I wish to thank Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. He has made plain what I have been arguing for some time: This nation is dead. Everything that had made it a nation, indivisible, has been wiped away, and in its place is a stinking, festering carcass of past glory. What remains is the fetid, reeking, scorched remains of a free people, now subjugated into tyranny by a United States Supreme Court dominated by a cabal of leftists and pragmatists, the former seeking to overturn our constitution, and the latter willing to join them in order to remain popular. There is no political liberty anywhere on Earth any longer.
There will be some number of conservative talking heads who will urge calm, and if you feel inclined to listen to that hogwash, you should follow your leanings, but I will have none of it. There is nothing in this but pure, unmitigated evil. This law has converted us to the Soviet Union. The walls are not [yet] built, and the barb-wired fences to restrain us are not [yet] erected, but all the necessary elements of a slave state are now in place.
Freedom of choice? Gone.
Freedom to be unmolested by outrageous governmental persecution? Gone.
Freedom to worship(or not) as one sees fit? Gone.
Freedom to live one’s life according to such beliefs? Gone.
Freedom to be secure in your person and your effects? Gone.
Freedom to decide what is in one’s own best interest? Stripped, wrecked, tormented, and tossed aside by John Roberts and the rest of the Statist Judicial activists on the Supreme Court.
Do you realize that to decide as he did, John Roberts had to ignore the plain language of the law, and imagine what is a penalty provision into a tax?
We have here a case of judicial activism writ large across our constitution, and it is a red-letter stamp: Null and Void.
Do you expect Mitt Romney to save you from this? Do you expect him to step up and do so?
Ladies and gentlemen, this has been rigged. The least-qualified Republican to campaign against Obamacare is our presumptive nominee. The least-qualified to criticize it will now be our candidate?
Shall I play the funeral dirge now, or wait until November 7th?
While the media has immediately leaped into the considerations of the horse-race aspects of this Supreme Court ruling, nobody is addressing the fact that our liberties have been stripped from us. Nobody but a few lonely conservative bloggers, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh. I expect other talk-show hosts will address this matter, but what we have in this case is a complete dissolution of the United States as we have known it.
I will not pay for Obama-care. I am looking into pulling my own health insurance, and making them force me to pay. SCREW THEM! This is my life, my money, my health, my choice.
At least one conservative politician gets it. Shortly after the decision of the court was announced, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tweeted the following:
In what can only be termed the greatest abandonment of our Constitution by a sitting Supreme Court, the Affordable Care Act was upheld. This decision heralds the end of the Constitutional Republic, the rule of law, and the American way of life. This decision is a treason against the Constitution, the American people, and the entire notion of liberty that had enabled our national development and prosperity. No American is safe from government, under any conceivable circumstance, and none should falsely believe that they might find relief at the bar of justice in the United States any longer. This decision announces a new form of anarchy, whereby the officials of government have become participants in lawless behavior, ruling in contravention of the founding supreme law of the land, while carrying on a grotesque charade by which they pretend to have followed a law that does not and has never existed. The Supreme Court has upheld the mandate as a tax.
Chief Justice John Roberts has betrayed the Constitution. At least he’ll be popular on the cocktail party circuit.
To understand what has happened, the individual mandate has been defeated as a command to individuals, but not as a tax on individuals. In other words, the court has held that the mandate is a tax that can be levied on individuals, but individuals cannot be forced to buy health insurance. Put another way, the Supreme Court has said that while you cannot be forced to purchase health insurance, but that you can be forced to pay more (extra) taxes if you do not.
The entire healthcare bill has otherwise been upheld.
In short, the country is dead. They can force you to pay a tax for failing to purchase bubble-gum. They can do anything they like. Congress and the President can enact any law they please. You are now slaves, completely. It’s time to become accustomed to it, and I am hearing conservatives who are surrendering even on the concept of repeal.
Rampage, or whimper? I suspect most will choose the latter.
I reject this opinion. I reject this court. I reject the entirety of this anarchical government.
The Republic that is our constitutional, representative form of government stands upon a precipice. We have a President who has undertaken to set aside the constitution at every turn. We have a Congress divided, split between a Senate controlled by a maniacal shill for the President, and a House of Representatives led(and I use that verb very loosely) by a Speaker who is unwilling to do battle with the President, unwilling to attempt even the most basic defense of our Constitution, and incapable even of holding an outrageous Attorney General to account without much hand-wringing and waffling. We have a United State Supreme Court that has most recently ruled that States have no sovereignty to speak of, and not even the authority to protect its own citizenry. We are told by the presumptive Republican nominee that he will repeal Obamacare, despite implementing a similar program in the state he governed, while his various mouthpieces talk about “replacement.”
Do you think we face long odds? Do you believe our Republic can survive or recover? The decision expected from the Supreme Court on Thursday will either re-shape our country forevermore, or allow us one more opportunity to restore it. Make no mistake about it: If the court upholds the Affordable Car Act, the Republic is dead.
I have given this a good deal of thought, busy as I have been these last two months, and as we’ve all waited to see what tomorrow will bring, I’ve decided that if the Supreme Court of the United States upholds this legislative abomination, a de facto state of war exists between the United States Federal Government and the people whose rights it had been constituted to defend. Those who will perceive this as true will be branded enemies of the state, in one fashion or another, and the decline of this Republic will accelerate at a breathtaking pace. There can be no recovery of the Republic if this law is allowed to stand, and the urgings to repeal it from we citizens, with platforms large and small, will fall on the same deaf ears that have ignored our pleas for more than two years. If this law stands, there is no constitutional, representative republic.
If the law is overturned, even then, our jeopardy will only have begun, because this President will ignore the ruling of the court, as he has done repeatedly, and as he has done remorselessly. He will attempt to impose his program anyway, and even should our milquetoast House of Representatives act to impede him, he will turn to incitement, outright. He will attempt to raise a mob, and force his will by virtue of threats and violence. He will do everything in his power, and many, many things beyond their legitimate exercise in order to create chaos. Barack Obama will not rest, and none of the looters or moochers who ride upon his coattails will allow this to be overturned. We may see what can only be termed a civil war, and it will be bloody.
