Obama vs The Supremes

Apparently bucking the known odds, the Houston Chronicle proclaimed in a March 28 article: "Both sides confident high court will rule their way". OffHisMeds' first reaction was one of curiousity that the Chronicle - given the drubbing the Administration took at the hands of the Justices - should feel this was a fifty fifty proposition. His second reaction was amusement that the administration's Solicitor General Donald Verrilli should justify the law before the Supremes by citing the preamble to the Constitution, intuiting from those very general paragraphs that the phrase "secure the blessings of liberty" meant that free health care should be provided to the uninsured.

That's an interesting strategy, given the number of specific Amendments in the Bill of Rights that Obamacare would seem to trample:

- The First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging ....the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". Obama's "Exchanges", with rates negotiated between the Insurance Cartels and the government certainly deprives me of that.

- The Fifth Amendment: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation". The Individual Mandate is even worse: all Taking with no compensation.

- The Eight Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted". There's that pesky Mandate again. OffHisMeds thinks any fine imposed because one chooses not to surrender to a Cartel is excessive.

Obamacare seems to be a violation in its entirety of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments that prohibit the federal government from exercising power designed to "deny or disparage (rights) retained by the people" or taking for itself "powers not delegated by the Constitution (and) reserved to the States respectively, or to the people". Heck, I'd even argue - with my tongue ever so lightly pressed against my cheek - that Obamacare violates the Eight Amendment prohibition against Cruel and Unusual Punishment, since having to stand by as the Administration's lawyers so abuse the Constitution is both, but technically, I have to be an inmate before that particular Amendment comes into play. Wait. That's right. I am.

Suffice to say, The Usual Suspect wasn't happy with the way the Supremes appeared to be treating his signature accomplishment, what with this being an election year and everything and so inconvenient to his prospects for future employment. So a few days after the Hearing, he fired up the rare press conference, cranked the TelePrompTer up to ten and started throwing bombs. "Judicial Activism", he huffed. "Legislating from the bench", he puffed.

And yet, their house remained undisturbed.

There's a good reason, or reasons, for that. First, John Paul Stevens, the most tenured and doctrinaire Liberal on the court, and a man who has - prior to this case - never seen a government usurpation of constitutional liberties that he didn't like, doesn't like the Individual Mandate. He grilled Verrilli on the point in such a matter as to do Anton Scalia proud. Second, Kagan, Sotomayor and even Ginsburg chose to not even address the Mandate issue, and confined their questions to whether or not - absent the Mandate - portions of the law could be preserved. This is all the more telling in that even Kagan - Obama's former solicitor general - could not be roused to defend the law in its entirety.

Finally, OffHisMeds is not impressed with President Obama's argument about judicial activism. It was he and his Minions, after all, who crafted the legislation so as to make the Individual Mandate a Poison Pill that, if removed, would kill the entire bill. Given his pedigree as a professor of constitutional law, that makes his hypocrisy all the more cringe-inducing for thoughtful Democrats - all ten of them.