Good Point

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Rep. rush Holt (D-NJ) writes,

I’m reminded of one of the last times we voted on a Sunday: March 20, 2005, when Republicans forced an extraordinary vote to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo.

To know what a real government takeover looks like, one should revisit that resolution.

Yep, that’s what a real government takeover of health care looks like.

The Republican strategy seems to be to go after the mandate as unconstitutional, according to the Republican definition of “unconstitutional,” which is “any law we don’t like.”

20 thoughts on “Good Point”

  1. It’s the same when Republicans crow about states rights, except for those times when states pass laws (medical marijuana for example) that they don’t like. “Well, we’ve got to have some rules”, I heard one of them bluster, when I pointed out their hypocrisy. Their complete lack of self-reflection makes them unable to see that they are being hypocrites and unfair – the concept doesn’t exist in their minds in relation to themselves.

    Do see Establishing a Beachhead at GinAndTacos.

  2. IOKIYAR – BUT it was a LIFE panel, not a DEATH panel.

    Government Keep Your Hands OFF our medicare.

  3. The Republican strategy seems to be to go after the mandate as unconstitutional….

    This is one of those things I’m afraid I’m going to obsess about, what with the paralegal training and all. If this question goes before the SCOTUS, I count only 4 votes to overturn the mandate portion of the bill: Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and (probably) Roberts. Kennedy used to be a lot less ideological; I’m not sure where he’d land on this. I’m also not sure about precedent, but I suspect it exists in support of the mandate. I’d love to have the Republican state AGs get schooled by the SCOTUS; I’m just not sure it’d work out that way.

  5. There should be an orange alert for all the chatter, which is interesting. I’ve only been able to discuss and listen rather than read thus far…too much work.

    Rightees I know continue to yammer on about the bill rather than anything in it. I strongly urge them all to stick by their guns and renounce their new benefits if they find it all so deeply disturbing…you know, sort of stick by their guns. Somehow none of them seem to have it in them to speak out about the specific benefits they now have from the bill:

    – They are protected from being dumped by their insurers if they get sick.
    – Lifetime limits on coverage are suspended.
    – People can keep their children on their policies through the age of 26.
    – Insurers cannot refuse to insure children because of “pre-existing conditions.”
    – Policy premiums will not change on account of HCR.

    In their objections they are vague and claim “It’s the bill” with a look that suggests you are crazy if you don’t know just what they mean.

    Joe Scarborough and his little syncophant Mika Brezinski say that this saddles their children with debt and condemn Obama for doing this during hard economic times. Evidently there’s no correlation between millions of pink slips and loss of insurance by unemployed and their children. Stupendous refusal to deliberate so I can’t believe they are that cognitively challenged that this could be anything other than an unabashed attempt to put one over on paranoid Americans.

    Scarborough touts a guest as disagreeing with him when he really agrees with everything except how badly the Dems have sealed their doom over pushing healthcare.

    Part of the wingnut incredulity seems to stem from an inability to come to grips with the fact that they lost. Terra firma no longer exists for them as their most fundamental assumptions of the last 30 or so years lay in pieces on the ground.

    Thom Hartmann provided insights over the term “slave breaking” and similar “silent dog-whistle” terminology in the thinly-veiled hate speech of South Carolina’s Jim Demint.

    This legal challenge should be interesting.

  6. I share your angst Joanr16. Kennedy likes the attention and you are right about the first 4 votes. I am one of those people who looks to history when thinking about the future and FDR had a number of pieces of legislation overturned in the early days of the New Deal. The Court is at least as far right as when they installed Dumbya as president and there is little intellectual honesty or sound constituional law to be found among the 5.

  7. Yeah, I remember the Schiavo case.
    A poor, brain-dead woman’s last days on earth were turned into some huge fiasco by brain-damaged Republican legistlators. And Bush came mighty fast, too, until Katrina.
    This is the perfect triptic that summarizes Republicans – Schiavo, Katrina, and their stance on Health care. The brain damaged, the wind-damaged, and, now, despite all their wind, the big blow.
    And yeah, I don’t trust the SCOTUS. Especially not after Roberts got his tits in an uproar over the President rightfully mentioning his horrible vote in the “Citizens” case. He’s looking for revenge. If they were deciding a moving violation against him, If were Obama, I’d pay my traffic ticket. It’s better than spending 15 to 20 for a minor traffic incident.

