Comments

1
It wouldn't have mattered even if they did include a severability clause, Dan. This is so central to the bill that it would become worthless even if you could sever this provision from it.

We all knew this was headed to the Supremes anyway; this is just a step along the way.
2
I doubt congressional D's forgot the severability clause. The HCR plan doesn't work if the mandate is stricken. It makes no sense to sever this provision and leave the rest intact.
3
Someone didn't do their homework? Why does this NOT surprise me?
4
F the mandate. F the private insurance companies too. They should have to take everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions, and we'll buy Health insurance when we really need it and can afford it. They want us to purchase it, make it a reasonable price.

Or offer us a fucking single payer system. So tired of feeling in jeopardy of death just for not being super-wealthy.
5
We're that much closer to people saying things like "Greetings from The Humungus! The Lord Humungus! The Warrior of the Wasteland! The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla!" in political speech, aren't we?

This ain't going to stop. The Right will begin spinning this into a political civil war all over again in a week.
6
Oh and: Henry E. Hudson, the judge was put into play by both Bushes at different times.
7
If the must-purchase mandate is successfully thrown out, then the only workable alternative becomes single-payer. Perhaps Republicans should be reminded of that old slogan about being careful what you wish for....
8
@1, @2, thanks for the cool-offery. I notice the linked article does make that pretty plain as well, including this from a law prof:
"If there were a severability clause, it would mean that the court could strike down a particular provision of the law, and the rest of the law would remain in place," says Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University. "[However] since there is no severability clause, it does not necessarily mean that if the court strikes down a particular provision the rest of the law collapses.... the normal rule is that partial invalidation is the required course."
9
@2 is correct. It's clear that no-one "forgot" to put a severability clause in. Much of the bill is obviously and grossly unjust without the individual mandate, and should be struck down if the mandate is struck down. Other parts are fine without the mandate, and can still be upheld through the doctrine of presumed severability. You don't actually need a severability clause - it's just boilerplate.
10
Actually, I argue that a single-payer system is not antithetical to conservative/Republican principles. The judge's ruling is a sound one, and starts a constitutional debate we must have. In my opinion, mandatory insurance payments for simply existing is slippery slope. No Obamacare, no insurance companies run by the government as utilities, and yes to single-payer.
11
I think this ruling is misguided and will be reversed on appeal, even by the current Supreme Court. But if it's not reversed, the good news is that the public option becomes the only available alternative. There's nothing constitutional about the government taxing everyone to provide a service. In fact, that's the reason this should be reversed, as the mandate is really just a tax, not a penalty.
12
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Five of the nine Supreme Court justices have no love for Obama, so you'd expect them to agree that this is unconstitutional (I do too, by the way). But those same five justices also seem to be incapable of finding any limit to the breadth of the Commerce Clause, so that will be a factor also.
13
You gotta love those activist judges! Oh wait, Republican judges aren't activist, right? It gets sooooo confusing!

*headdesk*

@2 has it, though. I doubt it was forgotten. Given the context, plus standard legal handling of cases w/o explicit severability, there wasn't a need to put it in. The challenges to the health care bill are guaranteed to happen regardless.
14
Not this shit again.
15
First, Phoebe: Do you live in a state where you're required to buy auto insurance? And do you complain that it's unconstitutional and an assault on your freedom? How about a state where insurance companies are required to provide uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage? Are you lobbying the state legislature to stop that assault on private insurer's freedoms?

States regulate insurance companies all the time. Congress can fix the problem here by simply saying that any state which doesn't require its citizens to purchase health insurance won't get federal highway funds.

Also, it's the insurance companies who are going to be mad about this: They wanted the mandate:

http://www.thinkingthelions.com/2010/12/…
16
4

wow.

