I was wholly unsurprised that Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayer, and Kagan upheld the health care law. The former two are the intellectual descendants of William Brennan, the third has less legal acumen than a Walter Brennan character, and the fourth has less integrity than the person who appointed her.

I am disappointed in Roberts, however. (I shouldn't be, of course; just as pinhead Obama appointed pinheads Sotomayer and Kagan, it's hard to expect that pinhead Dubya would have been able to avoid at least one pinhead to the Court.)

I haven't read the opinions yet, but the "it's a tax provision and therefore okay" rationale is about as lame as it gets. Mr. Chief Justice, the individual mandate isn't just a tax provision. You're either a moron or a conservative statist swine, I don't know which.

US v. Darby Lumber and Wickard v. Filburn were bad enough. But those cases merely gutted the Commerce Clause. Thanks to your decision to enter the Pinhead Of The Year contest, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius says the power to tax and can be more powerful than any individual freedom, not only because the Congress and the Treasury agents happen to be five-hundred pound bullies with bigger guns than anyone else, but because the Constitution legitimates their bullying.

It's bad enough to use taxes to catch Al Capone. Al Capone was a thug who committed murder, robbery, and assorted other offenses against criminal law and morality. It's wholly a different thing to use the power to tax to make someone into a criminal for practicing basic freedoms we have for choosing our own basic needs like health care.

It's bad enough that you use the democratic process to "give" me health care options I didn't ask for. It's bad enough that you use taxes in general to pay for your provision of those options. That's the nature of majoritarian politics: if the majority says "spend", it isn't just the majority that gets to pay higher taxes. We all do, whether the spending is on health care, imposing democracy in Iraq, or first class air travel for all U.S. Senators. The power to tax is the power to confiscate in the name of the "general welfare".

But it's a whole different matter if you tell me that the only reason I am being taxed is because I have chosen not to take your new options.

This is not refusing a deduction for health care expenses -- you can do that, too, just as you can refuse to give a deduction for credit card interest. I'm not entitled to any particular deduction unless you grant it to me. However, if I want to protect my health in non-deductible ways, I ought to be able to do that.

This individual mandate thing is a different kind of rule. This is the lord of the manor telling one of his serfs she can't get married until she gives the lord her virginity. And mandating health insurance should be no more justifiable by majoritarian political processes than droit de seigneur.

Mr. Chief Justice, what are you going to do when Congress passes and the President signs a bill saying every unwed mother of sufficient wealth will be taxed if she chooses not to abort in the first trimester? What are you going to do when Congress passes and the President signs a bill saying vegans are going to be taxed unless they buy so much USDA-certified beef and pork each year?

Benevolence is not a sufficient condition. I'll set aside the questions of whether government-provided health care is a good thing or not. That is not the problem with your "it's a tax" rationale. The problem with your rationale is that, just like the Darcy Lumber and Wickard courts, you have said that government power is more important than individual freedom to choose.

And you've said it not just with regard to our choice of recreational chemicals, hobbies, or other "luxury goods." You've said it with regard to a fundamental choice like health care. And if you didn't know this already, I'll let you in on a secret -- not just the Obamas and the Sotomayers and the Kagans, but lots of caring people like my friends Troy, Nick, Paul, and Kevin, consider health no less an important choice than food, shelter, clothing, association, and other fundamentals.

Hayek once spoke of us being on a particular road. I guess we've finally arrived at our destination. The Darcy Lumber court was content with you and the 10th amendment to a "truism." Thanks to you and your colleagues, Mr. Chief Justice, the Constitution and the Declaration are worth less than the parchment they are printed on. The power to tax is the supreme law of the land.

We're just serfs, after all.

p.s. I thought Mr. Obama was going to run away with the Pinhead of the Year award yet again, but rest assured, Mr. Roberts, you're definitely in the lead now.

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Just one bit from the opinions. (As usual, today's justices are far too long-winded: Roberts opinion runs 58 pages, Ginsburg's 61, Scalia's 65. The only exception, again, is Clarence Thomas, just two pages. But this one paragraph from Scalia's dissent, ISTM, is important enough to quote:

Article I, §8, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States.” The Individual Mandate in the Act commands that every “applicable individual shall for each month beginning after 2013 ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage.” 26 U. S. C. §5000A(a) (2006 ed., Supp. IV). If this provision “regulates” anything, it is the failure to maintain minimum essential coverage. One might argue that it regulates that failure by requiring it to be accompanied by payment of a penalty. But that failure—that abstention from commerce—is not “Commerce.” To be sure, purchasing insurance is ”Commerce”; but one does not regulate commerce that does not exist by compelling its existence.

