Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Right-wing Republican judge rules health-care law unconstitutional
So what else is new?
Republican-appointed judges, embracing conservative judicial activism (even if they would deny it), are ruling against the Affordable Care Act and basing their decisions on spurious legal reasoning:
A second federal judge ruled on Monday that it was unconstitutional for Congress to enact a health care law that required Americans to obtain commercial insurance, evening the score at 2 to 2 in the lower courts as conflicting opinions begin their path to the Supreme Court.
But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so "inextricably bound" to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.
"The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker," Judge Vinson wrote.
How odd that Vinson's words are a metaphorical version of the standard Republican talking point -- repeal and reform, even if Republicans have no alternative plan and no intention of introducing one anytime soon. (It's important to note, too, that Vinson based his decision to a great extent on the views of the right-wing, theocratic Family Research Council, hardly an impartial source.)
Ultimately, the law will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, so it doesn't much matter how these lower courts rule. Although, of course, the Supreme Court, with a 5-4 conservative majority, is partisan and, when it wants to be, activist. (Kennedy will likely be the swing vote, as usual.)
But Steve Benen makes some excellent points in putting this latest ruling into perspective:
First Update: Note that when Judge Henry Hudson of Virginia, a Bush appointee, reached a similar conclusion in December, in a ruling that no one seemed to think made any sense, he said the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but left the rest of the law intact. Reagan appointee Vinson, however, took a far more activist approach, striking down a massive piece of legislation because of one provision.
Republicans are thrilled, of course, because activist court rulings are to be celebrated, just so long as it's activism the right can agree with.
Second Update: It's also worth emphasizing that two Republican-appointed federal district court judges have now found that the individual mandate -- an idea Republicans came up with -- is unconstitutional. And while that's important, let's not forget two other federal district court judges, appointed by Democratic presidents, came to the opposite conclusion.
Indeed, overall, about a dozen federal courts have dismissed challenges to the health care law.
In other words, when you hear on the news that "courts" have a problem with the Affordable Care Act, remember that it's actually a minority of the judges who've heard cases related to the law.
Aside from the obvious activism on display here, that last point is crucial. Only two judges, both Republican-appointed, have ruled against the mandate (the second also against the entire piece of legislation). The media focus disproportionately on these negative rulings, rulings that would seem to validate the Republican position, but the reality is that the law, including the mandate, has thus far been upheld everywhere else.
Self-Immolation
By Carl
OK, it looks like 2012 will be the year of overreaching. The hemmorhoids in the asshole of progress, the Teabaggers, are painting bullseyes. Again. Already.
Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.
They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent. [...]
In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe. Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avoid splitting their vote. In Utah, the same people who ousted Senator Robert F. Bennett at the state’s Republican convention last spring are now looking at a challenge to Senator Orrin G. Hatch.
First, Orrin Hatch? Really? Granted, you can't get much more establishment than Orrin Hatch, but it's not like he's given the Democrats a leg up on a legislative agenda, and you might want to consider that he's got some credibility in the Senate. But I digress...
The intriguing bit in this clip is that the Teabaggers missed the point of the 2010 election cycle. It wasn't that Teabaggers failed in the Senate primaries, it was that they were soundly rejected in the Senate general elections, and many of the mainstream Republicans who did go on to win actually looked moderate by comparison.
Americans have long loved the dichotomy of a feisty and rancorous House (which is why Teabaggers succeeded there) and a deliberative Senate. As George Washington famously observed, the Senate was where legislation went to cool off, to make it less burny and more palatable to the American people.
The lessons of history are apparently lost on the Teabaggers. You can alter history, it's true, but you cannot reverse human nature, only amend it (or else the racism we see now on the right would be long gone), and there will always be an element of this dichotomy in Congress.
Now, admittedly, the Teabagger movement started after Republicans dropped their ball during the Bush administration....I mean, hell, it only took these assclowns thirty years to catch up to the fact that the Republicans were paying lip service to the whole "tax cuts are good" mantra, rewarding only the uberwealthy and protecting their interests at the expense of the middle and working classes. Four legs bad, two legs good, you see.
And it's conceivable we're seeing the start of the downfall of the GOP. The one thing we are not seeing, and will not see, is the rise of the Teabaggers as anything more than a bloated blockage of do-nothings intent on screwing the country more quickly.
Unless they grow up. Of course. But then they'd be....Republicans!
(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)
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