even among the moocher clueless liberal hipsters on slog you stand out.....
17
@15, wow, there are so many flaws in what you wrote it's hard to know where to start. So I'm not going to. I'm sure someone else will be happy to, though.
18
Don't worry, the mandate to buy insurance is the one provision in that bill that the insurance industry absolutely loves ("So many new customers while we continue to raise premiums, new mansions for everyone!"). It'll survive.
19
@15: If you don't drive a car, you don't have to buy auto insurance. In Obamacare, simply existing requires you to buy insurance. That's the difference.
20
Obviously we need to just go to Single Payer National Healthcare and stop trying to negotiate with terrorists.
21
This is the main flaw in the bill, and central to its structure. I am all for Single Payer but I knew this mess would end up being ruled unconstitutional if there was any semblance of justice left in the judiciary branch. Too bad all the Dems made concessions when they could have stood up for universal health care. Way to throw your weight around guys, you really got what you wanted here and we are all the better for it. Ugh. Pitiful.
22
Yeah, LOL @15's fallacious equivalency.
23
@19: You have to buy auto insurance if you drive a car because if you get into an accident, you need to have some way to pay your share of damages. Everyone should have to have health insurance in case they have to go to the emergency room, so they're not putting their bill on the taxpayers. It's really the same thing.
24
No, VL, it's not the same. Nobody's forcing you to buy car insurance. I don't buy car insurance. Dan Savage doesn't buy car insurance. Millions of New Yorkers don't buy car insurance.
26
This is playing out much like Social Security did. Soc. Sec. kinda sucked when it first started, and it was also challenged as unconstitutional.

I still suspect that the U.S. will eventually have socialized health coverage, and it will spring out of the current, flawed health care bill of Obamas.
27
@24: So we should say that if people don't have health insurance, they don't get to go to the emergency room? THAT'S libertarianism for you.
28
Urgutha: That would be my prediction for the future also. The trick word here is "eventually," though. Still, the first step's always the hardest one.

BEG: Interesting. Not surprising, but interesting.

VL: Obviously, nobody's going to say that. But I still don't see how the government has any right to tell you how to spend your own money. Sure, they have a right to just come take it, but spending it with a private-sector company is something completely different.
29
@23, @24, it's kind of the same, because in some situations emergency rooms are required by law to treat patients in life-threatening situations whether or not they have the ability to pay. When they can't pay, the rest of us end up footing the bill (in various other ways).

The options around this are to allow people who can't pay to die, or to give everyone the "ability to pay" somehow.
30
@5280,
I still don't see how the government has any right to tell you how to spend your own money. Sure, they have a right to just come take it, but spending it with a private-sector company is something completely different.
It IS a little strange, although if you really think about it, the gov't forcing you to spend your money on a private company should actually be more acceptable to people than the other way. That is, gov't already spends your money on private companies all the time, and in most cases, you don't really have any say over which companies those are. This way, at least it's sorta cutting out the middle man. Gov't isn't taking your money and choosing a private health ins. provider for you, they're just telling you you have to choose one yourself... you'd think people would be happier about doing it that way, but they're not.

I think what it really boils down to is the old adage: "you can please some people all the time, and all people some of the time, but never all people all the time."

People just like to bitch and moan. Shit... the entire internet consists of almost nothing but porn and complaining.
31
But, but . . . if it wasn't for bitching and moaning, I'd have no life at all. Well, and pornography.

OK, and booze, too. Can't forget that.
32
And guns and knives.

Bitching, porn, liquor, and deadly weapons... god damn 5280!! Have you ever considered that you might be the antichrist?
33
Heh heh. It's a rough life, but somebody's got to do it.
34
@33: Please tell me you own a Harley as well. And a wide-brimmed hat.
35
No Harley, I'm afraid. But I've got the wide-brimmed hat covered. It's a Stetson, though - probably not what you were expecting.
36
@15: Wow, the energy it would take to correct your statements is overwhelming.

“It is precisely because the states are governmental bodies that break the national authorities’ monopoly on coercion that they constitute the most fundamental bastion against a successful conversion of the federal government into a vehicle of the worst kind of oppression” Rapaczynski
37
@12: I've gotta take issue with your characterization of the Supreme Court's attitudes toward the Commerce Clause. I mean, three of the five justices who formed the majority in U.S. v. Lopez in 1995 are still sitting on the court today. And Clarence Thomas has as harsh an opinion toward the Court's more recent Commerce Clause jurisprudence (for example, Gonzales v. Raich) as he does toward the President. (Scalia is less consistent, somehow--"I like guns, but I don't like marijuana. Can the Commerce Clause help me?")
38
Directing me to purchase a financial instrument I may not need is clearly unconstitutional in the spirit of the document. So is directing me to purchase one containing specific provisions I may not need, even if I do need the actual insurance. Regulating existing commerce is one thing, directing citizens to engage in commerce quite another. (And don't bother with the tired auto insurance non sequitor. I have no right to drive. If I wish to do so I'm subject to the regulations my state puts in place regarding that priviledge. Legally health and car insurance aren't so much apples and oranges as apples and socket wrenches.)

