Archive for the ‘War on U.S. Constitution’ Category

The Red States should issue a “Declaration of Non-Compliance” with all unconstitutional Federal laws and regulations

Short of seceding from the union, are there steps the states can take to counter an abusive federal government?

For example, suppose a big state, such as Texas, declared itself a tax sanctuary — that no Texan will be required to pay an income tax of, say, more than 15 percent to the federal government.

It would cite the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments for legal justification.

The Fifth Amendment states that “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”

This is known as the “Takings Clause.”

The Fourteenth Amendment states that the government must not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.“

This is known as the “Equal Protection of the Laws” clause.

The progressive income taxes violates both these Amendments.

If some Americans are taxed at a higher rate than others, they are being denied equal treatment under the law — a fundamental principal of common law and justice.

I should not pay a bigger fine for running a red light if I’m richer.

If the government is taking my money to give to someone else, clearly my property is being taken without just compensation . . . and not even for public use. So this is a violation of the “Takings Clause.”

So there is plenty of legal justification for Texas to simply declare (by passing a state law) that no Texan will be required to pay an income tax of more than 15 percent to the federal government.

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution establishes the dual sovereignty doctrine. It states that,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

According to the Tenth Amendment, most of what the federal government is doing today is unconstitutional.

If the federal government actually followed the Tenth Amendment, it would be about one-third the size it is now.

The Constitution set up a federal government to do certain very specific things –”establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Clearly, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to take money from one American to give to someone else.

The Sixteenth Amendment states that,

Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

But the federal government does not have the authority to tax some people at a 30 percent rate and others at a 10 percent rate (for the purpose of wealth redistribution) because that violates both the Fifth Amendment’s “takings” clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” clause.

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly upheld the “dual sovereignty” doctrine of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment.

Most recently, in the ObamaCare case, the court ruled that the states are under no obligation to comply with the ObamaCare law. That is, the states are under no obligation to use money from the state treasury to set up the ObamaCare “exchanges” or to expand “Medicaid.”

Thus, much of the financing mechanism for ObamaCare is gone if the states simply refuse to provide the funds and refuse to set up the exchanges.

James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both argued that the states have the right simply to refuse to go along with unconstitutional federal laws and decrees. After all, it was the states who created the federal government in the first place.

At North Carolina’s ratifying convention, James Iredell told the delegates that when “Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.”

In other words, the states would have the right to ignore any law Congress might pass that violates the Constitution.

So let’s say Texas declares that no Texan will pay more than a 15 percent rate on income to the federal government and that no Texan will be subject to arrest by federal authorities for refusing to pay more than this. What practically could the federal government do in response?

Well, the federal government could try to come into Texas to arrest the non-compliant Texan.

The state of Texas would then provide legal defense for the Texas taxpayer while the case worked its way through the courts, which could take years.

The state of Texas can just use the courts to tie up the federal government for years in litigation.

This would be taking a page from the ACLU’s playbook.

The ACLU has achieved a lot for the Left by threatening litigation and tying up the government in litigation.

Texas could take this approach with every abusive federal law, such as the Obama Administration’s plans to deny Americans their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, or all the unconstitutional regulations coming from the EPA.

In fact, the state of Texas could declare every federal regulation illegal that was not explicitly passed into law by Congress.

The federal agencies have issued hundreds of thousands of regulations that carry the force of law. You will pay fines and can go to jail for failing to comply with these regulations. But these regulations should carry no weight whatsoever because they were not actually passed into law by Congress.

Congress is the lawmaking body, not the Executive Branch.

And Congress has no Constitutional authority to transfer the lawmaking power to the Executive Branch.

So the state of Texas (or any state) could go through every federal regulation and declare it will no longer comply with these regulations.

What could the federal government do if Texas did that?

And what if this trend caught on in other solidly Red states? — such as Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Nebraska, Kentucky, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho.

That’s a pretty sizeable chunk of territory that we might call the “Free United States of America” — in contrast to the “Enslaved United States of America.”

What could the federal government really do if this happened?

We would not actually secede from the union. These states would  just refuse to comply with unconstitutional laws and regulations.  They would continue to comply with Constitutional laws. We would want, for example, to continue to pay for national defense because that’s authorized by the Constitution.

The states can go through the federal budget and determine what they will pay for (the Constitutional items) — and NOT pay for (the unconstitutional items).

We will be happy to pay for all Constitutional federal functions of government.

