Journal pudge's Journal: Governor Gregoire Hates the Rule of Law 3
On KING 5 News tonight, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna pointed out that the obvious fact that the policy of the health insurance bill is irrelevant to whether or not it's legal. He was asked, if the provisions in the bill are thrown out by the courts, won't that gut the bill? But that can't possibly be relevant to the lawsuit, which is just about whether or not those provisions are legal.
Our system, in theory, follows the rule of law, not an ends-justifies-the-means consequentialism that ignores what the law says if the people in charge happen to like the result.
But when his Governor, Christine Gregoire, had her turn to speak, she refused to actually explain why she thought the bill wasn't unconstitutional. She asserted it without explanation, and instead devoted her entire time to explaining why she thinks the bill is a good idea.
The bill could be the best idea in the world, but if it violates the Constitution, it cannot stand as it is. That's how our system works, as a former attorney general should know. And as any lawyer should know, the government has no authority to force people to buy a product just because those people happen to be alive. That not only violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, as well as Article I, Section 8, but it subverts the entire nature of limited government established by the people of the United States of America. And worst of all, it denies the self-evident and unalienable human rights noted in the Declaration of Independence.
That Gregoire tries to divert attention away from the obvious constitutional questions involved, and focus instead on the completely irrelevant notion of whether it's a good bill, is prima facie evidence that she doesn't even care whether the bill violates the Constitution.
While I am on the subject, I draw your attention to a letter to the editor I had published in the Seattle P-I way back in 2007, on this very subject:
Hillary Clinton wants to force everyone to pay for health care insurance, especially those who need it the least. The less you use it, the more you help pay for everyone else.
You have a tax on your property, on your sales, on your income, but this is worse. Those other taxes are based on things you do; this is a tax on just existing, on breathing. The government forces you to pay money for that.
Clinton and the Democrats want to tax you for being alive, tax you when you die, and use that money to kill you before you're even born.
Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Sounds like the O'Reilly interview (Score:2)
He had Rep. Weiner (NY) to defend the health bill, and when O'Reilly asked him, repeatedly, what happens if Americans decide not to pay the fine and resist? Weiner simply would not admit that there are criminal penalties if you refuse to participate in this farce, and he repeatedly dodged the question.
But (Score:2)
The problem is I've heard an awful lot of legal experts say that by putting the IRS in charge of assessing & collecting the fine, they've done enough to get by it because the courts have given the the Federal government so much latitude as far as taxation for the "general welfare."
Honestly, I'm so down on things. And not just that a monstrosity of a bill that will only make things worse has passed. But more that it will also accelerate us into an absolutely frightening death spiral of debt leading to ni
Re: (Score:1)
The problem is I've heard an awful lot of legal experts say that by putting the IRS in charge of assessing & collecting the fine, they've done enough to get by it because the courts have given the the Federal government so much latitude as far as taxation for the "general welfare."
If a legal expert said this, they are not much of a legal expert. It is, in fact, very rare for the Court to approve of the Congress doing something for the sake of "general welfare." So rare that the liberal Democrats themselves don't even try to make the case that it is constitutionally justified on that basis, but, rather, point to the Commerce Clause (it's actually in the law itself: something akin to "this mandate is justified because it falls under the power to regulate interstate commerce," in Sect