WELCOME TO TOM'S BLOG

Thank you for stopping by for a visit. You are invited to read and comment on anything posted on this blog. I advocate the maximum amount of Personal and Economic Liberty, consistent with the defense of individual rights. I am fiscally conservative yet socially tolerant, I favor lower taxes, free trade, individual rights, strong national defense and limited government. I subscribe to the Freedom Fighters Creed: I am an American Patriot, defender of the Constitution, First Principles and Essential Liberty.

I believe that buried deep down inside every Conservative you'll find a Libertarian - And Inside Every Liberal Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out.

"One of the penalties of refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" - Plato

FYI any crude or vulgar comments will be removed from the blog.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Justice Kennedy's Million Dollar Question

Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?

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The entire landscape of Congress’s constitutional powers changed on March 27, 2012, when, very early in the argument over the individual mandate, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked a somewhat shaken Solicitor General Donald Verrilli this simple question: “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”

I was as surprised by that opening gambit as everyone else. But surely not as dismayed. As three full days of oral arguments confirmed, that one question turned the constitutional showdown over Obamacare into a real horse race, with a five to four vote to strike the mandate down perhaps now the most likely outcome. The public realization, with this one question, was that the moderate Justice Kennedy, long regarded as the perennial swing vote, had bought into the argument of the opponents of the statute, chiefly crafted by Professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University Law Center.

The individual mandate, which requires all individuals either to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty, may be struck down by the Court as unconstitutional, in isolation from the remainder of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law’s regulation of the private health-care market, and even its extension of Medicaid may go down with it.
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