This is the direction in which this nation has been lurching for generations, since the so-called “progressives” took over both parties. We have been led into a box canyon, from which none may escape unscathed. Today, idiotic former Democrat Congressman from Rhode Island, and latest family ne’er-do-well, Patrick Kennedy warned:
“If the Court upholds the law, dangerous Tea Party extremists will go on a rampage.”
We should be so lucky. The truth is that if the court upholds this law, Tea Party types will not go on a rampage, because they are not dangerous, although they probably should have been.
Rampage or not, civil war or not, this piece of legislation and all that has followed in its wake serve to demonstrate how fragile our Republic has become after a century of unceasing statist agitation. In the 1930s, we could have sustained this condition had our court exhibited such staying power as to have overturned all of the New Deal legislation, because the American people were still a moral people by a vastly overwhelming majority. By “moral,” I mean specifically in the sense that they respected the notion of property rights, the idea of self-sufficiency, and the concepts that once buttressed our constitutional foundation. Who now can claim this description would apply?
I spent most of the first decade of my adult life serving under an oath by which I swore to uphold and defend the United States Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I have never yielded on my oath, neither for comfort nor for ease; neither for the sake of a false unity nor for the sake of familial peace. Sadly, many of my countrymen no longer even understand what principles that oath had been constructed to honor, and to protect, but still, I observe it, while our Supreme Court ignores it, our President demolishes it, and our Congress abandons its defense. No branch of government seems interested in upholding it any longer, and by this procedure, they have slowly stolen our Constitution from us. Thursday, we will learn if we shall have even one more chance to resurrect our Republic, but if we are given that chance, we must neither squander it nor revel too long in our temporary reprieve. “Rampage?” Indeed, we of Tea Party orientation must rampage at the polls, where we must not permit even the most thuggish brigands of the President to deter us from our electoral duties. We must now walk back the entire statist menu, or watch our Republic perish. If the Supreme Court does not present a sentence of death, we must make the most of any temporary stay. We must undo it all, or be undone by it.
There’s a good deal of talk about how the oral arguments before the Supreme Court seemed to have gone badly for the government, particularly Solicitor General Verrilli, with a good deal of talk about how unprepared he seemed to make the arguments before him, but let’s be careful about two things: I’m sure Verrilli is an able attorney, but there’s no way to plaster enough lipstick on this pig to disguise its true nature, but more importantly, I don’t think we should take for granted anything about how this or any other court will rule based on their questions alone. If all the people who’ve spent the week trying to read the tea-leaves are wrong, we may be in for a serious disappointment come the end of June. For my part, while the questioning offered some measure of hope, I won’t count my chickens before they’ve hatched, or even count Obama’s before they have gone home to roost.
Listening to the media, you would think Verrilli had been the constant butt of jokes, and while it’s clear that there were a few laughs at his expense, I think this says more about the impertinent character of the Obama-care legislation than it says about Verrilli’s legal scholarship. He was placed in this position by a Congress now long gone, defeated and sent home by voters in 2010, and a President who was willing to sign this tract of tyranny into law despite a 2 to 1 disapproval by the American people at the time, that has only managed to worsen, now just shy of three-fourths of Americans considering the law unconstitutional. As any litigator will tell you, if you have his client with a smoking gun in hand over the dead body with a signed confession, and thirty eyewitnesses, you’re not going to make it far on the defendant’s claims of innocence, but as an attorney, if your client says he will plead not guilty, you must still stand in and defend him. That he’s left you with no conceivable method for doing so isn’t your fault, so I’d prefer we not tread too heavily on Verrilli. He may be a left-wing goon for all I know, but he was doing his job.
The question of severability on Wednesday seemed to cause the greatest stir from the leftist members of the court, because they wanted to find some way, any way at all, to salvage some part of the “Affordable Care Act.” One after the next, they tried to set up questions designed to muddy the water, but fundamentally, the problem is this: If the individual mandate is struck down as unconstitutional, the rest of the bill is eligible because it would be difficult to imagine how the exchanges and the rest of the complex structure of the law operates without the mandate provision. Some have assumed that the court may bounce the remainder of the bill, because Justice Scalia pointed out the impossibility of going through the law and figuring out what stays and what goes without risking larger damage. In other words, keeping some of the Act might well wind up causing more trouble than it fixes.
I think that’s the proper way to view it, and you might wonder in light of this why the liberals on the court are so intent on keeping such parts of it as they are able. The answer is simple enough once you understand their highly political motive: The mandate, if carved out, would merely affect the funding mechanism, but it would not do anything to the spending side. The spending would go on, and the Congress would face deficits even greater than those already envisioned with this irresponsible law, and the entitlement would become firmly rooted in the American culture. Once that happens, repeal becomes almost impossible. For the liberals, therefore, preserving as much as the bill by severing only the mandate becomes the object of the ruling.
The conservatives may not be inclined to tamper with any of it. They may not wish to toss out the entire bill for what will to some be an appearance of a political ruling, but the truth is that no matter what the court rules, it will certainly have political ramifications. The question is whether that matters to all of the justices. We know it drives the liberals on the court, but the problem is the conservatives are generally disinclined to weigh politics in their considerations on rulings. If that is the case, you could well see a bifurcated ruling in which they throw out the mandate but leave the entirety of the remainder in place. This too would constitute a disaster because the spending would commence in full as the law comes into force, with the revenue then [more] uncertain.
It could also happen that the court rules 5-4 that the mandate is constitutional, and if that happens, the country is thoroughly screwed. At that point, the whole severability question is moot, and the law is implemented on schedule. Of course, there are many theories about how this may play out, but the fact remains that we won’t know until late June. Liberals are preparing for the scenario in which some or all of the law is tossed by preemptive strikes in media against various justices, particularly Justice Scalia. I expect those attacks to ratchet up, even though the voting is already complete, and all that remains is to write the ruling and publish.