To put this in real world terms, I'm self employed. My families health insurance covers catastrophic care. I can easily afford yearly physicals and dental care for me and my family. For us the cost of premiums is considerably higher than the costs of such care. On the other hand I or a child having cancer would financially devastate my family, so I insure for that cost.

See the link here? I'm an adult with the right to decide what risks I take, so long as I accept the consequences of the choices. Neither Obama, you or the Supreme Court has a legal right to take this right from me.

Anyway, at what point would you stop? Can I use my sailboat? Can I ski during the winter? I mean, I could drown in the Sound or be injured on the slopes, exposing my family to the loss of my income. Clearly in the strange mind of a liberal I don't have the right to take that risk, right? So let's make all sailboats and ski resorts illegal. I drive an old sports car on occasional weekends. It lacks safety devices common to modern cars, and would fare poorly in a crash. So we clearly need to remove all vehicles over 5 years old from the road as well. I jog with my dogs in the morning and evening. In Seattle those times of day are dark, and drivers who are tired and don't see me may kill me in a collision. Dogs have to go too, as well as road based jogging.

We take risks every day of our lives. At what point are those risks mine? At what point does society and the law get to decide I can't take them?

Fortunately we have a Constitution to help answer that question. Unfortunately in a chain of cases from Wickard v Filburn to now the answers have been wrong.
39
@38: Have you ever gone to the emergency room? Of course you have. And who would pay for those bills if you didn't have insurance? The taxpayers, maybe? So you think that everyone should have the right to mooch off the taxpayers regardless of their financial need? Am I right?
Also, glad to hear that you know better than several decades' worth of Supreme Court justices, being the expert constitutional scholar that you indubitably are.
Have you ever HERPed so hard that you DERPed?
40
"Have you ever gone to the emergency room? Of course you have. And who would pay for those bills if you didn't have insurance? The taxpayers, maybe?"

Yes, fellow customers, and no, in order. Shoplifters add to the cost of all consumer goods. Where is the liberal outcry against paying for other people propensity to dishonesty? At any rate, this is not a taxpayer issue, but a consumer one. The government has no legitimate interest in health care, except to regulate it REASONABLY. Sorry about the caps, liberals always forget that qualifier though.

"...glad to hear that you know better than several decades' worth of Supreme Court justices.."

Read Wickard. If you find the conclusions drawn therein reasonable there are two possible reasons. One, you would have found Stalins regime or that of Hitler quite rational. Or two, you're an idiot. Briefly in Wickard a Supreme Court suborned by FDR to rubber stamp any and all legislation he saw fit to sign found that a man growing corn on his land for his cattle was somehow engaged in interstate commerce. And the next 80 years are the bitter accounting for this justification of tyranny. Money can be stolen from me to pay for the housing, food or college education of others. It can be stolen from me to pay for their mistakes, in which I had no hand. Obama is merely the inheritor of the profoundly anti-american notions of FDR and LBJ with this latest attack on my civil liberties and property.

BERP? DERP? English please. Or Italian or French if you prefer. At least try to refrain from gibberish.
41
Venomous,

With your deference for the honorable men and women of the Supremes I take it you found Citizens United and Bush v Gore perfectly decided? Plessy v Ferguson?

No?

Hmm.
42
@40: Actually, county hospitals and other publicly funded institutions are run on taxpayer money. That means that uninsured visits to the emergency room DO go on the taxpayer's tab.
Having looked over the arguments in favor of Wickard, I must say that you are wrong in your assertion of equivalence to fascism. That mindset is clearly a product of your contempt for the Commerce Clause. If saying so makes me an idiot, so be it; I'll not be the sort of scum to respect only certain parts of the Constitution while spitting upon the rest.
@41: There's a general consensus amongst legislators, constitutional scholars, and historians that Plessy v. Ferguson was decided incorrectly. One crank, on the other hand, does not mean anything against the authority wielded by the Supreme Courts of nearly 70 years.
As for Bush v. Gore and Citizens United v. FEC, I may disagree with them but I will not base my arguments with regard to the constitutionality of other issues on the premise that they were not decided properly. I may argue against them, but I will not attempt to use their constitutionality or lack thereof as a support for arguments in related fields. That is, I will not proceed under the assumption that my opinions with regard to a certain case are right in an effort to make a point pertaining to another case.
43
"That means that uninsured visits to the emergency room DO go on the taxpayer's tab."