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Ah yes, Mia will get to have health care all her life. Now all we have to do is make all employers having full time workers - provide health care as part of the compensation package. And all welfare people can't use the emergency room for a hang nail anymore.

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The blue doesn't work. I can't read the shit. Whatever Wade said, I'll go with - lol.

Edit-- TY

I was right in the 1st place, btw.

Is that better? I changed the color. (The code says it's brown, but on my screen it looks red.)

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And you don't have to worry. If you get enough congresscritters to mandate all people in America buy North Dakota honey, that law will be perfectly constitutional, too.

[boxing]

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Haven't I explained this North Dakota honey ad nauseum. The bottlers take my perfect product and blend in shit like Iowa corn syrup and then have the nerve to put on the label 100% pure ND clover honey.

Well I've sent you enough of my product so that you know what the creme de le creme tastes like.

Americans buy shit off the shelf, but my friends get the real stuff from me.

As for insurance - we all should have it. There's enough shit in the world to worry about. The rich people can still have the top care - but the rest of us shouldn't go bankrupt if something shitty happens in life.

Wade, nobody in this country is truly free anyway - we're all slaves to something. Mine just happens to blonde hair and nice rack. [grin1]

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See? you are fucked up there too. NATURAL hair is the way to go. Those porno blondes with the big fake tits do NOTHING for a man with some wisdom. . Those girls are for the 21 year olds to fantasize about. Give me a -natural headed brunette with a natural top and good eyes... THEN you got somethin'-- a red-head also, (blonde-type-features are awesome and greed in a red-head )but I digress, lol

Shit man....just put 'em in government diapers the day of birth; fill their heads with garbage in government schools; shuffle 'em off to the government job (because their sad little intellects cannot find meaningful work with a major in ethnic studies and a minor in political science); send 'em off to retirement after 20 - 30 years for a decades long government psid retirement; and then bury 'em in a U.S. government issued cardboard box.

We are largely a nation of sad little dependants who have squandered the inheritance provided by our brilliant founders....and now deserve every bit of the sad chapters of our decline that are about to unfold. For 50 years, the American left has wanted to be Europe....we are now pretty much there. How is that working out for those worthless little nations who riot over a 35 hour work week?

Robert's is an disgrace.

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Who's we numbnuts? Your generation squandered all the inheritence, plus sold the rest of us into slavery. Worthless assholes, fix the shit already! Your outrage is noted, but utterly laughable.

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We went to the moon with about 1/100th the computing power of your average cell-phone, This generation can't make it to Wal-mart sober to pick up their doctor-shopped oxcy, which they need.



http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=etas 

Oh, I agree, your honey *is* the creme de le creme. *I* wouldn't have to be forced to eat it. But my point is that if you could convince Congress to mandate it even for the hoi polloi like Foster and the cultureless of Minnesota, the Honey of Honey Laws would stand.

I like to think of myself as a man of fairly refined tastes when it comes to matters of food and drink. But I would object strenuously to making even my choices of North Dakota honey, Spanish pork, English cheddar, and Scots whisky mandatory on others. And my dad instilled in me early on the virtues of insurance, so you don't have to convince me of that "should" point either.

But that's what the Supreme Court has okayed with this degree of judicial deference to the legislature and its "power to tax."

Every time "should" becomes "must" we have lost some of our freedom. When we enable the federal majority to make "should" into "must" whenever they think it happens to be a "should", we negate the very vision of our own Constitution as one of powers limited by enumeration, and we no longer have a constitutional justification for ANY freedom.

It would have been bad enough had the majority in this case been built solely around the case law surrounding the Commerce Clause. Judicial deference to the legislature on matters "regulating commerce" has emasculated the 10th Amendment for half a century. But giving a legislature carte blanche in the name of their power to tax? That is madness pure and simple.

Not surprisingly, most of the examples that I gave in my earlier post were examples of where a liberal government with its agenda wants to change our behavior. But consider these two:

1. A conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates all pregnant women to take their pregnancy through nine months, that said women disclose all their sexual partners during the possible period of conception, that all such named partners be tested for paternity, and that all men found by such testing to be the father be made to marry said pregnant woman. The same statute then provides that any man or woman failing to obey this mandate be assessed an head tax of $10,000 (or perhaps a income tax surcharge of 10%).