This process is important to the function of our republic, and yet there are those who disparage it as anachronistic, but I believe that if we are to remain a nation of laws, we must give the process its due. Leftists want to know the ruling now, and you can bet every court clerk is being prodded for answers by media who want to know in advance. I would urge conservatives not to become to happy over what they have heard and read from the oral arguments. Politically, you should remain engaged as though the law is going to be upheld. You won’t be surprised if it is, and you won’t wonder about what to do next.
In Tuesday’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said something in response to a question from Justice Antonin Scalia that I believe was intended to mislead. Scalia was much too clever for Verrilli, and why he didn’t call Verrilli on it, he made it clear that he understood full well what Verrilli was doing with his wording. It might not have been a “lie” in the strictest sense of the word, but it was intended to obfuscate the issue, and to do so in such a way as to shield the government from the very basis on which I have been criticizing the “individual mandate” since its proposal. To understand this “lie,” “misleading statement,” or “obfuscation,” whichever you will prefer to call it, you must understand the basic issues in context. In my view, Verrilli tried to hide something crucial, and you should know it.
What General Verrilli tried to conceal is the fact that this “cost-shifting” that Obama-care’s mandate is intended to address was created by government statute. Let us start with the transcript, available in full here:
GENERAL VERRILLI: That — that absolutely is a justification for Congress’s action here. That is existing economic activity that Congress is regulating by means of this rule.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Verrilli, you could say that about buying a car. If people don’t buy cars, the price that those who do buy cars pay will have to behigher. So, you could say in order to bring the price down, you’re hurting these other people by not buying a car.
GENERAL VERRILLI: That is not what we’re saying, Justice Scalia.
JUSTICE SCALIA: That’s not — that’s not what you’re saying.
GENERAL VERRILLI: That’s not — not -
JUSTICE SCALIA: I thought it was. I thought you’re saying other people are going to have to pay more for insurance because you’re not buying it.
Now for the key exchange:
GENERAL VERRILLI: No. It’s because you’re going — in the health care market, you’re going into the market without the ability to pay for what you get, getting the health care service anyway as a result of the social normsthat allow — that — to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.
Here, Scalia absolutely demonstrates he understands the issue:
JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, don’t obligate yourself to that. Why — you know?
And now, for the slam dunk:
GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I can’t imagine that that — that the Commerce Clause would — would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.
JUSTICE SCALIA: You could do it. But does that expand your ability to issue mandates to — to the people?
Let me explain why I’ve italicized the portions above. When Verrilli argues that the receipt of healthcare by the so-called free-riders is the result of “the social norms that allow,” he stammered through a self-correction, “to which we’ve obligated ourselves so that people get health care.”
What Verrilli is here talking about is that Congress has enacted laws prohibiting an emergency room from turning away patients on the basis that they cannot show an ability or willingness to pay. Verrilli tried to hide this behind a “social norm,” and later a “deeply embedded social norm,” but in fact, Scalia understood with acute perception why it is that Verrilli would do this, and he spat it back in Verrilli’s face, as was right and proper: “Well, don’t obligate yourself to that.” In other words, if you don’t want people to receive treatment without having paid, repeal the law that provides that treatment must be provided.
Verrilli wasn’t satisfied with this, and he claimed that “[he] can’t imagine that the commerce clause would forbid Congress from taking into account this deeply embedded social norm.”
Here, Scalia might have asked him: “How deeply embedded a social norm is it that has been enacted within my lifetime,” but he did not, preferring to underscore the larger point:
“You could do it. But does that expand your ability to issue mandates to — to the people?“
What Scalia is asking here is plain enough: The government may claim an interest in taking this “deeply embedded social norm” into account in creating its policy, but a desire to support a “social norm” (deeply embedded or otherwise) confer upon the government the authority to stand in demand of participation in the social norm?
What Scalia here recognized is that which I’ve been telling you all along: The government may enact a law forcing somebody to provide a good or a service(I reject that too, by the way) but the fact that the government creates a legal obligation for itself does not give them an additional claim of authority over you.
A good example is this: You let one of your adult children move their entire family into your home with you, despite the fact that they can or should afford their own domicile on their own, but when you perceive it is too burdensome, you then go to your other adult children and demand they help you support them, since it’s now bankrupting you. Your other adult children would rightly say to you: “Don’t let them live their any longer.”
What kind of mind would actually propose this to their other adult children? The other adult children would be best to remove themselves from the conversation and ignore the demanding parent. The problem is that in this case, it’s the government that’s making the demand, and we(the other adult children) are prohibited from ignoring it.
What Scalia recognized, and every one of you must know, is that there is a cost to the choices one makes, but having made them, there is no authority to shift the costs of those choices onto unwilling others who would have chosen differently. This is at the heart of the entire Obama-care insurance mandate argument: The government voluntarily decides to fund or subsidize something for somebody, and then mandates that you participate in the payment. There is no right to health-care, or any other material commodity or service, and nobody is obligated to pay for it. This should be the basis upon which the entirety of the New Deal and the Great Society are tossed out to the curb, but what’s particularly objectionable about Obama-care’s mandate is that it compels you to purchase an insurance against such costs that you may well never incur.
Understanding this, you should see why it is that what Solicitor General Verrilli attempted to conceal, but Scalia didn’t permit, is that more than “deeply embedded social norms,” these are laws inflicted and imposed upon us by Congress, and that Congress is free to repeal them, but the creation of these obligations does not disparage our liberties. I hope Antonin Scalia lives to be one-hundred-twenty years old, or longer, and delivers us from as much evil as he is able. His agile legal mind, and his clear understanding of the issues at stake is among the best hopes we have for maintaining our liberties, or reclaiming those we have forfeited already. Our lives quite literally depend on it.
Greta Van Susteren interviewed former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Monday night, asking her about a range of issues including the Obama-care case and its relevance to the 2012 election. She was asked what she thought of the effect it would have on Mitt Romney’s campaign, and it was an accurate, and concise answer as usual. Said Gov. Palin: “Romney will have his hands full with this one because he’s now been dubbed the father of Obama-care.” That’s an apt description of things, and I believe it’s the prevailing opinion among conservative voters.