Only if the hospital doesn't try to collect them from, you know, the patient. In most cases uninsured patients without the cash for services make payments until the bill is paid. In cases where the patient already is receiving medical care at taxpayer expense the ER is often used in lieu of a primary care physician. These folks will have their insurance paid at my expense under Obamas plan, just as they have care at my expense now. No change, no savings.

For the rest those who can pay, do pay. Collection agencies pursue medical bills just as they pursue credit card or any other lawfully obtained credit. Again, no savings to the taxpayer.

"That mindset is clearly a product of your contempt for the Commerce Clause."

Wickard showed contempt for the Commerce Clause. You show contempt for it by thinking that case and the line of cases based on it anything but an atrocity. Those who would use it to mean that government is functionally limitless have contempt for it. I don't. I just believe it to be a means for regulating interstate commerce, not to create a Big Brother state. And I equated it, correctly, to tyranny, not to fascism.

In brief- A man violates INTERSTATE commerce by growing food for private consumption on his own land. He is engaging in no commerce, crossing not even his property line never mind a state border. This is tyranny as though Webster wanted a real life example for his dictionary.

But then, liberals have contempt for the notion of private property, so I shouldn't be surprised that you liked this bit of villainy.

44
@43: You lose all credibility when you insist than anyone who thinks differently from you, however slightly, is an irretrievably bad human being.
First, you forget about the possibility that the afflicted person MAY NOT HAVE THE RESOURCES to pay. See, not everyone can afford to live comfortably the way you presumably do. If someone goes to the ER of a county hospital and can't pay, the taxpayers are stuck with their bill. This is precisely why everyone should have health insurance: in case they cannot pay.
Now, you're a little fuzzy on the specifics of the Wickard case. Had the fellow not bought or purchased wheat at all, you would have been correct; however, this is not the case. The issue was not that the man was producing a commodity; it was that he was producing TOO MUCH of a commodity. It does not matter that he was not selling that commodity; since he was acting as a consumer of that commodity, he would have bought more of the commodity had he adhered to the set quota of production. Since he did not buy as much due to his own overproduction, he, by not buying what he normally would, caused a net increase in the available supply of that commodity. Thus, by influencing the balance of supply and demand, he was affecting the interstate trade in that commodity, which is ABSOLUTELY the business of the Federal government. The result of his actions was a net increase in the quantity of wheat on the market, as surely as if he had sold it directly. Your undeserved pomp and mulishly stubborn ignorance in the field of economics are astounding.
45
Those who simply can't pay for medical care are likely already getting 'free' medical care at taxpayer expense. Those who can and simply don't wish to give up date night or cable tv or the 12 year olds cell phone to pay their medical bills ought to be compelled to do so civilly, like any other purchaser who wishes not to pay their bills. In any case it either is a taxpayer expense we incur already, or one we need not bear.

Wickard, being among the worst cases ever decided by the Supreme Court, is very familiar to me. Sure, Dred Scott comes ahead of it for sheer injustice, but not by much. Dred was a crying injustice. The other demeans everything the Constitution was written to protect, individual liberty threatened by a tyrannical government.

You repeat the inane arguments FDRs little pet court used to justify tyranny. Congratulations, you can read. For your future edification simply repeating garbage arguments doesn't redeem them. Fundamentally, the Commerce Clause grants the federal right to regulate existing commerce across state lines. It says nothing about purely intrastate commerce. And it does not and can not compel one to engage in commerce. On both grounds, and more importantly on grounds of simple justice, Wickard fails. So does Obamacare and the mandate. On the one hand all insurance is a state product, at least in Washington State. On the other those who wish not to purchase a financial product have the perfect right not to do so.