Another area for the states to put their foot down is to say “no more seizing of private and state lands by the federal government.”

The states are perfectly capable of identifying places of true scenic beauty to protect.

What’s been happening is that the federal government has abused its eminent domain power to simply seize as much American land as it can for itself.

The federal government now owns 84.5 percent of Nevada, 69.1 percent of Alaska, 57.4 percent of Utah, 53.1 percent of Oregon, 50.2 percent of Idaho, 48.1 percent of Arizona, 55.3 percent of California, etc. — in other words, most of the Western United States.

The Obama Administration has mapped out a plan to seize millions more acres of valuable Western lands, putting many ranchers out of business.

The Red States need to say not only no more lands will be seized the federal government, but should begin taking lands back from the federal government.

Who is the federal government to say what Texas or Alaska can and can’t do with their own land — including their oil?

Kick the federal government out of the state.

And it really doesn’t matter what the Supreme Court rules because most of these federal laws and regulations are unconstitutional, no matter what liberals on the Supreme Court say.

The Supreme Court is not the supreme authority of the land.  The Constitution is. If the Supreme Court ruled that it’s okay to kill all red-headed children, that would not make it Constitutional to do so.

There’s no mention of the Supreme Court in the Constitution as the supreme authority in the land. That did not happen until 1958, when in Cooper v. Aaron the Court declared that its rulings have exactly the same weight as the text of the Constitution itself.

But that’s a self-evident absurdity.

The Constitution very clearly states that the courts operate under the laws established by Congress.  And Congress operates under the Constitution.

It’s then clear from the ratification debates on the Constitution that the states are supposed to be the final arbiters on what is Constitutional, or not. In fact, that was the entire promise in the ratification debates, or the Constitution never would have been ratified.  The states were assured over and over again, that they would be the judge of the Constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress.

If the federal law is Constitutional, the states would and should be pleased to abide by the law.  We all agree that sensible laws and rules are needed for the proper functioning of a civil society.

But under the American system, most of the governing is supposed to be handled by state and local governments.

Instead, the federal government that is the big usurper and primary lawbreaker America.  It’s come more to resemble organized crime than a real government.

We have a rogue President, a rogue federal bureaucracy, and a largely rogue Supreme Court — a court that actually found an unalienable right to an abortion in the text of the Constitution — where no such right exists — thus nullifying abortion laws in all 50 states.

So if the Supreme Court can nullify laws in all 50 states, the states can counter by nullifying unconstitutional federal laws.  We then have a stand-off — which is what happens when the government attempts to impose its will on an unwilling people.  We’re supposed to be governed in America by the “consent of the governed.”

Since we do need courts, the “Free United States” can set up its own Supreme Court — a competing court made up of Constitutionalists.

Again, what could the federal government really do about this?

The feds could theoretically take military action.

But that’s not likely to happen unless the states actually secede from the union. But the states would not be doing that.  We are not talking about attacking Fort Sumter here.

The states would just be enforcing their Constitutional rights — vigorously, on every front and in every way.

It would not be a Declaration of Independence, we would be issuing a Declaration of Non-Compliance – non-compliance with unconstitutional laws and regulations.

The Supreme Court has already given the states the roadmap for how to do this with its ObamaCare ruling — declaring that the states are under no obligation to comply with ObamaCare.

Its time for the Red States to reassert their Constitutional authority in every area — to take authority back from the federal government.

And it would good to formalize the Red State complaint against the federal government with a formal Declaration of Non-Compliance — following the same pattern of argument as America’s Declaration of Independence of 1776.

America’s Declaration of Independence made its case by cataloguing a long list of abusive behavior by the British government. It’s well worth reading this list, because so many of these complaints apply to our own federal government today:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world . . .

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance . . .

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation . . .

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever . . .

A strong case can be made that much of this is happening now — only more so. The federal government has vastly over-stepped its constitutional authority in many areas — “has erected a multitude of New Offices [not envisoned by the Constitution], and sent hither swarms of Officers [bureacrats] to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

Isn’t this happening today?

Let’s take ObamaCare as just one example.

ObamaCare sets up a Soviet-style health care bureaucracy that will destroy freedom in America and wreck our health care system if its allowed to take root and spread like a cancer into every area of American life. ObamaCare . . .

• Requires the hiring of 16,000 brand to IRS agents to enforce the 2,700-page law.
• Establishes 159 brand new government agencies to administer the program;
• Includes 21 new taxes and tax increases.