I’ve been looking at some of the information about the case that comes before the United States Supreme Court over the matter of the Affordable Care Act(widely known as Obama-care.) I ran into one story that frankly made me angry, because it’s typical of the sort of lies and misdirections of this administration, and frankly any stink-from-the-head lefty one may encounter. It’s ridiculous to read their arguments and realize that their backward logic is actually the basis for laws in the United States. The Obama administration is full of some very despotic people, but the garbage Neal Katyal spews on behalf of Obama-care is some of the most obnoxious. AFP is reporting via YahooNews a story I find so detestable that it has caused me to spit coffee across the screen. AFP interviewed Neal Katyal who has defended Obama-care as the acting solicitor general, and frankly, leftist double-speak like this needs to be shredded:
“The challengers to the reform say that never before has the government forced people to buy a product. We’re not forcing you to buy a product. Health care is something all Americans consume, and you don’t know when you’re going to consume it. You could get struck by a bus, you could have a heart attack and the like. And if you don’t have health insurance, then you show up at the emergency room. The doctors are under orders to treat you — as any Western, any civilized society would do. And who pays for that? Well, ordinary Americans pay for that. They’re the ones who have to pick up the tab for those who don’t have insurance. We are not regulating what people buy, we’re regulating how people finance it.”
There’s a good deal to tear apart here, but let’s begin with the first premise: Katyal says they’re not forcing you to buy a product. Instead, the claims is laid that they’re merely regulating how you finance it. What if I don’t want to finance it, because I won’t use it? What if I refuse care? What if I want to finance it differently? What if I’m in a car wreck tomorrow and killed before I ever use any? Do I get my money back? No? Then you’re forcing me to buy something I may never use.
The claim is made that doctors are under orders to treat those who show up at an emergency room, and it’s true that this is the law. Get rid of the law. Don’t command the entire population of Americans on behalf of the claim that doctors, nurses, and hospitals must labor without any proof of a patient’s willingness or ability to pay. Don’t like that? Fine. What the government can do is put medical bills outside the reach of bankruptcy protection, much like they do your tax bill, or you child support payments, or your student loans. Give it the second bite at the apple of one’s estate, after federal taxes. The fact that some people do not pay is not a burden to be commanded upon all. We shouldn’t be doing that anyway, and I really don’t want to hear any silly arguments about Western or “civilized” societies. There is nothing remotely civilized about the government putting a gun to my head and forcing me to pay for products and services I may never consume, or may have not intention of consuming.
Life and death and all of the other necessities of life are not the government’s proper role or responsibility, ridiculous laws notwithstanding. When I read remarks from a useless jack-ass like Katyal, I realize that this is one of these idiots who probably wants to mandate legal insurance on us too. (Trust me, there is a whole movement among lawyers who want this.) There can be no authority to regulate how I finance something on the basis that I might decide to buy it, otherwise what you’re compelling me to do is purchase in advance.
The rest of the article is filled with similar drivel, and I encourage you to read it on the basis that you ought to know what we’re fighting. I also saw the beginnings of a smear-campaign against the court in the interview, and I want you to notice how they’re preparing to smear the court with this “unelected” business:
“If the Supreme Court struck this down, I think that it wouldn’t just be about health care. It would be the Supreme Court saying: ‘Look, we’ve got the power to really take decisions, move them off of the table of the American people, even in a democracy. And so it could imperil a number of reforms in the New Deal that are designed to help people against big corporations and against, indeed, big governments. The challengers are saying that this law is unconstitutional, which means even if 95 percent of Americans want this law, they can’t have it. And that’s a really profound thing for an unelected court to say.”
On the one hand it’s true: If 95% of Americans want to suppress free speech, that doesn’t make it constitutional, but let me suggest to this legal moron that if 95% of Americans want to suppress free speech, they can easily amend the constitution to do it, thus making it constitutional. Besides, 60-65% of Americans oppose this law anyway, so the very idea posited is false. Give me a break! Here comes the garbage, however:
“The two main outcomes that one can predict — the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate as unconstitutional because it’s unprecedented or it upholds it and says it is part of Congress power over commerce and over taxation. The latter is far more likely because it is such a grave thing for unelected judges to take a decision of such a magnitude for American people. I expect the Supreme Court’s ruling at the end of its current term, June 30.”
Is this clown kidding? That’s what the Supreme Court exists to do: Make judges of this magnitude for the American people. More, the very idea that the Supreme Court is unelected is now a bad thing flies in the face of lefty arguments that were only too happy to see “unelected judges” impose Roe v. Wade, or Social Security, or any other damned thing they want on the American people. No complaints then, at all.
Leftists are scum. I truly hope there is still sufficient wisdom on the court to overturn this unconstitutional monstrosity. If not, the only course remaining is repeal, but for that to happen, Republicans will need to capture sixty seats or more in the Senate, and replace Barack Obama. That’s a tall order in any year, but if Romney is the nominee, prepare to live as slaves to the will of idiots like Katyal.
I’m a talk radio junkie, and like so many, I listen with great interest when the various candidates for public office appear on the various talk-shows. Some talk-show hosts won’t ask very hard-hitting questions, while others will ask the tough questions even of friends. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to make an educated guess about which sort of host gets many more requests for air-time, and which do not. Still, the thing that I use as a gauge of the worthiness of a candidate is their relative courage in facing hard questions. Many of you will have noted that I hold Mark Levin in high esteem, because his passion and his intellect combine to make for one tremendously good show. He’s funny, outspoken, and most of all well-reasoned, and he’s always polite to guests though he has been firm. During this campaign season, he’s mentioned his preferences for Bachmann and then Santorum when the Minnesota Representative bowed out. He was always gracious to them, but that didn’t stop him from asking some tough questions.
