It’s unfortunate that those arguing the case for the health care law before the Supreme Court have sunk to the clownish level of talk show hosts. It seems that the principal argument against the mandate to buy insurance has to do with broccoli. It’s obvious that Scalia and Thomas have dragged us down to their idiot level.
I really hate to have to go into this, mainly because it seems to me that the answer is self evident, but any number of my right wing friends have tried to make the same inane point so here goes. The anti Affordable Care Act people claim that you cannot regulate what citizens choose not to do. If you could, you could make them buy more broccoli, or in the case of states’ attorney, David Rivkin, it’s more Froot Loops, than they want or need.
The first part of the syllogism is wrong because the government can regulate what citizens choose not to do. The government does it all the time and has for as long as we have been a country. The most obvious current items include; you cannot choose not to have a license if you wish to drive, you cannot choose not to pay your taxes if you wish to stay out of jail, you cannot choose not to have a license for your machine gun, etc, etc. In all these instances, the government is regulating what you choose not to do. It is saying you cannot choose not to have such a license or not to pay taxes if you want to participate in life in this country. The health care plan is saying the same thing. You cannot choose not to have insurance if you want to use the healthcare system. If you want to opt out completely, that’s a different thing, and provisions for such a situation are already in the law. The guys who are trying to change the law should try to read it.
The second part of the syllogism is just buffoonery. It tries to give a consumable, food, the use or non-use of which, has no effect on any other action, the same relevance as a function of the law that effects both the people and the systems around it.
Now I understand that Scalia used this to try to subvert the argument and that Thomas just didn’t understand it, but I would have thought that Rivkin would have had the brains to ignore it, instead of trying to use it, and make a fool of himself.
And while I’m mentioning Scalia and Thomas, let’s discuss their deportment on the court and how it cannot be either excused or allowed to continue. There is supposed to be some semblance of impartiality on the court, mainly because of the nature of the judges’ lifetime appointments, appointments that were made lifelong to keep these judges from being politically influenced. This pair and their buddy Samuel Alito have desecrated this concept by actions that are a disgrace to the bench and an assault on the concept of ethical, impartial behavior. This is more than evident when, as they did recently, they appear at a fund raiser for the off-the-board right-wing, Federalist Society, which was sponsored by Bancroft PLLC a firm involved in litigation against ACA on the same day they reviewed an appeal brief from Paul Clement, the Bancroft lawyer, the same lawyer whose arguments they received so favorably last week.
At that affair, Clement sat between Scalia and Thomas and with Mitch McConnell who told the gathering that he would rely on Bancroft to help undo the ACA. Alito was at a nearby table despite the federal judicial ethics rule against such an involvement in political fundraising. Obviously this bunch of hacks doesn’t know what ethics means.
Earlier reports have Scalia duck hunting with former Veep Dick Cheney, which, at least, shows that Scalia has guts. I mean, you need guts to hunt with old eagle eye.
Scalia, in his questioning of witnesses sounded like a Rush Limbaugh clone, not an impartial judge, which, even if he doesn’t understand it, is supposed to be his role,. The fact that he’s wed to the radical right is a subversion of the court’s charter. Thomas shouldn’t be sitting on the bench at all, but particularly on this trial. Thomas’ wife, Virginia received $1.6 million from conservative, anti-health care reform groups for acting as a lobbyist against ACA between 1997 and 2011 and she stands to earn millions more if she is successful in convincing her scurvatious spouse to vote against ACA. No other judge in America would have the audacity or the fundamental lack of moral character not to recues himself from this trial. The fact that he hasn’t, should make him an instant candidate for impeachment and the whole process a sure shot for mistrial. Whether or not this will happen is still up in the air. It seems that there must be, between the two remaining conservative judges, at least one, who retains the integrity and moral fiber to stand up to the travesty that is being played out in what used to be an honored organization but what has turned into a hack vaudeville team.
While not participating in these unethical activities, Chief Justice Roberts, has in the past, supported them, when he spoke in support of upholding a West Virginia judge who failed to recues himself from a case involving the environmentally disastrous, A. T. Massey Coal Co. It didn’t bother Roberts that Don Blankenship, Massey’s principle owner, had donated $3 million to the judge’s reelection campaign. Fortunately for the cause of constitutional ethics, Justice Kennedy stepped up and cast the deciding vote to uphold the right to adjudication by an untainted judge. Let’s hope he does the right thing again in the ACA case, while still surrounded by this trio of immoral, blatantly prejudiced right-wing disgraces to the court.
Unfortunately, the latest solution to this problem, one that has been gathering adherents by the bundle, lately is to take away the appointment process by which Supreme Court judges are seated and have them elected by the general public. This, I think, is a panic motivated concept. The election of judges across this country, a process in which we now are deeply involved, has proven to be much less stable than our current methodology, whereby potential judges are put forth by the president and then vetted by congress. When this process works, as it has for much of our pas, and at least basically impartial judges with intelligence and moral fiber are appointed, the system is far better than the election process, mostly because those involved in the appointment process know the individual judges better and have a better perspective on how to fill the Court’s needs. That’s what happens when the process works. When it doesn’t you get a court packed with party hacks like Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
I understand that the upcoming election has dire consequences on our economy and that who wins can make a big difference on how millions of Americans live in the next four years but the real, the most important outcome of the election will be how it effects the Supreme Court because the makeup of the Court will effect the nature of the country for decades not just years. One more conservative judge will turn this country into a bad version of a totalitarian oligarchy.
If the Citizen’s United decision, which turned our election process into a rich man’s wet dream wasn’t horrible enough, if this current ACA debacle doesn’t turn your stomach, then maybe the latest decision which allows strip searches of anyone detained for any cause, should put you on a plane for someplace with a little personal freedom like Somalia.
America, the land of the free and the home of the concentration camp! What the hell is happening to this country? All around the nation cops are acting like Nazi storm troopers, spraying tear gas and worse into the faces of defenseless women at peaceful demonstrations, the president signs a law that allows for unlimited detention without evidence or trial for anyone accused of being a terrorist, completely eliminating the concept of habeas corpus from our legal structure, and now the Supreme Court gives any half trained, bigot in a uniform the right to strip search anyone they want to, pretty much without limit. Where are we, Europe under Hitler or Argentina in the ‘70s?
This deterioration of American justice has to stop and it has to stop right now. It’s no wonder the gun nuts want the right to keep their M16’s. They seem to be the only ones who have the prescience to have seen that they are going to need them to resist the totalitarian ambitions of our own government.
These new laws that take away our freedom in the name of fear are exactly what Osama bin Laden predicted, exactly what he wanted to achieve and because of our gutless inability to take the hit but keep our freedom, he is getting everything he wanted and more, even in death. What everyone in our government from the President to Congress to the Court is doing, is buckling under to a threat that barely exists and selling our free democracy down the river rather than standing up on their hind legs, like men, and saying, do your worst, we will resist and we will live up to our obligation to continue to support a free America. We will not buckle under and steal the rights of our citizens just because of an outside threat. That is contrary to everything that we have grown up believing and contrary to the principals upon which our country and its democratic government is based. The November election is the time for every American who cares about the kind of country he wishes to live in, to stand up and vote. Vote out those who are trying to steal our liberty and let’s see if we can get a couple of people on the hill who understand what our founders had in mind when they broke from England and set up, what until now, has been the world’s shinning light of freedom and liberty. If this erosion of liberty continues, this will no longer be the land of the free. If we are to escape that ugly fate, it had better become the home of the brave.