Here’s a controversial question you won’t see debated on the editorial pages coming out of Fairview Fanny: Is Attorney General Rob McKenna a crappy lawyer or a crappy liar? Inquiring minds want to know.
The question was raised again last week after the Obama administration formally appealed a federal court ruling striking down the individual insurance mandate, a core provision of the landmark Affordable Care Act (ACA). The winners in that appellate case, McKenna and a cohort of right-wing attorneys general, responded by asking the high court to toss out the entire law. Which means you’d think the press might ask some serious questions about how McKenna’s actions don’t match his words.
In talking to both the press and the public, McKenna has repeatedly insisted that he is not seeking to toss out the entire health care reform act, but rather just the individual mandate.
At issue is a legal concept known as “severability.” According to McKenna, the mandate is legally severable from the rest of the ACA. “The provisions we’ve been talking about regarding 26-year-olds and preexisting conditions… they are not the subject of the lawsuit,” McKenna told TVW’s Austin Jenkins in a March 24, 2010, interview, “they’re not affected by it at all.” And on June 4, 2010, speaking before a conservative audience at the Washington Policy Center, the Republican gubernatorial wannabe insisted that “it is inconceivable that one lawsuit could bring down the entire measure.”
Yet from their first filing for summary judgment, McKenna and his fellow attorneys general have argued exactly the opposite in court:
Plaintiffs have established that the Act’s Individual Mandate and Medicaid provisions are unconstitutional. Because each of these portions is essential to the [ACA] as a whole, neither can be severed. It follows, as a matter of law, that the unconstitutionality of either renders the entire Act unconstitutional. Accordingly, Plaintiffs ask … that the Court declare the entire ACA unconstitutional and enjoin its enforcement.
After the latest filings, McKenna’s office told the Seattle Times that he was overruled by his co-plaintiffs, explaining that in a multistate lawsuit “an individual state can’t necessarily dictate to the group every aspect of the case.” But that’s an excuse that simply does not jibe with the timeline of the lawsuit, which by his own account, McKenna took the lead in pursuing: “Two of us got together, and others joined us,” McKenna told the Christian Science Monitor back in March of 2010, in explaining the genesis of the lawsuit. Severability is not a new issue. And McKenna has been arguing both sides of it from day one. (McKenna did not respond to a request for comment.)
At a press conference on Friday, his Democratic opponent, Representative Jay Inslee, called McKenna a “camouflage candidate” like Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. “This lawsuit is a fraud,” Inslee insisted, demanding that McKenna either drop the suit or “come clean” with voters. Given McKenna’s penchant for arguing one thing in a court of law and another in the court of public opinion, it’s an assessment that should be obvious, even to his fans over at Fairview Fanny. 
I was not going to bother, but I’m a bit loopy right now because of pain meds and bored out of my gourd …
1. I hope you aren’t trying to claim The Stranger as more “fair and balanced” … at least not the balanced part since comments are not edited.
2. As for “anti-healthcare”, no one is anti-healthcare (except maybe the crazy anti-vaccine nuts), they are anti-jumping-into-something-that-could-be-a-big-mistake. Unless you get doctors to actually treat patients right and help them get healthy, and control the costs, it will drive us further in debt with “single payer”. Get the doctors in order first, then talk about how to pay for it. Even if you put the costs in check, they will still allow problems to go untreated just to rack up more money. If you don’t believe it happens, look at most of the problems people die from that could be solved, it’s a lack of medical attention that causes it. Every single story, there’s been a major lack of doctors actually treating a problem that they should have caught.
Its safe to say all Medias are in fact total sluts and “or” just don’t have the intelligence (ability to gather constant amounts of intelligence)and present America with a Informed view of facts? and for that part most of them try real hard to act stupid to generate a conflict that will coax the chimps into getting into a poop slinging contest?
Many a news media play for the chimp poop only to find people are very tired of poop slingers!
As for the Stranger they are all foreign exchange students who don’t give a crap about America or its politics but if you bad mouth Italy or France or Russia look out man as the war of words will be looking for the elephant poop to sling.
Gee, Kitten, you should re-read the story and then your own comment to see if it makes sense. Your main lament seems to be doctors and patients “allow problems to go untreated just to rack up more money.” This is the very problem the individual mandate is intended to solve, controlling cost for everyone. McKenna’s lawsuit guts the provision of law that would actually help solve the problem you care most about. Goldy is right to call out the flaw in McKenna’s substantive argument AND the inconsistency of his public statements. You may actually get more meds that way.
https://www.robmckenna.org/home
Mnnn! He dont even mention republicans on his web sight and “his” platform is Jobs,Education and Government Reform……….?
“It’s time for a governor willing to eliminate the barriers that discourage job growth.”
“The world is changing, but our schools are not keeping up. Rob’s plan is to empower teachers and principals to take charge and change their schools for the better. In exchange, they will be accountable for the results.”
“Rob knows that by improving performance and productivity the state can do a better job with fewer employees – and he has proven he can do it with the Attorney General’s Office”
As Seattle is a festering puss bag of Sleazoid Lawyers and perverters of justice its no wonder the Failure of Attorney General who used his position to employ more politics then Law would inturn try to use Politics to employ law? But its that word REPUBLICAN that seems to be lacking in this evaluation?
as Republicans suck its that OOOOOoooooh! Yea! Thats right! He is a Republican! He is one of those things that falls from Satins ass when Satin sits on the toilet and grunts and groans and strains Physicaly? Evil poop!
On the other hand look at Hillary go! Look at Obama go! Go Dog Go!
IRAN! IRAN! IRAN!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/po…
TEXAS USED CAR DEALER! TEXAS USED CAR DEALER!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/na…
BOEHNER SAYS! BOEHNER SAYS! BOEHNER SAYS!
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/po…
We are no more evolved than sharks it seems as WW I and WW II are no real stretch of imagination and could have been banked on with 100% confidence that the backward steps of war and destruction were simply a hop skip and jump from your front door that your politipiggys told you was so safe and secure and prosperous?
I have to grin when the president of Iran tells the world that Israel made up the story of the Holocaust and then talks up enough crap to make America leave the United Nations conference?
But Hillary really is the moral of this story as she has become the mouth for every secretary but secretary of state? She has become the biggest Fattest poop slinging Chimp of them all and to make it worse she “was” rather pleasant at one point before she left New York?