He also talked to Gingrich, of whom he had been fairly critical, and he was tough but fair to Gingrich, and even defended him against the blatant hit-piece by Elliot Abrams. He talked to Cain, and to Perry, and has had a standing invitation for Huntsman, Paul and Romney since the beginning of the campaign season. Huntsman quit the race, but Paul and Romney haven’t done the show, and he’s been particularly critical of Ron Paul at times, so I understand he might have burnt that bridge a little, but he’s said repeatedly that if Mitt Romney is the nominee, he would support him, and yet Romney is always too busy to be on, and Levin doesn’t talk to campaign staffers in lieu of candidates. I realize Levin has been tough on Romney, but no more than on Gingrich, and this distinction was telling for me. If a candidate won’t face Mark Levin on-air, how is he to be expected to compete in a national debate against Barack Obama and the moderator(s) who will almost assuredly be predisposed to Obama’s side?
I was actually impressed by Newt Gingrich when he went on Mark Levin’s show, not merely for his answers to Levin’s probing questions, but mainly because he had the courage to go on, despite the fact that Levin had been fairly critical of Gingrich. Mitt Romney has exhibited no such courage to date, and it’s interesting to me because if you want to “audition” before an audience of conservative and Tea Party types for the job of President, stepping up to the plate on Mark Levin’s show is a good way to demonstrate that you’re willing to stand in the batter’s box even when a few fastballs are high and inside. Romney continues to show no such inclination, and that’s troubling to me and to millions of other conservatives who’d like to hear him answer a few questions from “the Great One.” The problem is that Romney isn’t interested in an appearance with Levin just now. I’m sure if he’s nominated, he’ll appear thereafter when it’s “safer,” because Levin will be on the team at that point.
For a listener and a conservative, this is troubling to me, because it hints at Romney’s strategy of winning the nomination with only sparse conservative support. His calculus is clear: If he wins the nomination, you’ll be faced with the choice to support him, Obama, or simply stay home, and he’s hoping you’ll do the former in preference over the other two alternatives, and it’s his operative assumption that you will. For my part, I’d prefer a candidate to work a good bit harder for my support, because he believes I might well exercise one of the alternatives. After all, the vote is the only real leverage we have with any of these candidates. Let’s call that the “conservative nuclear option.” What a candidate like Romney gambles is that you will see that the fall-out will land on your own head, thus giving you just enough motivation to forgo that messy option.
It’s for this very reason that I always keep my voting options open. I want candidates to understand that having an “R” next to their name doesn’t make anything “automatic.” It’s the only tool an average voter like me has to use as leverage, and if I give that up, I’ve got nothing else, and they know it. You might suggest that this is “extreme,” but I’d ask you what I have otherwise. What keeps any politician even vaguely in line if they don’t have fear of losing our voting support? When you’re talking about a Gingrich or Santorum, without a crowd of deep-pocket contributors, it’s important, but when you’re talking about a deep-pocketed Mitt Romney, it’s really all we have. Rick and Newt need our fives, tens, twenties, and fifties. Romney can live without them. As an example, he’s presently outspending Santorum in Wisconsin by a ratio of 50:1. With this in mind, what Romney wants and needs from us is the only thing we have with which to influence his course: Our votes.
For those of us who can’t contribute thousands of dollars, or millions, what it should make plain is the value of our votes, not in terms of dollars, but in the serious impact they have on the future of the country. You would think with all of that at stake, Mitt Romney would find the time to appear on Mark Levin’s show, but so far, he hasn’t and conservatives like me are beginning to wonder why. We know Levin has taken him to task, but no more than Newt Gingrich, and Gingrich had the fortitude to appear, leaving conservatives to fill in the blanks on their own: Is it that Romney is afraid of that interview now, or is it that he simply doesn’t care about the opinion or the votes of an audience he assumes will come back to him for lack of options later?
I tend to think it’s more of the latter than the former, because while Levin asks some tough questions, he doesn’t overplay his hand or go off the deep end with GOP candidates in that fashion, so other than the possibility of a slip-up, I don’t think Romney has anything to fear. I think he’s simply playing it safe. I believe he assumes that 98% of that audience will have no choice but to vote for him in the general election, so why risk it? I don’t think candidates should be permitted to make such assumptions, but for obvious reasons, it’s easy for them to get away with it. I don’t know what Mark Levin might ask Mitt Romney if given the opportunity, but I have my own short list:
Governor Romney, if you did not win the nomination, could the Republican party still count on your active support in the November election?
If you are nominated and elected President, you’ve said you would repeal Obamacare. Is that still the plan, and if you succeeded in overseeing its repeal, would you seek to replace it with something else, and if so, what?
I believe he’d answer the first appropriately, although if it came to pass, I have my doubts about how active his support would be based on 2008. I think the second question would be the one to trip him up, because it’s the one nobody in media is really asking. They ask him if he’d repeal, and he says yes, but what is never discussed is what he would then do on the issue. Would he simply return things to their pre-Obamacare state, and walk away, or would he seek to replace it with something similar albeit not much less egregious? Would he tinker with it around the edges instead?
These are the questions conservatives would love to hear answered, because I suspect that he plans the latter option, if he’d move on the legislation at all. I think if he were pinned down by this question, he’d be forced to either reveal his plans or tell a whopper. Of course, I’d love to hear the answer to one question I suspect Levin would ask:
Governor Romney, you’ve said you would issue waivers to every state immediately. Could you tell me which section of the statute permits such waivers?
This is one of the bits of Romney’s repeal pledge that has been suspect in my mind for some time, and Levin was really the only person in media I’m aware of who picked up on the significance. I have looked, and I can’t find where there is authority for any waivers in the statute, and any such “waivers” would likely result in immediate legal challenges launched from the left. Sure, they won’t say anything about it now, because it’s their guy issuing phony waivers, but those waivers won’t be permanent in any case, and you can expect that if a Republican president issued such a waiver to states, the left would mobilize to the courtrooms to argue there is no such statutory authority.
