So I’m reading today how the Stalinization of Healthcare Act of 2010 is facing renewed Constitutional scrutiny, this time at the hands of a three-judge panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Georgia. Much hay has been made since the passage of the monstrosity and immediate court challenges thereto of the political make-up of the judges who have so far heard arguments and their seemingly ideologically mirrored conclusions about the federal government’s Constitutional authority to force its subjects citizens to purchase a service for no other reason than that they happen to live in America. Which is to say, up until now, every judge appointed by a Democrat has sided with the Administration, and every Republican-appointed judge has sided with Americans.
What’s gratifying about what we learned today is that members of the panel of the 11th hearing this particular case (this is the one in which twenty-six states have filed suit), made up of two Clinton appointees and on GHWBush appointee, are skeptical of the Administration’s position. If they were to rule the way observers are thinking they will, it’d be the first time a body representing the judicial branch has, ahem, crossed the aisle.
And to be honest, that’s what’s making me grit my teeth a little bit.
Yes, yes, yes. I’m all upset (or whatever) about the “politicization of the Judicial Branch…”
And yes. It’s always grated on me how the Left in America tends to go bawling to the Bar when they can’t convince a majority of their fellow citizens to go along with their cockamamie schemes. When accusations of ‘hate’, ad hominem insults, and attempts to shame voters (or legislators) into going their way don’t seem to win the other side over (imagine, huh?), the Left seems all too prepared time after time to lawyer-up and take their adversaries to court, rather than ever attempting (really) to settle their difference the good old-fashioned representative democratic (“American!”) way: at the ballot box.
So that’s partly—but only partly—why if (hopefully when) this charlie foxtrot is finally dispensed with, it’ll be a Pyrrhic victory for us. Not only because we had to go hat-in-hand to the Black Robed Sages like a bunch of little bitches…
No, no. It’s because this whole national humiliation has said some very troubling things about the state of our alleged democratic republic.
Consider: This law has never ever had a majority of support among the American people. In fact, the impossible happened in an attempt to thwart it. Not a single member of the opposition party, dead or alive, in office or not, has ever voted for it. It’s unpopularity was at 60% when it passed and has hovered around there ever since. It was passed without having been read, let alone be open to the scrutiny that such a mammoth power-grab by the central government should demand. After its inexplicable passage by the skin of its teeth, in a political revolt, an historical tide overcame both houses of the Legislature as a show of dissatisfaction from the People of America.
Yet, the Ruling Elite of Washington have still not seen fit to correct this gargantuan foible.
That is more a testament to the chasm that exists between Washington and the rest of the Nation than any twitted picture or under-the-table dirty deal could ever demonstrate.
Surely the individual mandate, as well as the employer mandate is a brazen abuse of the Federal Government’s Constitutional authority. Now, there are likely those who would disagree, and obviously the president and his sheep supporters are of them.
However, discussions of the obvious unConsitutionality of this piece of law, and our need to resort to them in order to have it overturned speak badly…very badly…of what has become of our Great Nation. While I believe in my bones that we are absolutely correct that this law is unConstitutional, why on earth should we even need to discuss that, given that most of America hates it? Since when, to those who represent rule over us, does that not matter?
When the book is written on the death of representative governance in America, there will be an entire chapter dedicated to the citizens’ complete loss of control over their elected officials in the wake of this terrible terrible law.
I dunno…something tells me that if it weren’t for the Seventeenth Amendment, we could have avoided all this awful messiness.
-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)
