And which of the Founding Fathers got the contract to run the marine hosital?

Yeah...see how that works.

@1 - Precisely the kind of thing Chomsky would point out.

Well, if the earliest Congress were socialists, it's obviously time to only obey the Articles of Confederation, untouched as they were by the socialist Nazis of the Order of the Cincinnati, which was founded by George Washington WHO WASN"T BORN IN THE U.S.!

I'll volunteer to watch. I was a Girl Guide leader, so I could help him with tying a really tight knot...

Glen Beck on Suicide Watch?!?!? As long as he does it live on his TV show...radio would be such a waste!!

@4 I'm not sure that's what "suicide watch" means, but in this case, I like your definition better! Need any help?

I have a strong urge to make a joke about the founding fathers being into semen, but I shall restrain myself.

John Adams also signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were clearly unconstitutional. It required 14, not 5 years of residency in the US to become a citizen; allowed Adams to have resident aliens he deemed dangerous deported; mandated the deportation of resident aliens whose mother countries were at war with the US; and, worst of all, made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government or its officials.

Jefferson, the Constitution's primary author and the Supreme Court agreed that it was unconstitutional. I don't think that Adams has much authority on the constitutional boundaries of executive power in the United States and I think we've been having these debates since the beginning.

My goodness, this 1798 act led 140 years later to the construction of our own Seattle Marine Hospital on Beacon Hill, rehabbed at public expense before granting a cheap 99-year lease to Wright Runstad so they could take it out of public service and sublease it to Amazon for its first world headquarters. With Amazon's move to Allentown in South Lake Union that building may be empty for a long, long time to come.

Who know history could so closely bind John Adams, Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen?

(@2, that's the kind of thing Chomsky points out after gathering evidence, not before, as with our dear Republicant Bailo Universe @1...)

(Canuck, as a Girl Guide, won't you show us your cookies, then?)

gus, darling, all I have at the moment is vanilla creme, will that do? (I'm confused, though...didn't think boxes were your thing, at all...)

Brooklyn, yes, help would be appreciated, bring a nice, soft pillow, why don't you, in case he...uh...gets tired...

@ 9 I was just "answering" a comment SROTU made in another thread about Chomsky's views being "paranoid"... It seemed ironic to me that he would then be the first to say that business rules the government, and not vice-versa, since it was precisely the Chomskian view he deemed paranoid.

The article doesn't matter. Republicans and teabaggers will just ignore it and keep on telling their followers the same shit as usual, that "Obama and the liberals are all anti-constitution and anti-founding father and blah blah blah" and their followers will simply believe everything they're told.

Facts, reason, and logic are useless when talking to a teabagger. They know what they know and that's the way it is, period.

@12, ah, that makes sense then...

Canuck, cookies are always fun to see! Boxes, well....

John Adams also signed the Alien and Sedition Acts, two of the least constitutional acts Congress ever passed. So let's not go down this slippery slope.

gus, thanks for clarifying...I was thinking maybe it had been a Heather marathon, or something...

Personally, I'm partial to cupcakes, myself...

Easily rebutted by the "repeal" side of the debate:

Mandating one industry to carry insurance is not the same as mandating everyone to do so. They're sailors by choice.

However, the debate will rage. I'm actually glad the R's are fighting such a fruitless battle. keep 'em occupied for a while.

Just to throw it out there, I can't get over how the teaggers don't care that Sarah Palin doesn't know how to hunt. She can't load, aim, or shoot. They put it on TV. Oh, and one of the ominous Saudi Muslims behind the evil victory mosque at ground zero also owns a fifth of Fox News.

But it doesn't matter. Does anything matter to them? Can you have a movement that is so untethered from reality?

It makes me think of movie thrillers where the scheming politician is is undone when it's he is caught on tape admitting he is some kind of traitor or hypocrite. But it can't happen with these people. No matter how many times you pull back the curtain, nothing changes.

OK, but the argument the teabaggers will use is that, like cars, people can choose whether to be private seamen. If they choose to be seamen, or drive cars we can force them to buy a product but you can't force them to buy one just for being alive. Silly argument of course but I'm just pointing out that this new information doesn't really change the debate substantially.

Though, if this becomes public knowledge and we can start making teabaggers use the word seamen in their arguments more then it will not be a complete loss.

@17 and 19, the article Dan said we should read in full makes the same point you both do, and suggests the rebuttal:

Yes, the law at that time required only merchant sailors to purchase health care coverage. Thus, one could argue that nobody was forcing anyone to become a merchant sailor and, therefore, they were not required to purchase health care coverage unless they chose to pursue a career at sea.

However, this is no different than what we are looking at today.

Each of us has the option to turn down employment that would require us to purchase private health insurance under the health care reform law.

Would that be practical? Of course not – just as it would have been impractical for a man seeking employment as a merchant sailor in 1798 to turn down a job on a ship because he would be required by law to purchase health care coverage.