I note you carefully make no response to the question of where my right to risk ends way back at my first post. Wise choice. After all, if we are to be babysat by our goverrnment at every choice, what the hell is the point of calling us free?
46
BTW, this is the logical extension of Wickard. One who manufactures cars can't own a car collection, because he is taking sales from car lots. A person owning a kennel can't own a dog, because he is taking commerce from other kennels. An orchardist can't produce fruit because he is taking sales away from Safeway. Hell, let's start arresting the Wenatchee apple grower who keeps a couple of bushells aside for personal use. Bastard is ruining business for a New York fruit market!

Nice world libs would like us to live in. You guys really don't think things through, do you?
47
@46: You're confusing ownership here with production. There's nothing in those laws against OWNING a certain commodity, nor should there be. The laws are purely against PRODUCTION in excess of a set quota. Also, you're wholly ignorant of the laws. They are not to prevent people from taking business away from retailers; they are to prevent a catastrophic fall in the price of certain commodities. If, for example, every person with a plot of arable land produced as much wheat as the land could grow, there would be a glut of wheat on the market, and prices would plunge, probably sending most of those farmers to the poorhouse.
@45: If there are limits set on production of an inter-state commodity, then producing in excess of the limit without selling any of the production can be prosecuted IF AND ONLY IF the one doing the producing also acts as a consumer AND engages in trade in that commodity. It's logical and just. You just seem to have a particular hatred of any power exercised by the Federal government.
If you think otherwise, then do explain to me in a rational manner (that is, differently from your current hysterics) where the reasoning I put forward fails. It may seem odd to you, but then again, you don't seem to understand the basic workings of the market.
Also, private insurance IS an interstate product, as decided by the case of U.S. v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ge…), due to the fact that the INSURANCE COMPANIES THEMSELVES can and often do span state boundaries. Claiming that insurance companies do not do so in Washington State is pointless.
In order to address the issue of the right to risk:
If you hold that every person has the right to take whatever risks they wish, then naturally you oppose the institution of helmet and seat belt laws, regulations imposed on working conditions, sanitary standards in restaurants, and laws against practicing medicine without a license. If I want to buy a product without verifying that it won't give me peritonitis, it's my right to take that risk, and no government should be able to stop me. Is that what you're saying? Should we go back to the days in which companies could cut their flour with powdered paint in order to turn a profit? Do you think that?
48
"...producing in excess of the limit without selling any of the production can be prosecuted IF AND ONLY IF the one doing the producing also acts as a consumer AND engages in trade in that commodity..."

If I'm not selling the commodity, but am using it for personal consumption, how am I engaging in trade in the commodity? The court in Wickard found that by not buying wheat he might otherwise have purchased, but growing it instead, Wickard was engaging in trade. That is, by withholding his trade, he was engaging in trade. Surely you can see the problem there.

"You just seem to have a particular hatred of any power exercised by the Federal government."

I and any other rational man has a deep wariness of any power exercised by the Federal government. Those who wrote the Constitution also were wary about Federal power. It is why the specific rights and duties granted were stated to be the only rights and duties federal government enjoyed. All other rights were to be given the states and the citizens of them. A blurb about 'general welfare' dubbed the Elastic Clause has caused all sorts of misery since, but that's another topic. Basically, these men had had a powerful central government, deposed it, and wanted to avoid a recurrence of it in their new republic. It is why most liberals dislike the notion of original intent. The real intent of those who founded this nation militates against nearly every ideal or policy liberals espouse.

I grant that the men who wrote the Constitution weren't infallible. It's why we have a process for an orderly alteration of it. Amendments address changing needs or just plain errors on the part of the men who wrote the document. Liberals have a role in keeping the pressure on government to recognize changing times and social circumstances. Conservatives have an equally valid role in keeping a brake on change so that the structure of government stays sufficiently stable as to last. Both sides contribute, though neither much cares for the other. Ah well.
49
@48: Filburn WAS trading in wheat; he purchased it to feed his chickens. (You can affect the market without selling anything, you know.) The net result of him growing more wheat than was permitted per acre was to increase the amount of wheat on the market, driving prices down. You may say that the effect is negligible, but if all chicken farmers at the time had grown as much wheat as the land would support and used that instead of buying wheat, wheat prices would have PLUNGED dramatically, probably resulting in the poverty and possible starvation of hundreds or thousands of farmers. Now THERE'S an effect on interstate commerce.
The men who wrote the Constituition WERE worried about centralization of power. That's why they wrote a predecessor to the Constitution called the Articles of Confederation. The trouble with the Articles was that nothing got done; it delegated too much power away from the Federal government for it to be even marginally effective. The fact that they scrapped the Articles and wrote the Constitution PROVES that the Founding Fathers favored a strong, effective Federal government with the authority to oversee and coordinate the policies of the states, to mediate their disagreements, and to step in when no one state had authority. Remember: they weren't against government so much as against a government that was not answerable to the people. The real innovation in the creation of the USA is that theoretically, the will of the people rules, rather than any one person or class of persons.
50
@Seattleblues, you really are a jack of all debates- unfortunately it seems you're a master of none.
51
@50: More knave than jack, really.
52
@50

