States' Rights advocates on a roll these days

This thread is about understanding the US Constitution, right?

This notion is not the problem. The problem is that some people, having found the courage to decline instructions from others, then forget that the next step is to use reason, let alone reading comprehension.

dyslexia wrote:

Quote:

"Guapo's Mexican Cantina."

now Joe that's just plain silly, everyone knows what is now called the United States was called VespucciLand.

That was before it was called "Guapo's Mexican Cantina." Cripes, what did they teach you in school anyway?

Fla. Republicans take aim at Obama's health care bill
(By Michael C. Bender, Palm Beach Post, March 22, 2010)

Florida Republicans took aim today at President Obama's health care bill by threatening a lawsuit and a constitutional amendment they hope will block the federal changes.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a Republican candidate for governor, promised to sue the federal government over its power to require Americans to buy health insurance. McCollum will file the suit Tuesday, despite many constitutional scholars saying similar attempts have failed over the past two centuries.

House Republicans, meanwhile, gave initial approval today to putting a question on the November ballot asking voters to amend the state constitution to say that no Floridian would be compelled to participate in any health care system. But even lawmakers' own analysts pointed out in a study of the bill that the federal government has ultimate authority over conflicts with state law under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"That sounds like a lot of sound and fury that means nothing," University of Florida Levin College of Law Emeritus Professor Joseph W. Little said of the proposed amendment.

The partisan House debate over the amendment mirrored the national dispute over contentious health care issues. But not all Republicans in the state Capitol were ready to undermine the reform.

Sen. Durell Peaden, the Senate's health care budget chief, cautioned his fellow Republicans against a "rush to judgment."

"People are making these first-blush assaults on a bill that nobody really understands the full impact of," said Peaden, a retired physician.

"There's a lot of political fodder in the wind," he said. "It's easy to say you're going to run for governor or whatever and you're going to change everything. It's a long way to go to reverse what Congress did."

McCollum, whose gubernatorial platform includes reducing health care costs by limiting lawsuits, said he will be joined by attorneys general from 10 others states when he files the complaint Tuesday. An eleventh, Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli, will file his own lawsuit against the federal bill.

All 12 are Republicans. Three, including McCollum, are running for governor in their respective states and five others are seeking re-election. Four are not up for re-election this year.

"This is a political bill that is in response to a Democratic president," Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, said during a House committee debate over whether to endorse McCollum's lawsuit. The health and family services panel voted 7-5 on a party-line split to endorse the suit.

"It is really not helping anything in the way of health care to suggest that we will not allow the federal government to respond in any way to the health care crisis in our country," she said.

McCollum's gubernatorial campaign sent out seven press releases about health care reform in the past seven days, but he denied claims that the lawsuit was political.

"No politics involved with this whatsoever," McCollum said. "This is a bad bill."

In his legal analysis, McCollum argues that the federal bill's requirement to buy health insurance or pay a fee, which would not go into effect until 2014, falls outside the federal government's power under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Generally, that section gives Congress great power to regulate the movement of people and things across state lines.

McCollum said the clause lets Congress regulate markets, but does not let it force a consumer to participate in that market.

"This is a tax or a penalty on just living. And that's unconstitutional," McCollum said.

Many constitutional law professors say states have tried and failed with similar lawsuits. But with a conservative Supreme Court, others say McCollum's lawsuit could be worth a shot.

"I don't rule it out," Little said.

House Republicans pushed the proposed constitutional amendment (HJR 37) through the first of four scheduled committee stops on a partisan vote, 10-3.

"This should be done with or without Obama-care," Rep. Scott Plakon, a Longwood Republican sponsoring the bill, said after the meeting, but he acknowledged that the change would mean little if McCollum's suit is unsuccessful.

A similar measure (SJR 72) has two more Senate hearings, including one in Peaden's committee.

"This is one of those things," Peaden said, "that might be really politically hot today. But as you wind it out it burns down. And the people hell-bent to change it might find what they were trying to change is more popular out in the hinterland than they thought."

Now I have a Q: does implementation of the law (which goes into effect the moment the bill is signed) get suspended until all legal proceedings are exhausted, and if so, how long does that take?

I (and anyone familiar with public finances) really worry the US dollar will go the way of the Argentinian peso. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security have a combined actuarial deficit of about $60 trillion and this latest entitlement will obviously add to it. We're at the point where Warren Buffett borrows at rates better than the US Treasury - actual fact. Guantanamo had no net effect on federal finances, so the related jurisprudence isn't relevant here.

So has Stevens. His positions have evolved on such issues as civil rights and the death penalty, and he has led the Court’s counteroffensive against the Bush Administration’s treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay. And, as Stevens’s profile has risen, and his views have moved left, so, too, has criticism of him from conservatives reached a higher pitch. “From the beginning of his time as a Justice, you could see Stevens’s roots in the New Deal Court and his willingness to justify an expanding welfare state,” Richard Epstein, a libertarian-leaning law professor at New York University, said. “On these issues, he’s been consistent and consistently wrong about everything"and highly influential.”

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/22/100322fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all#ixzz0j17N9qhC

I (and anyone familiar with public finances) really worry the US dollar will go the way of the Argentinian peso.

I (and anyone familiar with public finances) really worry the US dollar will go the way of the Argentinian peso.