Barack Obama promised in his 2008 campaign for the Presidency that he would “fundamentally transform” the American system (his words) — including our Constitutional structure of government.

The engine that’s driving this fundamental transformation of our society is”ObamaCare.”

Communists and socialists have always known that the fastest and surest way to move a country to socialism is through socializing medicine — that is, by putting a country’s health care system under government control.

Vladimir Lenin, the founder and architect of the Soviet Communist state, said “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”

Lenin and the Communists knew that once you control people’s access to health care and medical treatment, you control their lives. The Left here in America is well aware of this also.

When radio host Paul W. Smith asked liberal Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) why it will take the government until 2014 to fully set up the ObamaCare system, Dingell said this:

“It takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Source: News Talk WJR Radio with Paul W. Smith 3/23/2010

Does this sound like the America established by our nation’s Founding Fathers and described in the Constitution of the United States?

Is this really the purpose of our federal government — “to control the people“?

The Constitution says the primary purpose of government is to “secure the blessings of liberty” and to provide for the “common defense”  – not to “control the people.“

Under our Constitution, people are supposed to be free to do whatever they want, so long as they are not harming someone else.

That’s called freedom.

America’s Declaration of Independence says the purpose of government is to secure our “unalienable rights” to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

ObamaCare is about none of this.  ObamaCare is about the opposite of what described by our nation’s founding documents.

No wonder Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro hailed the passage of ObamaCare as “a miracle.”

In other words, when Barack Obama told us in 2008 that he was out to “fundamentally transform” America, he meant it. And he’s doing it primarily through ObamaCare — but also via the EPA, Executive Orders, and his administrative control of the vast federal bureaucracy.

His bureaucrats and regulators are issuing an avalanche of regulations on their own every week that carry the force of law — complete with criminal penalties and sanctions.  All this is unconstitutional.

It’s time for the Red States to Declare Independence from all this — or rather Declare their Non-Compliance with a long catalogue of federal abuses by the federal government, very similar to America’s original Declaration of Independence of 1776.

This is not a proposal to go to war or to secede.  It’s a proposal  simply to refuse to comply with all federal laws and regulations that are clearly unconstitutional.

What could Obama and the Left do if the Red States actually did that?

Not much.

Jr. says Obama should declare a national emergency, just like Lincoln did, and exercise dictatorial powers  –presumably including suspending Habeas Corpus and declaring Martial Law.

Would this also mean slaughtering hundreds of thousands of citizens? Not clear.

Here the brilliant and learned Jesse Jackson Jr exlains why the U.S. Constitution should be changed to include right to have a laptop computer and an iPod

And to think: These are the people who are running America.

It will be real interesting to see how well he gets along with his fellow inmates.

NY DAILY NEWS: A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

“Tavarez was … was worried about getting sent back [to patrol] and, you know, the supervisors getting on his case,” he recounted at the corruption trial of Brooklyn South narcotics Detective Jason Arbeeny.

“I had decided to give him [Tavarez] the drugs to help him out so that he could say he had a buy,” Anderson testified last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

Read more here >>>

END OF THE AMERICAN DREAM:

#1 A 55-year-old man in Arizona was recently ordered to turn in all his guns because of things that he wrote on his blog.  Fortunately, after WorldNetDaily covered the story there was an outpouring of outrage and the order was overturned, but what would have happened if WorldNetDaily had not covered the story?

#2 According to Mike Adams of Natural News, the CDC is starting to call parents all over the nation to question them about the vaccination status of their children….

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which has been comprehensively exposed as a vaccine propaganda organization promoting the interests of drug companies, is now engaged in a household surveillance program that involves calling U.S. households and intimidating parents into producing child immunization records. As part of what it deems a National Immunization Survey(NIS), the CDC is sending letters to U.S. households, alerting them that they will be called by “NORC at the University of Chicago” and that households should “have your child’s immunization records handy when answering our questions.”

You can see a copy of the letter that the CDC is sending out to selected parentsright here.

#3 According to blogger Alexander Higgins, students in kindergarten and the 1st grade in the state of New Jersey are now required by law to participate “in monthly anti-terrorism drills”.  The following is an excerpt from a letter that he recently received from the school where his child attends….

Each month a school must conduct one fire drill and one security drill which may be a lockdown, bomb threat, evacuation, active shooter, or shelter-in place drill. All schools are now required by law to implement this procedure.