I believe this last issue is certainly one reason Mitt Romney won’t get within a country mile of a phone line upon the other end of which is the Mark Levin show. It would be a fiasco if Levin asked him this and he was unable to satisfy the question with an answer. As you can see, there’s every reason for Romney to play it safe and avoid Mark Levin like the plague during the primary season, but it’s also the reason I can’t get behind Romney. By avoiding Mark Levin, he’s really avoiding all of us who want to hear his answers to these questions. It would have been great to get an answer to these in a debate, but for all the smoke and mirrors, these were never raised in full. If Mitt Romney wants the support of conservatives, he’s going to need to answer these at some point, or risk going into the general election unsure of whether conservatives will give him their unqualified support. He’ll need every vote to defeat Barack Obama.
I’ve warned conservatives for nearly as long as I’ve been blogging that to nominate Mitt Romney is to commit an act of electoral suicide. I’ve told you that when it comes time to run the general election campaign, Romney will abandon all of this talk about repealing Obamacare because he will be toast on this issue. Barack Obama knows this too, and it’s the reason every Democrat in Washington wants to see a Romney candidacy. For once, we got a little insight into the coming Romney betrayals, when his longtime Campaign adviser and Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom on Wednesday likened Mitt Romney to an etch-a-sketch in terms of their ability to re-shape the campaign once the general election campaign begins. This was an admission of what would really happen to all of his talk about being a conservative should Mitt Romney secure the party’s nomination.
I’ve urged the other candidates to hammer Romney on this point, and to their credit, they have, but without debates lately, they’re not making much headway in the media that largely favors Mitt Romney, so the point isn’t being made. Consider it another gift, because now we get a little help from an unlikely source, who made mention of this issue, although not by name. The source? Barack Obama.
“We designed a program that actually previously had support of Republicans, including the person who may end up being the Republican standard bearer and is now pretending like he came up with something different,” the president said.
The Massachusetts plan served as a model for the Affordable Care Act, signed two years ago Friday. Romney, the state’s former governor, has since said the legislation was the correct course for his state but not meant as a model for a national overhaul. But the plan has proved a focal point of criticism aimed at the GOP frontrunner.
In Thursday’s interview, Obama said Republican opposition to the plan, including the Supreme Court challenge, is politically motivated.
He said state governors will have a difficult time explaining resistance to the law to their constituents.
“When people see that in fact it works, it makes sense – as it’s, by the way, working in Massachusetts – then I think a whole bunch of folks will say ‘Why aren’t we trying it as well?’” Obama said.
It’s important to understand the meaning of this audio clip in context of the “Etch-a-sketch” comment. Twice, in less than two minutes, Obama goes out of his way to mention a unnamed candidate(Romney) and the state he governed (Massachusetts) as extensions of his healthcare law. Let that soak in, and realize that the one issue on which more than 60% of Americans agree, that Obamacare must be repealed, Mitt Romney will be completely neutralized in a general campaign.
Therefore, I believe that the Etch-a-Sketch is all about dumping his promise to seek the repeal of Obama-care. He can’t. He will be absolutely wrecked by Barack Obama and his campaign if he even tries that approach. Romney is the one candidate among all of the Republicans who is least able to make the case against Obamacare, and it is the one issue that has united the American people against Obama like no other. I cannot see how the Republicans defeat Obama without this issue, and yet if Mitt Romney is the nominee, this is precisely what he will be forced to do.
That “Etch-a-Sketch?” Yes, that got to be shaken as soon as Romney captures the nomination, and when it is, part of the picture that will be erased will be the promise to repeal Obamacare. Mitt Romney is being dishonest in this respect. It will ruin him if he tries, and without it, he cannot win. I think most of the readers of this blog have understood this all along, but there’s a segment of the conservative base that doesn’t follow the inside politics, and may not yet understand this. There is no candidate who will fare more poorly against Barack Obama than Mitt Romney. All of this talk about his electability is based on a very generic sense conveyed by the media, but does not represent what the voters will see in the last six to eight weeks of the campaign. This is just a sample of how Romney will be neutered on the Obama-care issue, and it’s going to mean Romney will simply drop all of the repeal talk once he has your nomination. Let me be blunt:
Nominate the Etch-a-Sketch, and you get four more years of Barack Obama.
Remember when Congress was running the numbers through the Congressional Budget Office to get a scoring of the costs of Obama-care? Not surprisingly, these estimates fell well short of the real numbers under the arm-twisting and politicking of the Democrat leadership of Nancy Pelosi(D-CA,) then Speaker of the House. In short, they engineered a lie, and that lie was that over ten years, the costs of Obama-care would be “just” $900 Billion, but now the CBO has revised its estimates, and that number has sky-rocketed to nearly $1.8 Trillion. You might wonder how badly you’re about to be hammered, but you can expect that by the time Obamacare is fully implemented, most working Americans will see their premiums sky-rocket(and in truth, many already have in just the last two years since the bill’s passage.) Expect to pay more in taxes, and if you’re an employer, you may want to consider what they intend for you with all the new penalties.
Back in 2009-10, when the bill was being debated, they kept going back to browbeat CBO as repeated modifications of the bill continued to exceed one-trillion dollars. They finally came out with a cost estimate of $940 billion, and this was sufficient to get the support of some wavering Democrats who didn’t want to be tagged with a $1 Trillion expenditure. At the time, many Congressional critics said that it would come in far higher since the CBO was using a static scoring that didn’t account for economic conditions at large. Much of the near doubling of the costs are accounted for by a weaker economy than they had estimated at the time. This is typical CBO estimating: Look at the sky today, see it is blue, and estimate the cost for umbrellas over the next ten years will be zero. As you’re drenched for lack of an umbrella, they will explain that their estimates didn’t account for the dynamics of weather.
The entire Obama-care scam is just now kicking into high gear. Over the next eighteen months, as new features and taxes kick in, along with the mandates and penalties, I don’t think most small or even medium businesses quite grasp how badly this is going to affect their bottom lines. This is because much of it has been hidden, and many large corporations have managed to obtain exemptions from the Obama administration. It’s not clear that those exemptions are even legal, and it’s fairly certain they will end early in a second Obama term. Our best hope is that the Supreme Court overturns the whole law, since there is no severability clause in this law, meaning that to throw out one portion, for instance the individual mandate, all portions of the law must go. If that happens, we’ll be extraordinarily fortunate, but we must plan on the fact that this is going to go forward irrespective of the desires of more than 65% of the American people, who oppose it.
