manna from heaven for both parties and their media lapdogs, who cannot be coaxed out of a coma.
Whether to bug Zubaydah’s cage or not: this is a limited, small, relatively safe distraction that allows complicit journalists, jurists, politicians and pointy heads to skirt the real issue: the need to prosecute Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Kerry, for invading Iraq.

Turley, moreover, is a stickler for the letter of the law—the positive law—but not necessarily for the higher moral law.

Update II (Sept. 17): The thrust of the healthcare proposal, “unveiled yesterday by Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus,” is sufficiently simple to defer to National Review, for once:

“[I]t tries to expand coverage through coercion and hidden taxes instead of through consumer choice and price competition in a free market.

Like the bills that have been approved by committees in the House and Senate, the Baucus plan is built on mandates, expanded governmental control, and taxes. It would require all Americans to sign up for government-approved insurance or face a hefty federal tax penalty — up to $3,800 per family. Employers would be required to offer insurance conforming to government specs or pay a head tax on each of their full-time employees.

There is no breakthrough miracle cure to be found here: Insurance coverage is expanded with tried-and-true, heavy-handed regulation. Americans who don’t play along will be disciplined by the IRS.

To take some of the sting out of the individual mandate, Senator Baucus promises new subsidies to some low-income families. He would limit their portion of the insurance premiums to a percentage of their income. Families with incomes at three to four times the poverty level would pay no more than 13 percent of their incomes toward insurance. But this promise comes with a lot of fine print: Workers with incomes in these ranges who are offered qualified coverage by their employers are ineligible for additional subsidization. They will have no choice but to take what is offered at work — whether they can afford it or not. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), only about 13 million people will be getting subsidized insurance through the exchanges in 2014 even though there are, as of 2008, 127 million Americans under age 65 in households with incomes between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line. For the vast majority of Americans, therefore, the individual mandate is simply a hidden, onerous, and regressive tax.” …

Read on.

Are BO's Pants On Fire?

Barack Obama, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Law, Media, Politics, Propaganda

By federal fiat, US state schools and hospitals must bear the costs of teaching and treating illegal aliens because of federally granted rights. Unless the courts overturn these mandates, Obamacare will uphold federal provisions that are already on the books. By logical extension, Joe Wilson, South Carolina’s Republican Representative, was correct—if indecorous—in asserting, during Obama’s address to the chambers last week, that the president was not being truthful.

This college senior from Charleston is sufficiently savvy to mine the relevant source and deduce what the malfeasant media refuses even to entertain, let alone investigate:

“President Obama just swore that his plan would never include such an element, and there’s no reason for the president to lie. However, Obama has not published his own written plan, and the only written plans currently being considered are those bills in Congress. Therefore, we must test the president’s claim against those plans which do exist, chiefly HR 3200.”

“HR 3200 cannot hold up against some basic scrutiny. Republican-proposed amendments that would explicitly exclude illegal aliens from the legislation were voted down consistently by Democrats in committee hearings. Further, pages 50 and 51 of the HR 3200 legislation clearly read that ‘all health care and related services covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.'”

“Can proof of legal citizenship be reasonably considered a personal characteristic that is ‘extraneous to the provision of quality health care?’ Yes, it can: someone’s health can be cared for regardless of whether or not he or she is a citizen of a particular country. Reasonably, therefore, it may be concluded that HR 3200 provides care for illegal aliens. So indirectly, perhaps even unintentionally, the president did lie.”

“Hopefully, this exercise gives the health care debate new meaning. Wilson’s outburst, whatever you may think of it, embodies the frustration growing numbers of Americans feel over health care reform: namely, that the message being preached by President Obama and other Democrat leaders is simply not compatible with the dominant legislation at hand.”

On LIVING A LIE. Why the incredulity all around at the suggestion that a politician might lie? Jack Hunter speak to that general issue.

Are BO’s Pants On Fire?

Barack Obama, Democrats, IMMIGRATION, Law, Media, Politics, Propaganda

By federal fiat, US state schools and hospitals must bear the costs of teaching and treating illegal aliens because of federally granted rights. Unless the courts overturn these mandates, Obamacare will uphold federal provisions that are already on the books. By logical extension, Joe Wilson, South Carolina’s Republican Representative, was correct—if indecorous—in asserting, during Obama’s address to the chambers last week, that the president was not being truthful.

This college senior from Charleston is sufficiently savvy to mine the relevant source and deduce what the malfeasant media refuses even to entertain, let alone investigate:

“President Obama just swore that his plan would never include such an element, and there’s no reason for the president to lie. However, Obama has not published his own written plan, and the only written plans currently being considered are those bills in Congress. Therefore, we must test the president’s claim against those plans which do exist, chiefly HR 3200.”