So who in the world ever decided that it would be a good idea for 1st grade students to endure “lockdown” and “active shooter” drills?

To get an idea of what these kinds of drills are like, just check out this video.

#4 According to licensed private investigator Angela V. Woodhull, hospitals are increasingly using “guardianship” to strip elderly Americans of their liberty and to rapidly drain their bank accounts.  The following is one story that Woodhull included in a recent article….

Ginger Franklin, Hendersonville, Tennessee, fell down the stairs in her condo and suffered a bump on her head.  She was declared “temporarily mentally incapacitated” and a guardian was appointed through the courts.  Within six weeks, the guardian had sold Franklin’s home, car, furniture, and drained her bank account.  Today, Franklin has her freedom back, but she is having to start all over.

#5 In a sign of just how far individual liberty in the United States has declined, a judge in Wisconsin has actually ruled that citizens do not have a right to grow and eat whatever foods they want to.  The following is a short excerpt from his recent decision….

1) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;

2) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;

3) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to board their cow at the farm of a farmer;

4) no, the Zinniker Plaintiffs’ private contract does not fall outside the scope of the State’s police power;

5) no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume foods of their choice;

#6 The freedom to raise our pets as we want to is also being greatly curtailed in many areas of the country.  For example, a new law in St. Louis would require nearly all dogs and cats to be sterilized and microchipped….

Board Bill 107 would require all pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs and cats and microchip them for identification. Those who don’t want to sterilize their pets would be assessed a fee of $200 per year.

Will the control freaks that run things want to start sterilizing and microchipping humans someday?

#7 Whenever any politician suggests that we should “suspend elections”, that should be a major red flag.  North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue recently made national headlines when she made the following statement….

“I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover“

#8 As I wrote about recently, many NFL teams are now performing “enhanced pat-downs” of fans before they enter the stadiums.  In Green Bay, the Packers are using hand-held metal detectors on fans before they are allowed to enter Lambeau field.

What is next?  Will they soon insist that we all undergo full body cavity searches before we are permitted to attend the games?

Read more here >>>

 

It’s fun when these Dems tell us what they really want to do.

DAILY CALLER: Newly released audio contradicts claims of North Carolina’s Democrat Governor Bev Perdue’s press team that her call Tuesday for suspending Congressional election was a joke or hyperbole. In the recording, her tone is matter-of-fact and her comments are part of a serious speech.

“Listen to the Governor’s words: She wasn’t joking at all,” North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood told The Daily Caller. “The congressional Democrats are wildly unpopular in North Carolina, so she may have been trying to invent a solution to save their jobs from public accountability.”

“If it was a joke, what was the set-up?,” Lockwood adds. “What was the punch-line? Where was the pause for laughter? It took them three hours to say it was a ‘joke,’ but when that flopped it became ‘hyperbole.’ We’ll just call it an unconstitutionally bad idea.”

Read more here >>>

Listen for yourself . . .

THE BLAZE: A southern California couple has been fined $300 dollars for holding Christian Bible study sessions in their home, and could face another $500 for each additional gathering.

City officials in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. say Chuck and Stephanie Fromm are in violation of municipal code 9-3.301, which prohibits “religious, fraternal or non-profit” organizations in residential neighborhoods without a permit. Stephanie hosts a Wednesday Bible study that draws about 20 attendees, and Chuck holds a Sunday service that gets about 50.

Read more here >>>

He’s Bush++ . . . Bush on Steroids . . . even Bizarro Bush. The last thing we need is another Big Government Republican.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Beltway types are obsessing over GOP Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign trail comments about the Fed and Ben Bernanke.

I’m far less aggravated by Gov. Perry’s injudicious toss-off remarks than I am by his profoundly troubling, liberty-curtailing actions in office and his fresh batch of specious rationalizations for them. My syndicated column today dissects Perry’s recent, so-called “walk backs” of his odious Gardasil vaccine mandate for children. I’ve written and reported on vaccine bullies in the schools and on informed parental authority over vaccines previously. But as you’ll see from my column below, Perry defenders who dismiss critics as “single-issue” activists are willfully blind to the Gardasil disgrace’s multiple layers of rottenness. Related must-reads on Perry and Gardasil: Tom Bevan, Rhymes with Right, and BA Cyclone at RedState. (See also this flashback on Hillary, Merck money, and Gardasil.)

