“Missouri’s Democratic attorney general broke with his party on Monday and urged a federal judge to invalidate the central provision of the new health care law.”
“Recent district court decisions have fueled speculation over what the Supreme Court will do about ObamaCare if and when one of the challenges to the law’s ‘individual mandate’ arrives on the justices’ doorstep. Largely unnoticed amidst the agitation, though, cases that will have profound effects on ObamaCare’s future are already pending before the Court. They involve enormous amounts of money, and they have powerful implications for the implementation of the criminally misnamed ‘Affordable Care Act.’ The justices will get these cases right, to good effect.”
“The fundamental question in the Obamacare case is whether there is any constraint on the ability of Congress to regulate economic activity. Do we still live in a system of dual sovereignty, split between the federal government and the states, as set out by the Constitution? Does the federal government only have certain enumerated powers? Is anything beyond its ambit? Judge Kessler’s argument is a ringing “no” on all three counts.”
“The Obama administration got a well-deserved rebuke today from Judge Roger Vinson in the Florida lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare (aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as big government types insist). Judge Vinson issued a new order in response to a bizarre and obtuse ‘motion to clarify’ that the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed on February 17.”
“The crux of these cases is whether the government’s power to regulate ‘Commerce . . . among the several States’ is so broad that it can mandate that everyone buy health insurance. Judge Gladys Kessler of the D.C. district court says in her 64-page opinion that this power includes regulating even ‘mental activity, i.e., decision-making.'”
“Late Thursday, February 17, the Obama Administration filed an incredibly odd and almost insulting ‘Motion to Clarify’ the judgment in the case it lost against 26 states and the NFIB in the Obamacare litigation in Florida v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, No. 10-cv-00091 (N. D. Fla.)(Judge Vinson). With this motion, the Administration has now stated officially that, notwithstanding the Judge’s declaration of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) as unconstitutional, the Administration does not interpret the Judge’s order as requiring the Administration to cease carrying out the unconstitutional ACA.”
“Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said he won’t implement the federal health-care overhaul after a judge in Florida struck down the law as unconstitutional… Mr. Parnell, who sought the advice of his attorney general amid concerns implementing the law would violate his oath of office, told the Juneau Chamber of Commerce the state would pursue lawful, market-based solutions to making insurance affordable and accessible to Alaskans.”
“In ruling as he did, Judge Vinson wrote that ‘it must be presumed that federal officers will adhere to the law as declared by the court.’ Yet the Obama administration has thus far shown no inclination to do so. But neither has it sought to stay the practical effects of the ruling — perhaps because it thinks that doing so would give credence to the court’s decision.”
“Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli petitioned the Supreme Court to take the case immediately, calling resolution of the overhaul’s constitutionality ‘a matter of imperative public importance.’ Separately, 28 Republican governors wrote to President Barack Obama, asking the administration to back an expedited review. The governors said that would ‘help prevent the states and the private sector from undertaking potentially unnecessary measures and expenses’ should the act be struck down.”
“Fairly stated, this is the conservative constitutional argument: Health care for all is a good cause. But if, in the name of that noble goal, you construe Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce so broadly as to encompass individual choices that have never previously been thought of as commercial, much less interstate, there would be nothing left of the commerce clause’s restraints on Congress’s power. And then, the argument goes, Congress would be free to impose far more intrusive mandates.”