I guess we shall see when the Supreme Court eventually takes up the case.
It seems like a Scalia precedent will stand in the way of your wish, Hobie.
But this week, Obama administration lawyers pointed to Scalia’s opinion as supporting the constitutionality of broad federal regulation of health insurance, and most legal experts agreed.
Article I says, “Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes . . . [to] provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States . . . [and] to regulate commerce.”
Since the New Deal era of the 1930s, the Supreme Court has repeatedly said that the federal government can regulate almost anything that involves economic or commercial activity.
Several constitutional law experts said this week that it is somewhere between unlikely and hard-to-imagine that the Supreme Court would strike down the new healthcare law.
You are correct. By looking back to the policies born out of the Depression these great ideas to regulate various aspects of our society resulted in many unintended consequences. And if the bill was written correctly it should not have the Court looking at it.
As one of its earliest actions, Congress passed the Militia Act of 1792, which was signed by President George Washington. It mandated that “each and every able-bodied white male citizen” must “be enrolled in the militia.”
Hardly shy about imposing federal regulations on private citizens, the militia law said that each new recruit must show up within six months carrying “a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, a knapsack [and] a pouch to contain not less than 24 cartridges suited to the bore of his musket or firelock.”
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Militia point is not at all related. Cmon. Can’t take the word enrolled and apply it to health insurance mandates.
The common welfare angle is a stretch to apply it to health insurance and was not what our founding fathers had in mind. I am anxious to read Antonin Scalia’s opinion, if it even makes it that far. He is absolutely brilliant.
