Karl Denninger suspects the Obama administration is on the verge of committing sedition:
The White House officials said that the ruling would not have an impact on implementation of the law, which is being phased in gradually. (The individual mandate, for example, does not begin until 2014.) They said that states cannot use the ruling as a basis to delay implementation in part because the ruling does not rest on “anything like a conventional Constitutional analysis.” Twenty-six states were involved in the lawsuit.
So now we have a White House that has declared its intent to ignore a declaratory judgment. The Administration has no right to do this. Obama’s White House has exactly two options:
Comply with the ruling. This means that any and all activity authorized or mandated by the Statute cease now.
File an appeal and ask for a stay pending its hearing. If said stay is granted, then the ruling is held pending consideration.
That’s it…. This is now a full-blown Constitutional Crisis. The Executive’s willful, intentional and publicly-stated refusal to honor a declaratory judgment is an open act of willful and intentional violation of The Separation of Powers in The Constitution and, if combined with the use of or threat of use of force as is always present when government coercion is employed, treads awfully close to the line, and may cross it, of 18 USC Ch 115 Sec 238.
I tend to doubt that Obama and his crew are actually intending to challenge the separation of powers over health care reform. I suspect they are so accustomed to being able to impose their version of reality on everyone else that it doesn’t occur to them that it’s not always possible; after all they succeeded in convincing most of the nation that Obama is a highly intelligent author instead of the teleprompt-reading dolt with a ghostwriter that he observably is. I also suspect they simply didn’t stop to think about what the consequences of declaring that the executive branch need not pay any attention to declaratory judgments by the courts might be.
You must admit that it would be a rather peculiar objective for which to openly attack the separation of powers doctrine. And, given what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia right now, unusual timing as well.