Masterful point by point refutation, Sammy. Just masterful. Tell the truth now, you're channeling Seneca aren't you?

At least Venomlash is regurgitating all the liberal pap his brainwashing and brainwashed professors are feeding him. You're not even going that far, just riding the boys' coat-tails. Seriously, that isn't even dignified.

@51

You have it backwards. Conservatives are desperately trying to hold the walls against social disorder, political and financial ruin, and the slow decay of our culture. Liberals are in the cheering section for the forces trying to accomplish these things. Well intentioned sure, but we all know of what the paving stones on the road to perdition consist.

Cavafy wrote a poem about waiting for the barbarians to invade. The kicker? The protagonist wanted the sack and ruin of the city in which he lived! He must have been a progressive.

I don't have time to debate the intentions of the men who wrote our Constitution, nor would you agree with me if we traded comments until doomsday. Best of luck with the cradle to grave benign tryanny you wish to establish. Or not, as you're trying to ruin my kids future with your own.

Regardez vous Venomlash. All juvenile energies and certitude, no real world experience to show him how wrong pretty much everything he believes really is. Having said that, you seem a smart boy trying to learn about the world around him. Enjoy college and the ability to ignore reality while you can, young man. Real life will come to get you soon enough.

53
So, there you have it: Seattleblues believes that "compulsory" healthcare is a grave crime against the Constitution, yet he still believes that the military supersedes the rights guaranteed therein and that the Government should kill whistleblowers for treason.

"Juvenile energies and certitude" indeed!
54
"So, there you have it: Seattleblues believes that "compulsory" healthcare is a grave crime against the Constitution, yet he still believes that the military supersedes the rights guaranteed therein and that the Government should kill whistleblowers for treason."

Well, that't one way to put it. That it's an incorrect one shouldn't trouble you too much.

In a gesture of bipartisan charity, I'll repair your statement for you.

"Seattleblues believes that "compulsory" purchase of a consumer product that may or may not be useful to individual citizens is a grave crime against the Constitution. He believes that the safety and security of military personnel and the military aims of a democratically elected government in battlefield situations supersede the rights guaranteed the press. He also believes that the Government should try, convict and execute traitors for treason.."

Much more accurate.
55
@Seattleblues, Why bother with a point by point refutation of your half-cooked arguments when you are already in perfectly capable hands with Venomlash? Besides, unlike you, I know when to hold my tongue. Case history is not my strong point (though one of my many skills is wikipedia, which confirms the information Venomlash presents), a weakness you share- unfortunately you talk like you know what's what. In fact, it seems the only area in which you are strong is in dribbling out jingoistic spam.

And really, Seneca? Aristophanes is my homeboy.
56
@55: I'm no legal expert either. I just have good Google skills and the ability to quickly parse large blocks of text. Everything I specifically referenced was the result of doing some quick research to find the right case to back me up.
57
Couple of things. Case law is a bit more complex than whatever website you found on Google. And you didn't reference any case other than Wickard, which you didn't 'find.'. All that you said was that the court found correctly based on the quick blurbs about it you found.

So did you follow the trail of case law Wickard spawned? And approved of the functionally limitless power it grants the federal government? See, if the executive or Congress gets to determine what constitutes commerce without any checks or reference to actual commerce the Commerce Clause is a blanket grant of federal authority. Some who value freedom find this disconcerting, if not outright frightening. For instance, the Patriot Act would not be possible without Wickard, indirectly or directly depending on whom you ask.

