Tag: politics

Unconstitutional!

The full text of the decision from Federal Judge Roger Vinson is not available yet, but according to reporters who’ve seen the decision, he’s ruled the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. The ruling favors of the 26 state attorney generals challenging the law. The judge ruled the individual mandate that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance invalid and, according to the decision, “because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.”

It’s about time the someone in the judiciary began to come to his senses. While it’s true that not buying something is at least potentially an economic activity, it is absolutely absurd to claim that this permits the use of the Commerce Clause to provide constitutional cover for the federal enforcement of mandated purchases of health insurance or anything else.

Of course, now that the Republicans have judicial cover to kill Obamacare once and for all, they’ll probably offer the Democrats a compromise in order to revive most of it.

Note that this the technological priority of the so-called party of “small government”:

The House Republicans’ first major technology initiative is about to be unveiled: a push to force Internet companies to keep track of what their users are doing. A House panel chaired by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin is scheduled to hold a hearing tomorrow morning to discuss forcing Internet providers, and perhaps Web companies as well, to store records of their users’ activities for later review by police…. Tomorrow’s data retention hearing is juxtaposed against the recent trend to protect Internet users’ privacy by storing less data. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission called for “limited retention” of user data on privacy grounds, and in the last 24 hours, both Mozilla and Google have announced do-not-track technology.

These jokers aren’t going to fix anything. If they leave Ron Paul alone long enough to get some straight accounting out of the Fed, it will only be because the incompetence of the central bankers has put their corporatist gravy train in danger. The division between Democrats and Republicans isn’t based upon ideology or big government vs small government, it is basically a battle between pro-government bureaucrats and pro-corporate bureaucrats. And by “corporation”, I do not mean the small businesses that are a legal shell for the business activity of actual individuals, but the giant, government-created artificial entities that have taken on financial lives of their own.

It’s hard to quibble with this first action by Sen. Paul:

In his first major legislative proposal, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has proposed cutting government spending by $500 billion in a year, including eliminating the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development and most of the Department of Education. Paul, R-Ky., said the plan he rolled out Tuesday would cut almost 40 percent of the country’s projected deficit by abolishing programs that he said are outside the government’s constitutional scope.

Throw in the DEA and I’m sold.

Arizona looks set to tell Obama to show his cards:

A plan in Arizona to require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility to occupy the Oval Office is approaching critical mass, even though it has just been introduced. The proposal from state Rep. Judy Burges, who carried a similar plan that fell short last year only because of political maneuvering, was introduced yesterday with 16 members of the state Senate as co-sponsors.

It needs only 16 votes in the Senate to pass.

In the House, there are 25 co-sponsors, with the need for only 31 votes for passage, and Burges told WND that there were several chamber members who confirmed they support the plan and will vote for it, but simply didn’t wish to be listed as co-sponsors.

It should be interesting to see how many Arizona and national Democrats oppose this perfectly sensible state law. It should be kept in mind that any opposition to it is a tacit admission that Obama is not, in fact, eligible to be president, so I doubt the New York Times will dare to do its usual hand-wringing about Arizona.

Not in Hawaii, anyway:

“Senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections Division told me on multiple occasions that no Hawaii long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Senator Obama in the Hawaii Department of Health,” Adams’ affidavit reads, “and there was no record that any such document had ever been on file in the Hawaii Department of Health or any other branch or department of the Hawaii government.”

In a recorded telephone interview, Adams told WND that it was common knowledge among election officials where he worked that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate could be found at the Hawaii Department of Health. “My supervisor came and told me, ‘Of course, there’s no birth certificate. What? You stupid,'” Adams said…..

Moreover, Adams was told that neither Queens Memorial Hospital nor Kapi’olani Medical Center had any records of Obama’s birth at their medical facilities: “Senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections Division further told me on multiple occasions that Hawaii State government officials had made inquires about Sen. Obama’s birth records to officials at Queens Medical Center and Kapi’olani Medical Center in Honolulu and that neither hospital had any record of Senator Obama having been born there, even though Governor Abercrombie is now asserting and various Hawaii government officials continue to assert Barack Obama Jr. was born at Kapi’olani Medical Center on Aug. 4, 1961.”

You may recall that I not only insisted that Obama would be a one-term “president”, but I didn’t even think he would be the Democratic nominee. I am even more confident that he won’t be now, since his birth mythology appears to be rapidly collapsing and this time I doubt he’s going to be able to get away without having to produce some documentation to remain eligible in at least one state around the country. Too many people in power have become too suspicious of his credentials, or rather, lack of them. I don’t pretend to know where he was born, although Connecticut would be one obvious place to start looking. But wherever it was, it does not appear to have been Hawaii.

The newly self-appointed defender of the Obama birthplace appears to find himself at a loss:

Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie suggested in an interview published today that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health. Abercrombie told the Honolulu Star Advertiser he was searching within the Hawaii Department of Health to find definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii, because the continuing eligibility controversy could hurt the president’s chances of re-election in 2012.

This is rather interesting given the long and public history of people insisting that the information had already been released. Perhaps Gov. Abercrombie should be looking in Connecticut… or, you know, Kenya.

Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords was shot and killed at a political rally:

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and six others died after a gunman opened fire at a public event on Saturday, the Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s office confirms. The 40-year-old Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.

I have to admit, I’m a little surprised that Americans have begun shooting elected officials instead of bankers. I am even more surprised that it would be an Arizona Democrat that was shot. Of course, this could be the result of a personal issue, for all we know right now.

UPDATE: Now they’re saying that the Congresswoman isn’t dead yet and the shooter is a 22-year old Iraqi War veteran named Jared Laughner.

UPDATE II: Apparently the shooter is a schizoid atheist of some sort. And Rep. Giffords is making a miraculous recovery after being shot in the head and reported dead… now wouldn’t THAT be unexpected.

Karl Denninger notes that it took all of six hours for Republicans to abandon their self-proclaimed and much-ballyhooed goals:

The very so-called “Tea Party” and “Conservative” members of Congress could not even agree to cite a specific clause in The Constitution that enabled legislation to be brought to the floor.

Oh, it gets better. The actual proposed rule would not have prevented passing something that nobody could manage to find a clause in The Constitution that enabled the bill. It in fact only required that a point of order be raised if the language was not present, allowing a gigantic and overwhelming 20 minutes of debate (10 each side) before a simple majority could vote to table the objection and move forward anyway – Constitution be damned.

The Committee rejected that watered-down milquetoast rule!

That would be enough to call the Tea Party and so-called “Conservatives” we sent to Washington a failure on the day they took their oaths of office all by itself.

But no, that wasn’t enough for them. They had to make damn sure that I could get out the megaphone and holler from the rafters that every single thing we were sold by these clowns during the campaign – the entire Palin thing, the entire “we’re gonna take back Washington!” screed was an out-and-out fraud from the very first breath that passed their lips.

Remember, the claim by the Republicans (including but not limited to The Tea Party) was that they would cut the budget by $100 billion? Which, I might remind you, would have been less than five percent of the deficit this year. Well, it turns out that was a lie too.

I think it’s a little too soon to condemn the Tea Party for these failures, however. They are a mere subset of the Republican legislators and there aren’t enough of them to force these sorts of things through over the objections of their fellow Republicans. But, it certainly does underline the complete lack of commitment to either the Constitution or reducing government spending on the part of the newly elected Republicans.

And unfortunately, it looks like Rand Paul has already sold out too. He’s willing to raise the debt ceiling… just this one time. Again. How quickly they grow once they get into office.