@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:
Cycloptichorn wrote:
Then again if you had any understanding of the Commerce Clause, had done any scholarship on the issue or even really any research AT ALL you would know that the case against HCreform is very, very weak.
.......
One way or the other, the courts will decide this, and I'm very confident that they will continue to uphold the Commerce Clause - just as they have for the last 30-40 years.
Cycloptichorn
A Federal Judge has already ruled on the matter, and he found the insurance mandate to be an unjustifiable distortion of the commerce clause. He then declared the law both unconstitutional and void. That's where the matter stands until, either a revised law is passed or the ruling is overturned by the Supreme Court.
Is this serious?
Do you not realize that a different Federal judge in a different jurisdiction ruled the opposite? Actually, that two of them have? And what more, that judge you are speaking of specifically denied to issue an injunction halting implementation of the law?
You know better than to write tripe like this. The Feds have appealed this to the district court and nothing prevents them from continuing with the implementation of the law in the meantime. What you write makes no sense in the face of the reality of the situation.
Quote:Additional challenges offered by several groups of states are also pending. Meanwhile the Administration is pretending that nothing has changed and that the judicial ruling doesn't exist. However several states are already refusing to undertake mandated activities to set up or participate in insurance exchanges.
I don't know if you recall or not, but Federal law trumps State law. A ruling by a single Circuit court judge doesn't invalidate Federal law and it doesn't remove the responsibilities States have to follow those laws.
Otherwise the 9th circuit would have re-defined our political world several times over, as I'm sure you know.
You're forwarding a political position as if it had legal validity, which is silly.
Quote:
Once again you are making vague references to your own scholarship on the matter as some kind of argument from presumed authority. However, the fact is you have offered no argument and no indications of real scholarship.
I have in fact done so, and offered those arguments here on A2K, in the form of both logic and in links to scholarly articles discussing the issue from a variety of sources and in several threads. The fact that you don't bother to read those posts or their supporting material, and you can't be bothered to do an ounce of research for yourself, doesn't mean that others don't do these things.
Nothing I've read indicates to me that the court will reverse its' decades-long trend of upholding the right of the Federal gov't to regulate economic activity through the Commerce clause of the Constitution. Those who believe that it will even be a close case are, just as you did above, projecting a political position onto the court instead of bothering to look at the actual underlying
legal issues. Can you tell us exactly why you and other Conservatives are so sure that the SC will overturn the court case?
This piece by Laurence Tribe earlier this month sums up the argument well -
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/opinion/08tribe.html
Quote: Since the New Deal, the court has consistently held that Congress has broad constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. This includes authority over not just goods moving across state lines, but also the economic choices of individuals within states that have significant effects on interstate markets. By that standard, this law's constitutionality is open and shut. Does anyone doubt that the multitrillion-dollar health insurance industry is an interstate market that Congress has the power to regulate?
Many new provisions in the law, like the ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, are also undeniably permissible. But they would be undermined if healthy or risk-prone individuals could opt out of insurance, which could lead to unacceptably high premiums for those remaining in the pool. For the system to work, all individuals -- healthy and sick, risk-prone and risk-averse -- must participate to the extent of their economic ability.
In this regard, the health care law is little different from Social Security. The court unanimously recognized in 1982 that it would be "difficult, if not impossible" to maintain the financial soundness of a Social Security system from which people could opt out. The same analysis holds here: by restricting certain economic choices of individuals, we ensure the vitality of a regulatory regime clearly within Congress's power to establish.
The justices aren't likely to be misled by the reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only economic "activity," not "inactivity," like the decision not to purchase insurance. This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don't purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system. They know that if they need emergency-room care that they can't pay for, the public will pick up the tab. This conscious choice carries serious economic consequences for the national health care market, which makes it a proper subject for federal regulation.
Even if the interstate commerce clause did not suffice to uphold mandatory insurance, the even broader power of Congress to impose taxes would surely do so. After all, the individual mandate is enforced through taxation, even if supporters have been reluctant to point that out.
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To imagine Justice Scalia would abandon that fundamental understanding of the Constitution's necessary and proper clause because he was appointed by a Republican president is to insult both his intellect and his integrity.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom many unfairly caricature as the "swing vote," deserves better as well.... Only a crude prediction that justices will vote based on politics rather than principle would lead anybody to imagine that Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito would agree with the judges in Florida and Virginia who have ruled against the health care law.
The truth is that I'd love to have a discussion of the merits and constitutionality of the HC mandate based on previous SC decisions and currently existing law. Let me know when you're either ready or interested in doing so.
Cycloptichorn
