A letter in today’s Wall Street Journal, responding to Michael McConnell’s op-ed on “The Liberal Legal Meltdown Over ObamaCare,” acknowledges that “liberal constitutionalists” are ill-suited to cry “judicial activism,” having long advocated a philosophy that “unmoors constitutional interpretation from the actual text of the Constitution.” But the writer goes on to assert that “no real judicial conservative” should argue ObamaCare is unconstitutional, because to suggest Congress is not “regulating a form of economic activity” by mandating insurance purchases is “conceptual and economic sophistry.”
Later this month, the Supreme Court will likely decide whether the power to “regulate commerce” includes the power to order individuals to engage in it so Congress can regulate them. An affirmative answer would seem to convert a specifically-enumerated power into an unlimited mandate over any significant economic decision, including a decision not to participate in commerce designed by Congress. Such a conclusion might be attractive to a “liberal constitutionalist,” but it is hard to see why a “real judicial conservative,” or anyone else who felt bound by the text of the Commerce Clause, would buy it.
As for conceptual and economic sophistry, nothing is likely to top Justice Breyer’s suggestion during oral argument that, on the day you were born, “because you are a human being, [you] entered this particular market, which is a market for health care.” Being born, as the trigger for power under the Commerce Clause, seems a bit of a stretch even for a liberal constitutionalist.
In any event, today’s WSJ letter, dismissing the challenge to ObamaCare as “sophistry,” is another example (to use John Podhoretz’s words) of “the unerring liberal inability” to credit the arguments of opponents – and another pre-emptive libel of a Court that may be about to moor Congress’s power to the text.
The legal grounds are blatantly obvious and the Democrat party has met the burden of proof – they are guilty across the board of pure Treason to their own homeland. If anybody still needs "an excuse" to get off their butts and do what is necessary, as much as necessary AND NOT LESS THAN IT TAKES to get the job done and set this nation back on a Constitutional course, I tell you, such folks are like those who are watching a burning building AS IT COLLAPSES, sitting there in committee, WONDERING if there is a fire and SHOULD they CONSIDER VOTING on WHETHER to call the Fire Dept. n nAs guilty as the arsonist.
"The person who does not become irate when he has cause to be sins. For an unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices. It fosters negligence, and stimulates not only the wicked, but above all, the good to do wrong." –St. John Chrysostom, c. 347-407 AD
"Is it because of your sins that you Jews have been living for so long a time outside Jerusalem? What is strange and unusual about that? It is not only now that your people are living sin fill lives. Did you, in the beginning, live your lives injustice and good deeds? Is it not true that from the beginning and long before today you lived with countless transgressions of the Law? Did not the prophet Ezechiel accuse you ten thousand times when he brought in the two harlots, Oholah and Oholibah, and said 'You built a brothel in Egypt; you passionately loved barbarians, and you worshipped strange gods.'"—-St. John Chrysostom, c. 347-407 AD–Homily VI against the Jews. n nThere were eight. n nThis guy was irate a lot, wasn't he.