Nor did you convince anyone not already convinced that the government can and should rule every aspect of my life from first breath to the pine box. Or that such an invasive government was what the writers of our Constitution intended.

You're a young and seemingly intelligent young man. That and the kind of curiousity you display will lead you at least to a better informed opinion than many ardent partisans, right or left. Kudos. For your family and friends it will be interesting to see what your politics look like in 10 years or 30 as real life modifies the pretty theories you espouse.
58
@57, Some who value freedom also apparently believe citizens have no right to know what their government is doing in their name in war zones, because journalists just get in the way. That freedom just isn't valuable. Apparently the prospect of the enormous bulk discount we would get by all having health insurance is disconcerting, if not outright terrifying- while letting the government do what it's gotta do to win the war against the bad guys without interference form meddling journalists is just hunky dory.
59
Again, in the spirit of bipartisan helpfulness-

Rights and liberties are not discreet, stand alone abstractions. The right to free speech doesn't allow me to endanger others with that speech. Hence the famous 'fire in a crowded theater' example. The right to a free press, acting as guardian of the peoples interests, is extremely important, even fundamental, to democracy. You would believe it more important than military necessity and the lives of those in the armed forces in time of war. Since you clearly despise the military, those who serve in it, and the government which controls it this doesn't surprise me. But it isn't a rational point of view, nor has any nation ever stated such an unorthodox doctrine including the United States.

And the utility for my fellow citizens of the Obama insurance mandate isn't the point. Many things the government could order me to do might make fiscal sense (though I don't believe that this will.) Expediency does not equate to Constitutionality in this country. Nor does utility or the common good. The Constitution is a strict check on the activities of our government, or was before the 2 pet high courts of FDR.

At the core, conservatives are much more optimistic about our fellows than liberals. To a liberal no one could feed their family, house them or clothe them without government assistance. No one could strike a fair business deal with a client or competitor without government regulation, or seek and maintain employment at fair terms. No one could attend college without government assistance, or retire without a government pension. No one could get water or power to their homes or develop a phone system without their ever present Uncle Sam to aid them in doing so.

Seriously, if I held such a dim view of my fellow citizens it would really worry me. Thank God I'm a libertarian leaning conservative who thinks most of those who share citizenship with me are pretty competent and able folks able to wipe their own posteriors without a government agency to tell them how.
60
More proof that you aren't even qualified to speak on behalf of conservatives, much less offer the third-grade caricatures of "liberals" (and I guarantee you I am not one):

"At the core, conservatives are much more optimistic about our fellows than liberals."

Have you read Burke or Hobbes?
61
@57: You: "And you didn't reference any case other than Wickard, which you didn't 'find.'. "
Me: "Also, private insurance IS an interstate product, as decided by the case of U.S. v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ge…)"
You mad?
You say that Congress shouldn't be allowed to judge what is or isn't the purview of the Federal government. Bearing in mind that the Supreme Court can override Congress's decision in this matter, who do you think should? Should the States be allowed to decide where Federal authority ends? No, they should not; the Supremacy Clause establishes that the Federal government is in charge of deciding things above the state level.
62
@SB, By jingo, you're right. I hate the military so much that I think our soldiers should stop dying in pointless wars whilst committing atrocities in our name. And clearly I despise the government that that facilitates a very long list of things that make first world living so cushy. I am being completely irrational when I say we should do things different, like, in a way that doesn't put the lives of soldiers who signed up to be in the line of fire ahead of civilians that had no say, or perhaps in a manner that meets American citizens right to health care. Absolutely mad for me to think that the constitution did not start out perfect, and should continue to evolve to meet the challenges of modern society. I absolutely hate America and want to see it outright fail, or something like that. I really think we need the government to wipe everyone's asses because everyone is incompetent to take care of themselves, mostly me, because I am incredibly lazy- my views really have nothing to do with the idea that many of us can't afford toilet paper and are walking around with shit-caked buttocks while a select few amass giant supplies of toilet paper in silos and don't share it because they earned it (off the labor of those worthless slobs walking around with shit in their pants) and it is their unassailable right to keep it all and pay to elect those who will do everything in their power to keep it that way. Yepp, it's really America I despise. Pretty please will you wipe my hateful lazy ass?

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