“HR 3200 cannot hold up against some basic scrutiny. Republican-proposed amendments that would explicitly exclude illegal aliens from the legislation were voted down consistently by Democrats in committee hearings. Further, pages 50 and 51 of the HR 3200 legislation clearly read that ‘all health care and related services covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.'”

“Can proof of legal citizenship be reasonably considered a personal characteristic that is ‘extraneous to the provision of quality health care?’ Yes, it can: someone’s health can be cared for regardless of whether or not he or she is a citizen of a particular country. Reasonably, therefore, it may be concluded that HR 3200 provides care for illegal aliens. So indirectly, perhaps even unintentionally, the president did lie.”

“Hopefully, this exercise gives the health care debate new meaning. Wilson’s outburst, whatever you may think of it, embodies the frustration growing numbers of Americans feel over health care reform: namely, that the message being preached by President Obama and other Democrat leaders is simply not compatible with the dominant legislation at hand.”

On LIVING A LIE. Why the incredulity all around at the suggestion that a politician might lie? Jack Hunter speak to that general issue.

Updated: Million-Man March (Fly-Over Obama)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Debt, Healthcare, Liberty, Media

Those of us who’ve shown little confidence in what remains of “the people” may have to swallow some pride. That’s fine, because I have never wished so hard to be in the wrong.

The Daily Mail: “Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as ‘Obamacare makes me sick’ as they protested the president’s health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.

The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.”

People were chanting ‘enough, enough’ and ‘We the People.’ Others yelled ‘You lie, you lie!’ and ‘Pelosi has to go,’ referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Today’s rally, the largest grouping of fiscal conservatives to march on Washington, comes on the heels of heated town halls held during the congressional August recess when some Democratic lawmakers were confronted, disrupted and shouted down by angry protesters who oppose President Obama’s plan to overhaul the health care system.”

Contra the English Daily Mail, American news organizations pegged the number of protesters in the tens of thousands only.

CNN, I am sure, is not the only mainstream media outlet to frame the march as the product of the shenanigans of “The conservative advocacy group Tea Party Express,” which “massed at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday to protest health care reform, higher taxes and what they see as out-of-control government spending.”

The subtle suggestion is that these people have been organized and incited. However, first comes the discontent. Organization follows the discord.

“What they see as out-of-control government spending”: as though the stratospheric nature of Washington’s debt and deficits was not settled but open to debate.

The New York Time leads its online US Section with a story about … “pollutants in drinking water [that] have damaged residents’ teeth.”

Unlike the Times, The WaPo covers the event, under the headline, “Lashing Out At The Capital.” The peons from the provinces are disobeying Rome. Dishonestly the WaPo categorically asserts that the protest is an extension of the Republican Party, a “populist dimension” of it.

Nothing at the Christian Science Monitor, except for an item buried under the headline, “Obama takes on Glenn Beck and ‘tea party’ critics over healthcare.”

Meanwhile, Obama beat a hasty retreat out of DC, to “Democratic-leaning Minnesota.”

Updated (Sept. 14): FLY-OVER OBAMA. I extend our appreciation to Chip for imparting the feel and impetus of the march he attended. We hope to hear more from him. Chip’s “Goebbels” comment: According to the Pew Research Center, “The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.”

The underlying process that accounts for the malign and deficient reporting on the rising opposition to statism is suggested in Pat Buchanan’s latest:

“In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?”

The answer is: America, for the most, is no longer a nation, but a disparate collection of identity groups supervised and subdued by a massive managerial state intent on dissolving the historical people and electing another. The propositional nation has replaced the nation. America is but “a notion and an idea; not a community of flesh-and-blood people sharing a mother tongue, traditions, history and heroes.”

The New York Times’ JEFF ZELENY has a decent report (which I had failed to locate yesterday, becasue not on the front page):

“A sea of protesters filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall on Saturday in the largest rally against President Obama since he took office … demonstrators came from all corners of the country, waving American flags and handwritten signs explaining the root of their frustrations. Their anger stretched well beyond the health care legislation moving through Congress, with shouts of support for gun rights, lower taxes and a smaller government. … many demonstrators expressed their views without a hint of rage. They said the size of the crowd illustrated that their views were shared by a broader audience.
Republican officials said privately that they were pleased by the turnout but wary of the anger directed at all politicians. … [My emphasis]
Protesters came by bus, car and airplane, arriving here from Texas and Tennessee, New Mexico and New Hampshire, Ohio and Oregon. The messages on their signs told of an intense distrust of the government, which several people said began long before Mr. Obama took office. …
In conversations with demonstrators, people identified themselves as Republicans, libertarians, independents and former. …” Democrats. [Ditto re emphasis]

ON HIS NOT-SO-MERRY way out of the capital, “Mr. Obama … flew over the assembling crowd in Marine One. The helicopter could be seen flying overhead as the demonstrators marched down Pennsylvania Avenue.”