What’s more, a constitutional challenge to the legality of mandated health care cannot exist based on the number of people who are required to purchase the coverage – it must necessarily be based on whether any American can be so required.

Clearly, the nation’s founders serving in the 5th Congress, and there were many of them, believed that mandated health insurance coverage was permitted within the limits established by our Constitution.

Any attempt to persuade Tea People by exhorting them to read an actual history book is doomed to failure.

@21 http://images.wikia.com/wikiality/images…

Proteus: That's a bit unfair: I think most of them are entirely willing to read books that challenge none of their ideas neither one tot nor one jittle. In this they are not that different from most people, including myself when I don't try.

They seem to feel no need to try.

#23 - "jot" and "tittle"

The teabaggers don't want to learn about things from 200 years ago, they want to live it!

@18- "Does anything matter to them?"

No. It really sucks.

I think this is different.

What they did back in 1798 sounds more like a tax/entitlement which no one argues is constitutional. The government collected the tax and ran the hospitals.

The republican's argument about the modern HCR law is that the gov can't force you to buy insurance from a private company.

As much as I would love for this to be a valid precedent, I don't think it is.

Let me repeat: Adams was constantly attacked for his promotion of unconstitutional laws by Jefferson and Madison, with whom the Supreme Court tended to side. One aggregiously unconstitutional doing of Adams was the Alien and Sedition Acts which, among other bullsh*t, banned criticism of the government. The debate about what is and is not constitutional was just as lively then as it is now.

While Adams may well have argued that the new health care law was constitutional, he had little credibility. Jefferson, who was much more credible and the primary author of the Consitution, may well have disagreed. But both of them are dead, so it's up to the courts.

I think Madison was the primary author of the constitution. Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of independence.

@28: Your central point, that Adams' support and enforcement of the Sedition Act undermines his reputation as a defender of the Constitution (especially as it is understood today), is valid. However, you're REALLY undermining yourself by claiming Jefferson wrote the Constitution. He wasn't even at the convention; he was serving as Ambassador to France at the time. James Madison came up with many of the Constitution's important ideas, George Mason did much of the writing itself, and the structure was heavily influenced by the Massachusetts Constitution, which had principally been written by--wait for it--John Adams. It's true that Adams cocked up sometimes as president, but so did Jefferson. You can't hold them up as complete opposite, pro- and con- Constitution Founding Fathers.

@ 25

No Urgatha, they want to live their ignorant and delusional imagining of 200 years ago. If actually transported to newly post-colonial America, I think they would be mightily unhappy [you know, all those secular elites running the show and such].

@31,
Good point.

Ignorant and delusional teabagger is redundant.

Looks like a job for the judicial branch, rather than the legislative. Someone's gonna have to get cited for not carrying health insurance, then take it to court, appeal it up to the supreme court, and see what happens.

@27 If you're right, you've just explained the constitutional basis for a single-payer health system for everyone!

Personally, I'd prefer a national healthcare system, but single payer is an acceptable compromise.

@34: I agree that single-payer avoids the constitutional problems with a mandate. A mandate does have some constitutional problems, and not all of us who think that a mandate is unconstitutional are against single-payer or government-funded health care.

@27, 34: It's not JUST republicans who think that forcing people to buy private insurance is unconstitutional, as I also do. And as pointed out, that's NOT what 'CHAP. [94.] An act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen." is: it's Single Payer, which IS constitutional, as the federal government is certainly allowed to levy taxes and use those taxes to provide services. Anyway, I'm with Brooklyn Reader: a national health care system (public, no-fee hospitals) is the best option, as it cuts a no-service-providing profit-making middleman (insurance) out of the picture, and forces private hospitals to compete with the public ones, as with schools. As I see it, single payer is a reasonable compromise, public option is barely better than the status quo, and the bill that was passed was worse than the status quo (it's privatization and private subcontracting of public functions along with a few more important regulations, but we shouldn't have needed to "trade" anything to re-instate reasonable regulation of the insurance industry).

@28 God. Just using Google indicates that in all likelihood Jefferson supported this initially and definitely supported it in his presidency.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-li…

Tea Partiers base their whole movement on inaccuracy. It's going to be hard to convince them with history when they don't acknowledge that the original Tea Party was a protest by the middle class colonists against a government tax cut on the superwealthy corporation of the time.

But it's still fun to see their slobbering fat faces don a tricorner hat in seriousness.

@39: Superwealthy corporation? What are you talking about?

@40 did you read the rest of the sentence, "of the time?" The East India Company was the colonial monopoly of the time. It's analogous to a large, very wealthy corporation. The original tea party was a protest against the activities of this monopoly and the British government's support of it.

Do you need me to hold your hand some more?

@41: Yes, if by "hold your hand" you mean "write clearly and intelligibly and explain your cryptic comments." I thought the original tea party was a protest against taxation: what tax cut are you talking about?

Check out the author sparring through the comments section below his piece like "The Dread Pirate Roberts".