  8. When President Obamawas running, he was not crazy about the mandate. He never said so, but I wonder if he was concerned about a Constitutional challenge on those grounds. Ultimately, the mandate was/is an essential component if you are going to require that private companies accept people with pre-existing conditions.

    I haven’t seen any opinions from Greenwald who knows the Constitutional law better than any blogger I know of. However the State AG’s havent begun to frame their arguments. I have a few questions.. How many times will different challenges to the law be possible. One for each state? One for each issue? How long can conservatives string this out – or will the court demand they present the WHOLE argument at one time? Second, how will the timing play out? It seems unlikely that anything will be heard before the November election but it seems quite possible that it will be heard before 2012.

    • When President Obamawas running, he was not crazy about the mandate.

      To tell you the truth, at the time I didn’t believe him and I wasn’t the least bit surprised when he “changed his mind.” Without the mandate the reforms won’t work.

  9. One other thought – Who might retire between ow and the case being heard, given that it will be years…

  10. Pat says, “In their objections they are vague and claim “It’s the bill” with a look that suggests you are crazy if you don’t know just what they mean.”

    It’s in the double-secret part of the bill that only Nancy Pelosi can see. But somebody told Rush that’s it’s in there, so it’s cool. That same person told Orly Taitz about seeing Obama being born in Africa.

    I understand that the constitutionality argument goes to the ever-so-short and ever-so-powerful Commerce Clause of Article 1, Section 8. The court’s been awfully expansive with that clause in the past – it factored huge in the civil rights movement, for example. But I haven’t seen a cogent summary of the specific argument in these various lawsuits.

    I find it interesting that so many state’s Attorneys General managed to file the same suit on the same day. Coordinated? Nah! Coincidence! Rush told me so.

  11. Dave S – It’s also a complete coincidence that all the AG’s who filed suit are Republican.

  12. It’s good to be reminded of one of our nation’s darkest days when our government ran amok. A government of, for, and by, the people had turned into a private boys club that would pass a law to specifically benefit one individual. It still boggles my mind to think about that particular episode of our out of control government under the Bush administration’s leadership. A big mind bending WOW for the Terry Schiavo episode.

  13. Doug, One of the AG’s is a Democrat..The Louisiana AG said he joined the suit at the request of Governor Bobby Jindal… I don’t know if the AG is bound by law to be the Governor’s lackey, or whether he’s just using Bobby J for political cover, but he’s a Democrat.

  14. However the State AG’s haven’t begun to frame their arguments.

    Jon Bruning of Nebraska at least has come up with a justification for wasting our tax dollars on this crusade: “The people of this state get their money’s worth from me,” he said on the radio this morning. “I’m always working… nights, weekends, so they don’t have to worry about that.” In other words, this purely political Absurdist Theater Troupe is just a hobby of his. In that case, he needs to take the state’s name off it.

  15. Thanks for the info, Swami. It’s refresing to see bipartisanship working in Louisiana.

  16. I know in Washington state the Republican AG joined the suit without telling the Democratic Governor, nor the Democratic leader of the Senate and Speaker of the state House. Ed Rendell of PA was on Rachel Maddow and it sounds like the AG there pulled a similar stunt.

    I have a feeling that once the dust settles and people see that this reform package isn’t the end of the world, even the Republicans in our state are going to wonder why the AG was spending money the state doesn’t have on a suit that has next-to-no chance of success. (The theory is that our AG has visions of a Senate run, and being seen as the “not batshit insane Republican” in the state won’t get you through a GOP primary. We’ll see how the strategy plays out for him in six months.)

    The video I saw of Governor Christine Gregoire talking to reporters about this showed one angry woman. She asked the very good question “Who is he representing? Who is the client?” No one in the state government asked the AG to get involved here. It’s all on him.

  17. “The people of this state get their money’s worth from me,”

    Mamma used to say..” If you don’t blow your own horn nobody’s gonna blow it for you” Maybe we should send Jon a Western Union Wonderful-gram.

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