03 July 2012
11:40 PM
George Will is among those conservatives driven to find victory in a stunning defeat.
By persuading the court to reject a Commerce Clause rationale for a president’s signature act, the conservative legal insurgency against Obamacare has won a huge victory for the long haul. This victory will help revive a venerable tradition of America’s political culture, that of viewing congressional actions with a skeptical constitutional squint, searching for congruence with the Constitution’s architecture of enumerated powers. By rejecting the Commerce Clause rationale, Thursday’s decision reaffirmed the Constitution’s foundational premise: Enumerated powers are necessarily limited because, as Chief Justice John Marshall said, “the enumeration presupposes something not enumerated.”This desperation to find a victory rides rough-shod over the fact that, as the Chief Justice explained, we are still free to buy (government approved) healthcare or not buy healthcare insurance; we just aren't free to not buy healthcare insurance and not pay a penalty for not owning healthcare insurance. And the IRS is still invested with power it did not previous have; and it previously had a lot.
The IRS now gets to know about a small business's entire payroll, the level of their insurance coverage -- and it gets to know the income of not just the primary breadwinner in your house, but your entire family’s income, in order to assess/collect the mandated tax. Plus, it gets to share your personal info with all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies and employers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. "We expect even more lien and levy powers," an IRS official says.
11:32 PM
In our mothers' house, there's lots and lots o' love. What was it Malcolm X said about a fool letting his enemy educate his children?
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About Me
- James Frank Solís
- Former soldier (USA). Graduate-level educated. Married 26 years. Texas ex-patriate. Ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America.