When you see Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or Barack Obama, or any other Democrat who supported and voted for this law, you can assume they are liars, one and all, and that they knew full well that this program was going to cost significantly more than advertised. They lied, because it was the only way to get even their own members to vote for it, not because those members believed the lies, but because it gave them plausible political cover. Know this: If your member of Congress or your Senators voted for this bill, despite what they may say now, they knew it was an underestimate based on willful ignorance. You should cast your votes accordingly at the next opportunity.
When you invite the world into your bedroom, don’t expect the world to withhold comments. When you invite government to fund healthcare, there will be no holding back the ultimate encroachment into personal privacy. There’s no ambiguity here. When Sandra Fluke testified before Congress, she invited this, but more importantly, when leftists shoved government healthcare down our throats, beginning in the 1960s, and culminating finally in “Obamacare,” the whole question of privacy was suppressed with a finality that most people simply won’t like: The government is involved in your healthcare. By definition, it is no longer private information. You cannot bring government into the matter of contraception without inviting it ultimately into your doctor’s office, your bathroom, and your bedroom.
People who are defending Fluke are ignoring the simple fact that when you make your sexuality and things related to it a matter of public record and government interest, you’re holding the door open for public judgments. Your reproductive health, but also the health of your kidneys is subject to governmental review. Do not offer that you haven’t understood where this would lead. Fluke wants others to be compelled to cover her contraception. What did she expect would happen? If you come to me and say “hey, pal, I need you to pay for…my kids to eat,” you can expect that I will soon ask you why you have so many children. As long as people are going to try to redistribute their private burdens onto the public account, there should be no claim whatsoever that the demand-makers can avoid public judgment. They’re inviting them.
What do you think is the meaning of the implementation of the various state EBT cards, so that at the grocery check-out, those living off of the rest of us can avoid any alleged stigma previously associated with food-stamps? They want the dignity associated with the appearance of paying their own way without the necessity of actually doing so. Such people are frauds, but their first victim is always themselves. Before they can fool the rest of us, they must first pretend to themselves that this procedure is fine, and that there is no shame in any of it. I won’t permit it. I’m not going to let charlatans parade around as though they are anything other than what the facts reveal.
If you’re a college student, or anybody else for that matter, and you wish to avoid pregnancy, but cannot afford your own contraceptives, there’s a simple answer, and as Foster Freiss might offer, it may involve an aspirin. As a member of the paying public, my first response when you demand free contraception is:
“Nothing is free. Why do you think I should pay for it?”
What can you answer? What is your moral premise? What is the basis for your claim against my wallet? There are two important principles here, and the first is that to Ms. Fluke and any like her who demand contraception funded by others, the only rational answer must be “No.” It’s an important word, and just as it applies in this context, where I do not give my consent, Ms. Fluke and all those like her should consider adding the word to their own vocabularies, in which case contraception might no longer be such a pressing necessity.
I don’t know anything about Fluke’s sexual habits, and I don’t really care. I simply don’t wish to pay for them, and I don’t want government compelling coverages on faith-based institutions, including the university at which she is a student. Her sexual life became a matter of public concern when she made it one. She is not a victim of Rush Limbaugh, or anybody else. She’s a victim of her own desire to put a gun to the heads of people of faith who will be coerced under the auspices of Obamacare to cover her contraceptive needs.
This is the truth of this issue, and when you consider what Obamacare will actually impose, from death-panels to medical records databases, and access to your financial records, it’s clear that there will be no effective protection of privacy. I don’t know how any rational person can believe that they can get somebody else to pay for something on their behalf, and still maintain privacy. You have a heart condition? The government will know. Diabetes? The government will know. Herpes? The government will know. They will know everything about you including the weight you register when you step on the scale in your doctor’s office.
What do you think has been the meaning of the “war on obesity,” the “war on bad eating habits,” the “war on smoking” or the “war on salt?” Wait until this system begets a “war on sexuality” or some such thing. It’s only a matter of time, because in the hands of politicians, it will be unavoidable. There will be no privacy. You will face inevitable judgments if you rely upon government directly or indirectly to meet or mandate the fulfillment of your needs. Sandra Fluke complains that she’s going broke paying for contraception, and that may be the case, but life is full of choices, and it’s time for her to grow up and make them, or sustain the judgments heaped upon her for demanding others carry the burdens those choices impose.
We’ve heard a good bit about what the 2,700 pages of Obamacare holds in store for the American people, but I’m not sure you will have known all of these details. This video is astonishingly detailed, and if you haven’t seen it before, taking the ten minutes necessary to view it will certainly be an eye-opening affair for those of you who’ve not seen this. Suffice it to say that if this isn’t repealed, we’re going to lose all of our liberties, and with it, the entire country. Take the time to watch this. If you weren’t worried about healthcare before, you will be afterwards:
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said a mouth-full in an interview with Greta Van Susteren On the Record. She effectively admitted that Mitt Romney will only seek to repeal such parts of Obamacare as are in conflict with his own ideas, so that we’ll see a push for Romneycare nationwide. She makes several dishonest arguments, but one thing that is certain is that she already believes she has a job lined up in a Romney Administration. After all, she helped deliver the critical Florida primary. After all, where would Romney be now if he had lost in Florida? Voters in Michigan and Arizona beware! Romney is who so many have suspected all along: A big-government liberal from Massachusetts. Watch the video here:
It’s bad enough to be ruled by Barack Obama and his friends in the Democrat party and throughout the far-left establishment, but to find that Republicans have the same notions is simply despicable, and here, Bondi confirms it. While she pretends this is a states’ rights issue, it’s nothing of the sort. This isn’t about federalism, but about the nature of one’s right to one’s life and liberty. To attempt to push this line explains why Romney wouldn’t back away from Romneycare, and used the same poorly-formed argument to excuse it: He intends this for all of us.
