So here it goes, my recession devalued two cents on a matter that is still being publicly discussed and weighed. Disappointment for some, elation for others - for me though, disappointing in the extreme, not for a political idealogy but for the United States of America and the integrity of our highest court and our CONSTITUTION.
Fourteenth President of the United States of America, Franklin Pierce, said,
"The storm of frenzy and faction must inevitably dash itself in vain against the unshaken rock of the Constitution."
The sad thing is that this non-partisan view of the CONSTITUTION cost him his second term of office, as the Democrats replaced him with James Buchanan.
Now I understand that the Supreme Court, AKA SCOTUS, has made their ruling and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare will stand (for now). My trouble is that what I had originally believed about Justice Roberts' ruling and his reasoning was actually wrong. His unquestionable integrity is now, in my mind, quite in the opposite, questionable... leaving Pelosi and the lefties to truthfully and arguably "Blame Bush" for the successful passage of that public law.
But in all seriousness, I really believe the dissenting judges got it right. I am aware of the fact that the justices have consciences and must sometimes rule in a manner they personally disagree with, but that is because it is based on law or precedent OR according to the Constitution, the guiding priniciple of law of this nation. But the majority opinion just looks like a mob looking for rationale, a REASON to make the law WORK rather than whether it follows our CONSTITUTION or not, which is the antithesis of what I believed SHOULD be a SCOTUS Justices' view.
Someone was recently quoted as describing Chief Justice Roberts' opinion as
“incoherent but brilliant.”
You will have to pardon my language, BUT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
in·co·her·ent [in-koh-heer-uhnt] Adj.
Without logical or meaningful connection; disjointed; rambling
The person who put incoherent and brilliant in the same sentence is a dumbass, those two words together in a sentence just do not reconcile at all...
What I had initially understood was that Justice Roberts was exercising personal courage and integrity to call a tiger a tiger by its stripes, by ruling that the law was a tax law BUT in retrospect that doesn't jive with the rest of his opinion...
The fact that since the penalty "tax" hasn't been implemented (makes that judgment moot); since no tax implementation means this should not have been ruled on right now and that since therefore the individual mandate was ruled as UNCONSTITUTIONAL the whole thing should have been sent back to the body of legislative mentally challenged idiots (we call them CONGRESS) who wrote it. And yes, they are the same dumbasses that never even read it in the first place prior to its initial passing; there they could endeavor to do it over again, without the individual mandate... Since it is not SCOTUS' job to EDIT law but only to adjudicate it as CONSTITUTIONAL OR NOT, it therefore should have been nullified.
Roberts' opinion then, becomes not one of CONSTITUTIONAL ADJUDICATION but one of a more personal nature; that of VALIDATION OF THE SCOTUS as an institutional body and not a ruling on the actual CONSTITUTIONAL MERIT of Obamacare...
Chief Justice Roberts ended up making a change in his decison, it appears, under duress and pressure, from BOTH the left-leaning press and the public podium scolding of President Obama. Changing his decision into a defense of and defining or protecting the Supreme Court institution from the press or any detractors instead of basing his opinion on the law and the CONSTITUTION. The whole idea for their life term appointments to the Supreme Court is supposed to eliminate any of this kind of strongarming to a decision.
In Marbury vs. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the majority opinion:
“A law repugnant to the Constitution is void.”
Obamacare, by the very nature of the individual mandate is UNCONSTITUTIONAL and REPUGNANT and should have been therefore nullified. The WHOLE legislation should then have been sent back down to CONGRESS to fix it. It would then have to go back through the whole ratification process over and then sent to the President for signature.
Even Grover Cleveland, a Democrat President, regularly VETOed Congressional legislation that had been championed by his own party because it presumed too much and overstepped Constitution restraints and enumerated powers.
President Cleveland was known to have said the following:
"A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves."
and he also said,
"Officeholders are the agents of the people, not their masters."
Notably, regarding government entitlements and handouts President Cleveland also said:
"Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people."
Grover Cleveland should be a symbol to Democrats that you can take strong personal positions and yet not overstep the Constitution. Cleveland espoused a theory of limited government...
The enumerated powers are a list of items found in Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution that set forth the authoritative capacity of the United States Congress. In short, it maps out to Congress the powers they may exercise, granted to them in the Constitution, and they are further restricted by the Bill of Rights and other protections of the individual citizens and states in the Constitution. The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states,
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Nowhere in the Costitution or the Bill of Rights, nor in any of the Amendments, does it give the Congress the right of or power to make healthcare a national right or to even define healhcare as an unalienable right to be ensured in universal disbursement WITHOUT CHANGING THE CONSTITUTION; therefore, healthcare in any form is reserved to the States and or the people themselves, which arguably is health insurance in the private sector as we know it now.
As a matter of fact, because of this questionable CONSTITUTIONALITY, quite a few of the states have refused to start financing or funding the mandated exchanges that are supposed to be in effect by 2014 to effect the choices and begin to enforce the mandate... These states are banking on change in the upcoming elections and that the newly seated Congress next year will act to repeal the law...
When Governors of states act that strongly, there is definitely a problem with the law.
Interestingly though, the Court did not bring up Munn vs. Illinois, in 1877, where it was ruled that
"Businesses that serve the public interest are subject to regulation by STATE government..."
Health insurance companies = public interest = State government regulation NOT Federal...
I also find it interesting that in 1990, Cruzan vs. Missouri Dept. of Health, the court found that while the Constitution protects a person's right to reject life-preserving medical treatment ("right to die"), it also left it up to STATES to regulate that interest as long as the regulation is reasonable... Wouldn't it be, following that logic, that in the area of health AND healthcare, that people can reject imposed health care, and if not, that STATES would be in charge of the reasonable legislation of that healthcare - especially being, going back to the Constitution, that healthcare is NOT enumerated as a Federal government power...??
You be the judge... what do you think? What legal or CONSTITUTIONAL precendent do you offer, outside of the unintelligible "incoherent" recent ruling that follows no logical legal precedent or course other than a personal reputation agenda...