While Perry and his campaign staff have now paid lip service to making a “mistake” in shoving the executive order down families’ throats, they remain defiant in defending the decree and Perry’s zealous, big government overreaching. From the latest story on Perry’s “reversal” in the Washington Post: “Perry campaign spokesman Mark Miner dismissed the criticism. Governor Perry has always stood on the side of protecting life, and that is what this issue was about…”

Oh, no it wasn’t. Please read this, get informed, pass it on, and make sure that you don’t fall for a purported cure to our political ills that’s worse than the power-grabbing disease in the current White House.

As for the ridiculous idea that scrutinizing Perry’s much-bragged-out gubernatorial record is tantamount to “smearing” him, toughen up, buttercups. This is just the beginning of 2012 campaign heat. Limited government activists already know Perry’s ready, willing, and able to dish it out against them. If Perry can’t take it from supposed allies and friends on his own side of the aisle, why should he be trusted as the GOP contender against our Democratic enemies?

Update: Document dump from Politico’s Ben Smith and Byron Tau on the internal e-mails in Perry’s office regarding the HPV decision. Their takeaway from the 700-page dump seems to be that Perry was largely absent from the internal discussions and that the e-mails do not leave a record of Merck meddling. I’ll go through the records and add anything significant here. But 1) Much of the schmoozing and lobbying on such matters takes place outside of the e-mail sphere and 2) Perry wouldn’t need to be involved in the implementation details once he made up his mind to move forward and attempt to ram the mandate down people’s throats.

Point 3) Smith writes: “Perry seems to have been vindicated on the question of whether he rushed into a policy other states would never embrace: The National Council of State Legislatures reports that 20 states now have some legislation regarding the vaccine.” I’m not sure who argued that “states would never embrace” the policy. The whole reason to be concerned about Perry taking the lead in the first place is because in so many key areas (e.g., adopting school textbooks, etc), as Texas goes, so goes the rest of the country.

Read more here >>>

INVESTORS: If “Operation Fast and Furious” was merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, “jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about” marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee?

Perhaps because all was going as planned until it was learned that two of the AK-47s recovered at the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December were bought in ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Allowing loads of weapons that we knew to be destined for criminals — this was the plan,” Dodson testified to the panel. “It was so mandated.”

ATF agent Olindo James Casa said that “on several occasions I personally requested to interdict or seize firearms, but I was always ordered to stand down and not to seize the firearms.”

Yet, as we’ve noted, gun-tracking operations stopped at the border.

That seems odd if the purpose was to catch gun traffickers and their drug-lord bosses. It makes sense, however, if the real purpose was to perpetuate, in the interests of pursuing the administration’s gun-control agenda, what Bob Owens of Pajamas Media calls the “90% lie.”

Read more here >>>

NEW YORK TIMES: President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Read more here >>>

ILYA SHAPIRO-CATO INSTITUTE: In the most important appeal of the Obamacare constitutional saga, today was the best day yet for individual freedom. The government’s lawyer, Neal Katyal, spent most of the hearing on the ropes, with the judicial panel extremely cautious not to extend federal power beyond its present outer limits of regulating economic activity that has a substantial aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

As the lawyer representing 26 states against the federal government said, “The whole reason we do this is to protect liberty.” With those words, former solicitor general Paul Clement reached the essence of the Obamacare lawsuits. With apologies to Joe Biden, this is a big deal not because we’re dealing with a huge reorganization of the health care industry, but because our most fundamental first principle is at stake: we limit government power so people can live their lives the way they want.

This legal process is not an academic exercise to map the precise contours of the Commerce Clause or Necessary and Proper Clause — or even to vindicate our commitment to federalism or judicial review. No, all of these worthy endeavors are just means to achieve the goal of maximizing human freedom and flourishing. Indeed, that is the very reason the government exists in the first place.

And the 11th Circuit judges saw that. Countless times, Judges Dubina and Marcus demanded that the government articulate constitutional limiting principles to the power it asserted. And countless times they pointed out that never in history has Congress tried to compel people to engage in commerce as a means of regulating commerce. Even Judge Hull, reputed to be the most liberal member of the panel, conducted a withering cross-examination to establish that the individual mandate didn’t help that many people get affordable care, that the majority of people currently without coverage would be exempt from the requirement (presumably due to their income level).

In short, while we should never read too much into an oral argument, I’m more optimistic about this case now than any other.

Read more here >>>