The Foundation

“The freedom and happiness of man … [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.” –Thomas Jefferson

Hope ‘n’ Change: ObamaCare Mandate Ruled Unconstitutional

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson, appointed by George W. Bush, ruled that one of the core provisions of ObamaCare – the one mandating that individuals buy health insurance – is unconstitutional. “The unchecked expansion of congressional power to the limits suggested by the Minimum Essential Coverage Provision [the individual mandate] would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers,” wrote Hudson. “At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance – or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage – it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.”

Read more here.

Editorial Exegesis

“U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson’s … court is the first in the country to invalidate any piece of [ObamaCare], a significant setback for those who have been clamoring for decades for a government takeover of health care. And it might not be the last court to rule against the legislation, given the number of other legal challenges out there. One such lawsuit in Florida was filed by 20 state attorneys general and governors and has been joined by incoming House Speaker John Boehner. It’s scheduled to be heard this week by a judge who has indicated he too has problems with the individual mandate. Perhaps most importantly, Hudson’s ruling puts the legislation’s supporters on the defensive, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion, where it’s not popular. Monday’s decision is a strong momentum boost for the repeal movement, which at one time seemed like little more than wishful thinking. The ruling will, of course, be appealed. A Congress and White House that were so willing to trod on American liberty with their health care reform aren’t going to let a federal court ruling stop their campaign to take over as much of the private sector as possible. … As so many others have said, ObamaCare and the legal challenges surrounding it are not about the country’s health care but about America’s future and our legacy of constitutional freedom. The justices will be deciding if we are a nation of laws or of legislative whim. They need to get it right.” –Investor’s Business Daily

Upright

“According to Obama, the federal government can make you do something if your failure to do it, combined with similar inaction by others, has a ‘substantial effect’ on interstate commerce. By rejecting that premise on Monday, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson took a stand for the principle that Congress may exercise only those powers that are specifically enumerated in the Constitution.” –columnist Jacob Sullum

“If the federal government can get away with ordering individuals to buy health insurance based on interstate commerce laws, it could order us to submit to any other practice it deems for our good based on similar misinterpretations of the Constitution. Such a course would further erode our liberties and move us closer to dictatorship and away from principles the Constitution was written to protect.” –columnist Cal Thomas

“The Supreme Court, as currently constituted, seems unlikely to overturn Judge Hudson’s holding on the individual mandate and the tax penalty. Yes, the highest court has gone very far in extending the Commerce Clause over the past seven decades. But even the Supremes have never gone as far as the Obama Justice Department desperately wants it to go. For the court to go that far, it will have to fundamentally break the Constitution, tearing out its strictures on a limited government. Such a ruling would mean the literal end of any limits on the power of Congress, posing the most dangerous political threat to our liberty since our nation’s founding.” –Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation

“Regarding the estate tax, or what has come to be known as the death tax, it is probably, of all the ways in which our government takes revenue, the most immoral. … The death tax punishes the very behavior that defines the economic heart and soul of American prosperity. But perhaps worse, it attacks our most important social institution – the American family. … If we want to get back to prosperity, then it should be axiomatic that protecting freedom, entrepreneurship and family is the answer. Not the politics of power and envy.” –columnist Star Parker

“Most people have no clue what military life is like, least of all the opinion makers in New York, Los Angeles and the nation’s capital. The military is not representative of the country at large. It is disproportionately rural, small-town, Southern and Hispanic. We ask our troops to do a lot for very little money. Sometimes they die for us. The least Democrats could do is not pass grandstanding bills while self-righteously denouncing our servicemen as homophobes.” –columnist Ann Coulter

Support The Patriot Post Today

Our team works tirelessly to consolidate a week’s worth of the best insightful conservative analysis and the most outrageous comments made by assorted leftists in the media, politics and culture. Indeed, The Patriot Post‘s Chronicle is a one-of-a-kind information buffet that you won’t find anywhere else.

We depend on your support to keep this priceless resource coming to your inbox every Wednesday. Help us by making a secure online donation to our 2010 Year-End Campaign. If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form.

Thank you and God bless!

Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

Dezinformatsia

Upside down worldview: “Republicans, they’re all for these tax cuts, even for multimillionaires but opposed to extending the unemployment benefits that are helping the people who are hurting the most. … [T]his is mean spirited. … [T]his tax cut deal could add another $900 billion to a deficit that is already out of control. So why shouldn’t Americans look at this as a disaster in the making?” –NBC’s Meredith Vieira

Redefining terms: “Republicans would apparently sooner walk over broken glass than yield on tax cuts for the rich. President Obama lacks that degree of ideological fervor, which is why he was elected. He’s not a fighter; he’s a conciliator. … In the battle over the Bush-era tax cuts, he folded earlier than he should have, but at the end of the day, he did the right thing in accepting the extension in exchange for a package that puts more money into the economy and helps the middle class. You could say we’re all Keynesians now, with Republicans cheering government spending as long as it’s in the form of tax cuts.” –Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift

“As President Obama’s tax cut compromise is about to pass the Senate, a federal judge throws a curve ball at his health care reform law, deeming it unconstitutional. … And the thing that he objects to most strenuously is this idea that everybody has to be insured. And the Republicans are jumping up and down, they’re ready to have a party. Do you think they have a legal leg to stand on?” –CBS’s Harry Smith (What part of unconstitutional do you not understand?)