2. The same conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates all adults sign certain "articles of faith" that strongly resembles Luther's Large Catechism, and taxes those not signing (Moslems, atheists, and a damn lot of those who would call themselves Christians) extra.

3. The same conservative-dominated Congress and Executive mandates a particular kind of gun training, and imposes an extra tax on anyone who refuses to take the several-thousand-dollar-a-head Government Gun Course.

By the logic of the court's opinion, a constitutional challenge to any of the three would be extraordinarily difficult to sustain. By my reading today of the various opinions (all 170+ pages of them), the only argument supporting the mandate that was supported by five justices was Roberts' "it's a tax" rationale. Add in any Court's reticence to actually reverse a prior Supreme Court decision, and this is going to be extremely hard to find unconstitutional ANY legislation that Congress has added the appropriate "tax" language to.

Courts will "distinguish" past cases they don't like, sometimes making great logical contortions to do so, but actual reversal is extremely rare. I doubt if there are enough instances that would take all of one's fingers to count.

And this is the kind of ruling which will be extremely hard to meaningfully distinguish from. In that it will be as successful as Wickard v. Filburn, the 1942 "as long as it significantly affects commerce, and Congress gets to decide what is significant" Commerce clause case that emasculated the 10th amendment.

But even Wickard v Filburn merely castrated the Constitution. This court has given the Congress the power to make us use an oversized catheter to pee.

What were George Carlin's seven words again?

Pissy shitty fucking cunt motherfucking cocksucking assholes, that's what they are. And if they aren't bastards, it's only because their mother made two mistakes rather than one.

Sorry for the language that belongs in the Back Alley, but this decision honks me off. REALLY honks me off.

Bastards.

[aside to Foster: can we reduce the wage of all fucks who wear black robes by twice what we reduce the wages of lawyers?]

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Applause for posting something by Jonathan Edwards.

(I wonder how many people here, or in the United States, knew who Edwards was before you posted this)

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Wow. Do we agree on something? If I could make one amendment, I'd cut out 'all welfare' and just leave it simply at 'people can't use the ER for a hang nail'.

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I got SKILLS Wade, lol skills, my brother... And no, we still got minimum wage laws (regarding that court)_

No one else read that link, btw, but thanks for the props, lol

Shoutout to Nick-- I know how to use a slide-rule, bro--These fucking snot-noses don't even know what it IS, for Christ's sake.

No. Our generation is left uninspired because YOUR generation has done nothing significant in your lifetime except rack yourselves in debt up to your ears and work a 9 to 5 for 60 years. Yeah, that's EXACTLY what we want.

The solution is to promote entrepreneurship and business ownership. Show our generation that there IS more to life than 'get good grades in HS, go to college, get good grades in college, get a job, work 9-5 for 60 years then die', show us that, hey, it's OK to want to make money AND have time to enjoy it.

This government that your generation has help corrupt is not the answer.

=)

BTW, where the floop is my honey, hunny?

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and that's the problem we have with our society... everyone points the finger at someone else, everyone has a reason why everything is wrong ... but no one has any solutions.

That's why I stay out of this crap. lol

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Lies. The 2nd paragraph in my post supplies a solution!

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WTF are you talking about? The Booms have control of everything right now, and they've enjoyed it all. The finger only gets pointed in one direction, the only logical place it can be pointed.

And you Jeremy should probably PM me your info. You can either get some of last years, or wait until August for the new stuff. 2011 was a vintage year though.

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As President, I'm eliminating the Dept. of Education. I'm eliminating the dept. of Housing and Urban Development. The Dept. of Agriculture will be 1/8th of the number of farmers in this country. No American troops will be on anything but American ground. I'm cutting the number of generals/admirals to 1/10th of the current force structure in the Navy, Air Force and Army. The Coast Guard and Marines stay the same. The Army is giving half their budget to the Marines, and the Navy is going to one SEAL team, and the rest of that money (after being cut by half) is going to the Marines also. They all get the exact same chow.


50 people in Congress. No more than 50 allowed in state legislatures. No more than 50 white house staff. No junkets allowed. The plane goes. Everyone gets 100k to campaign with.

Tort law is abolished.

Health care facilities are required to explain all costs and options prior to any care, including the option to negotiate costs, if in fact availble.

Unions are abolished. Plan-term retirement benefits for government workers are abolished. Everyone gets current congressional health care, but everyone pays equally, including all employers, 50% for them.