Long John Silver's Buried Treasure

Another red flag goes up on the "Public Option". Many constitutional experts are now saying that forcing people to buy health insurance may be unconstitutional and a stretch of the "interstate commerce clause" in the constitution. Of course constitutional scholars on both sides of the issue will disagree with those favoring a strict constructionist view coming down against the "public option" and those on the liberal side saying that the "public option" falls under the interstate commerce clause. Unfortunately the issue cannot be decided until a law is enacted and then only after some years following a challenge will the issue finally land in the lap of the U.S. Supreme Court---this is how our system works. It has it faults, but there is nothing better around. This should, however be a valid debating point in the upcoming discussions in the Senate and the U.S. House. We haven't heard much on this but it is time to bring it before the people---the judicial process just takes too long and often decisions are not reached until long after the damage is done.

I've been fair to both sides now let me tell you what I really think about those judges who give liberal interpretations to the constitution. Those judges who presume to tell us what the founders were thinking and not what the founders put down in writing. Hell I can't tell you what my wife is thinking half the time and they judges in their black robes presume to tell me what Jefferson was thinking over 200 years ago, bullshit! Let the words on paper, the words in the Constitution, speak for the founders. These stupid, and they are stupid judges are in effect telling us that the founders were dumb in that they didn't know how to put their thoughts into words and that they(these modern judges) really know what the founders meant to say, but couldn't because of some unknown impairment, so they will provide the words, words that fit their personal agenda's whatever that maybe be from year to year or just day to day. To those liberal members of the Supreme Court who have such great insight, such great vision that they know what a man who has been dead for over 200 years was thinking when he wrote sometime entirely different, I say, "damn you're smart guys, teach me how to do that so I can find Long John Silver's buried treasure."

The constitution allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce but legal experts argue the insurance requirement is just an attempt to dictate personal behavior.
By Jim Angle

The requirement that everyone buy health insurance -- a central element to President Obama's health care plan -- is flatly unconstitutional, legal experts argue.

"At the heart of this plan is an unprecedented imposition on individual liberty," constitutional attorney David Rivkin told FOX News.

The constitution allows the federal government to regulate interstate commerce but Rivkin argues the insurance requirement is just an attempt to dictate personal behavior.

"What’s unique about here is the mandate imposed on individuals merely because they live," he said. "Not connected with any economic activity, not because they grow something, make something, compose something. Merely because they live. And this is absolutely unprecedented."

During the Prohibition era, the federal government dictated personal behavior by making the consumption of alcohol illegal. But to do so, the nation had to pass a constitutional amendment.

Health care reform depends on the individual mandate, in part because it needs the money and good health of younger people to fund the system and spread the risk.

"When you're 25 and healthy you think you're invincible. You think you're never going to get sick, never going to get into an accident," said Doug Kendall of the Constitutional Accountability Center.

And so young people don't buy insurance. But if one gets into an accident and runs up huge medical bills, taxpayers foot the bill, Kendall said.

"The fundamental point behind pushing people into the private insurance market is to make sure that uninsured individuals who can pay for health insurance don't impose costs on other tax payers," he said.

Kendall argues the interstate commerce clause justifies such action because it regulates insurance and health care. But when the Clinton administration wanted an individual mandate in the 1990s, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also called such a requirement "unprecedented."

"The government has never required people to buy any good or service, as condition of lawful residence in the United States," congressional budget officers said.
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