Newspulper Headlines:

An Optimist Would Say He’s Totally Full of Himself: “Obama Fatigue? Press Room Half Empty for President” –McClatchy Newspapers website

Somebody Alert Al Gore: “Emergency Lockboxes Available” –Detroit Free Press

News You Can Use: “Study Finds Imaginary Eating Can Reduce Food Intake” –Denver Post

News of the Tautological: “Blizzard Blankets Midwest in White” –video title, WISN-TV website (Milwaukee)

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

The Demo-gogues

Big Man on Campus: “I will be happy to see the Republicans test whether or not I’m itching for a fight on a whole range of issues. I suspect they will find I am. And I think the American people will be on my side on a whole bunch of these fights. … One of those fights will be over the very thing that some Democrats are angry about: The two-year extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest Americans. When they expire in two years, I will fight to end them. … Republicans are going to have to explain to the American people over the next two years how making those tax cuts for the high end permanent squares with their stated desire to start reducing deficits and debt.” –Barack Obama

Class warfare: “It makes no sense to me to provide huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires while we drive up the national debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay.” –Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who helped run up the massive deficits that our grandchildren will have to pay

“No, I won’t vote for [the tax compromise]. I don’t feel that I should be coerced. I believe and I certainly was honest about this in the campaign I ran, that it would do no economic damage if you had that fairly small increase. Two years from now when this comes up again, we won’t be in a recession, clearly. And I will make a prediction to you now. They’ll [Republicans] be just as opposed to taxing in a fair way as they were today. That is this argument about a recession is pure cover. That’s not their real reason, and when we take this up in two years and we’re not in a recession, you’re gonna hear the same kind of resistance to putting the rate back to where it was during that very successful economy under Bill Clinton.” –Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA)

Narcissist in chief: “One year ago, I was humbled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize – an award that speaks to our highest aspirations, and that has been claimed by giants of history and courageous advocates who have sacrificed for freedom and justice. Mr. Liu Xiaobo is far more deserving of this award than I was.” –Barack Obama in a statement about this year’s Nobel Prize recipient, who sits in a Chinese prison and was, as Obama added, “denied the opportunity to attend the ceremony that Michelle and I attended last year”

Village Idiots

First Nanny: “Everywhere I go, fortunately, I meet parents who are working very hard to make sure that their kids are healthy. They’re doing things like cutting down on desserts and trying to increase fruits and vegetables. They’re trying to teach their kids the kind of healthy habits that will stay with them for a lifetime. But when our kids spend so much of their time each day in school, and when many children get up to half their daily calories from school meals, it’s clear that we as a nation have a responsibility to meet as well. We can’t just leave it up to the parents.” –Michelle Obama, who championed the just-signed $4.5 billion child nutrition law

He feels your pain: “I still spend about an hour a day trying to study this economy. I want to make full disclosure: You know, I make quite a bit of money now, so the – the position that the Republicans have urged will personally benefit me. I think the people that benefit most should pay most. I just got back from a trip to Asia with my foundation. Hong Kong, super-free market place, had a stimulus. Well, I guess we’re not supposed to use that word anymore.” –Bill Clinton

What Bill of Rights? “We’re acting as judges. If we’re going to decide everything on the basis of history – by the way, what is the scope of the right to keep and bear arms? Machine guns? Torpedoes? Handguns? Are you a sportsman? Do you like to shoot pistols at targets? Well, get on the subway and go to Maryland. There is no problem, I don’t think, for anyone who really wants to have a gun.” –Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer still arguing the Heller v. D.C. decision in which he supported banning gun ownership to most residents of the nation’s capital city

Open Thread: Bill of Rights

Today, Dec. 15, is the anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to our Constitution, as ratified in 1791. Read more here.

Short Cuts

“What can you do with a good ol’ boy like Bubba? He only does what Bubba does. You probably shouldn’t blame a distracted and overwhelmed Barack Obama, either. But that was a remarkable show the two presidents put on at the White House the other day. … Will the president take Bubba along the next time he and Michelle flee the White House for a brief exile in friendlier places?” –Washington Times editor emeritus Wesley Pruden on the Obama/Clinton joint press conference

“It’s the Clinton tax rates that will be reinstated if all of this falls, so who’s the party of no here, and who’s the party of exactly right?” –radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh

“The Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday on Arizona’s new immigration law, which punishes employers who hire illegal aliens. Nobody’s rioting. Polls show that most whites and Hispanics hate each other in Arizona, but because they’re in Arizona, it’s a dry hate.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“[I]t’s high time the 26th amendment was repealed. If 70 is the new 60, and 60 is the new 50, it’s fair to say that 18 is the new eight. Giving the vote to a bunch of brats who are still collecting an allowance, thus allowing them to cancel out the votes of their elders is inane. The sad irony is that the only youngsters who deserve to vote are members of the military, and they’re the ones whose ballots are least likely to be counted.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky