It’s on again. It’s off again.
Feb 1, 2011, 8:49 AM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:48 pm
Dave Ross Commentary – Listen: It’s on again. It’s off again.
While Egyptians declared their freedom from Hosni Mubarak, here at home, another federal judge was declaring our freedom from health care reform — at least the type of reform that would require you to buy health insurance.
This time the ruling came from a federal judge in Florida — who says the constitution’s famous “Commerce Clause” simply does not let the federal government punish you in any way for NOT buying something.
The courts do agree that the STATES can make you buy stuff, but not the federal government. The federal government could make you pay a health care TAX, but it can’t make you buy insurance.
So that leaves the score at two to two: Two judges saying the health reform law IS constitutional, and two saying it’s NOT.
But this judge went farther than the others: he said that because the law is so dependent on the unconstitutional concept of mandatory insurance, the whole thing should be invalidated. The Supreme Court will have the final say on that, but this judge found the law to be so screwed up, he compared it to a bum watch: (QUOTE) The law, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker.
OK — but wait a second. The law wasn’t made by a watchmaker. If that was the standard, democracy itself wouldn’t be constitutional. Laws are made by the United States Congress. They’re made by a BUNCH of watchmakers. A bunch of watchmakers who can’t agree on what time it is, or how many minutes are in an hour, or if the time is even worth knowing.
Which, come to think of it, explains why they make us change the clocks twice a year. Perfectly constitutional under the commerce clause, by the way.
