Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Kinda. Glenn Reynolds, uncharacteristically, has expounded upon it to cover all the necessities:
From ScotusBlog: “The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government’s power to terminate states’ Medicaid funds is narrowly read.” Plus: “The money quote from the section on the mandate: ‘Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.’”
So it was upheld on a basis — the taxing power — that the Administration didn’t advance. In fact, Obama denied that it was a tax. This just supports what Mike Graetz told me in Tax class years ago: “The constitution stops where the Internal Revenue Code begins.”
On the upside, the Lopez revolution, which some believed dead, appears to be revived.
So, liberals, does this mean the Supreme Court is legitimate again?
And what’s next? Republicans will have to push for repeal, or look like losers. Now Romney needs to make an issue of repealing the “Obama Healthcare Tax,” I guess. And, of course, it’s important to note that just because the Supreme Court — barely — found the Act constitutional doesn’t mean that it’s actually a good idea.
Text of the opinion is still not online. But here’s ScotusBlog’s summary:
In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding. . . . Yes, to answer a common question, the whole ACA is constitutional, so the provision requiring insurers to cover young adults until they are 26 survives as well.
So there you are. The Supreme Court has refused to save us from ourselves. The remedy now will have to be political.
The mentioned ScotusBlog link is here.
Wonder if Romney, or any of the Republicans running for the Senate or the House, will pick up some votes from this.
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Wonder if Romney, or any of the Republicans running for the Senate or the House, will pick up some votes from this.
It could potentially be much better than that. If Romney and the GOP aren’t complete imbeciles — a continent-sized IF, granted — SCOTUS could have just handed Romney the election.
The elephant in the room for the GOP has always been RomneyCare. It’s the insta- rebuttal to any debate point Romney scores on the size, scope, and responsibility of the government to its citizens. It’s a stupid bullshit leftist Great Society-lite program that’s so cosmically wrongheaded it achieves the exact opposite of its intended effect… passed by the putative “Republican” nominee for President of the United States.
But now Romney can use Obama’s trial-ballooned campaign strategy of running against the Court. He can point out all the bullshit in the decision and say “no, RomneyCare was nothing like that; that’s the crap you should elect me to fix. And if you don’t, Obama is going to cram every left-wing wet dream ever splooged from the pen of Karl Marx down our throats next term, since all he has to do is call it a tax and apparently it’s golden.”
- Severian | 06/28/2012 @ 13:58Sadly, once Zerocare is enacted and the sheeple get used to it, it will be impossible to repeal. IF Romney is elected they’ll have to move quickly to repeal it before people accept it as just another way government is looking out for the little guy. However, even if it is repealed, once again the Left has succeeded in ratcheting us towards Socialism with the Republicans already folding their tents. In response to the decision. Already the talk by the Republican leadership is of looking at ways to reform healthcare by reworking Zerocare. Here’s a novel idea, get government out of an area where it doesn’t belong and where since Medicare was enacted , it has only helped to drive the costs of healthcare upwards. How about this idea, tort reform? That would be an area to act upon but of course now I’m really getting out there.
- groman | 06/28/2012 @ 14:33