Rather than talking for two weeks about contraception, perhaps we should have been spending a little more time vetting Romneycare and Mitt’s intentions, but then again, maybe mis-direction has been the point.
Watching some of the coverage of Barack Obama’s edict issued to Catholic organizations, it’s become painfully clear to me that many so-called “journalists” don’t have the first clue why this is upsetting. They simply don’t understand it. In their thinking, this isn’t a religious issue at all. In their view, matters of conscience begin and end at the steps of the church, demonstrating that they not only believe in a separation of church and state, but church and life. What they admitted in their shocked confusion over the back-lash is what I have always known, and you have likely suspected too: To these people, religion is a belief system that is practiced behind the closed doors of a church, and the very notion that your beliefs extend to the rest of your life is foreign to them. While many in the media claim to be members of various churches, one clearly gets the sense that many are not all too serious about it, and this issue has revealed them as insincere.
After all, if you’re a committed and observant Catholic, you hold with the teachings of the Church that contraception (never mind abortion) contradicts God’s will. These people in media understand this about Catholics, but they are astonished when Catholics and others react badly against a governmental edict that requires them to support contraception through compulsory add-ons to insurance plans, or through tax dollars. For them, the issue is your private faith, to which they will agree you are entitled, versus your adherence to it in all facets of your life. In effect, what they suppose is that while you may rightly hold your own beliefs, that when you exit the church you must set aside your beliefs in all the rest of your daily life. In essence, they believe in a separation of your religious beliefs from practical life.
This is a telling revelation, and it correlates well with this class of bloody hypocrites, who may profess this religious belief or that, but seldom adhere to it in their own lives. To them, religion is about private professions of a belief in a crowd of like-minded people, assembled at best within the walls of a church, hidden from society and closed in from all the world. They cannot conceive of the notion that you might adhere to a given church, accept all its teachings, and extend their practice into your daily lives. You oppose abortion on the basis of religion? Fine, they will say, but if you’re a doctor, that doesn’t relieve you of the duty to perform one if a patient demands it. They demand doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmacists, and everyone else to abandon their faith once they exit their homes or churches.
In their view, religion is something dispensable, like deciding whether it is too warm for a sweater, or too cool for shorts on the way to a picnic. They project their own loosely-defined, carelessly adopted choices of conscience onto every other man and woman in the culture, and expect that all others would so easily drop their beliefs at the command of a President, or any other dictatorial thug, just on his say-so. It is much like the attitude of Romney over Romneycare in the debate with Rick Santorum: “It’s not worth getting angry about.” This disconnect in their professed religious views from their daily lives is born of the fact that in the first instance, most of them are liars, and starting with the commandment to “not bear false witness,” they begin very early in their careers to do precisely that.
If you slant a story about a person to make his actions seem worse, or better, you’re bearing false witness. What has modern journalism become if not a perpetual parade of people trotted out before some camera, or interviewed and quoted in print who bears false witness against somebody else? When this becomes the touchstone of your profession, and the way to score the lead story, and the above-the-fold headline, you can bet the long-term affect will be to destroy one’s sense of what is a lie and what isn’t. Mad? Yes, of course we become angry! This should offend you nearly as badly as the story in this case, because it reveals something else too: It is reported that President Obama and some in his inner circle dismissed warnings from some others in the administration that there could be a back-lash, and that they are somewhat surprised now that the back-lash is well under way. In short, the media is surprised, but so is the President’s inner circle, and for exactly the same reason: Obama, despite his professions of a Christian faith and twenty years in Jeremiah Wright’s church, doesn’t take his faith all that seriously either. Like many liberals, it was all about appearances.
This also explains something else, if you’re observant: The same people who are shocked about this reveal why they hold such naive views about radical Islamists. Think of it: They don’t understand that Muslims motivated to terror by radical Imams might well actually believe every word they’ve been taught as they throw themselves into crowded streets with bombs strapped to their chests. In short, they are willing to act on the strength of their beliefs, whether you and I agree with those beliefs being a separate matter. In the worldview of the left, this is a confounding issue of politics gone haywire, and it is why they do not understand how the Arab Spring is rapidly undergoing a climate change of a different sort. In the main, this is either because they don’t hold religious convictions, or at least not firmly, or because they believe that political expedience trumps all other causes. Either way, what they fail to understand is that a Catholic doctor of Obstetrics and Gynecology may have matters of conscience or faith that prohibit the performing of abortions.
To them, matters of faith are strictly personal, and should have no bearing on one’s dealings or relations with others. These people have no understanding of committed, observantly faithful practitioners of any religion. They think “free exercise” is a matter of speech at most, and even then should remain in church at its most public. Their perspective is that of a shallow faith, not made of actions tied to beliefs, but of words tied mainly to doubts or dis-beliefs. They cannot understand why one’s religious beliefs should matter at all in one’s performance in the workplace, or why they might affect the diligence with which one adheres to the vows of one’s marriage. In their view, these things are all superficial and transient, meaning that when they seem shocked and confused over how this could possibly be seen by Catholics, or Christians in general, as a matter of the interference by the state in the free exercise of religion, most are not faking it. They really don’t “get it,” and it’s because they have no idea that faith and religious instruction actually informs the views of many millions of Americans. They expect you to make professions of faith, but never to act upon it.
In short, they really are clueless. And besides, “it’s not worth getting angry about.”
To watch television and listen to the arguments of leftists is to punish your mind. I have heard and watched the most absurd switching of contexts I have seen in quite some time, and I must tell you that if the left is permitted to win on this one, you’re done. The country is done. Liberty is dead. These dictatorial thugs have perfected the ludicrous formula of switching contexts to an extent I have never seen, but you must know of it in full. This propaganda form would be artful if were not so evil, but in this case, it’s clumsily obvious. It is nevertheless effective against the sort of people who are easily swayed by half-baked arguments. They say: “Barack Obama isn’t oppressing people and institutions of faith, but instead, and incredibly, freeing their victims from oppression.”
Yes, that’s right: According to the talking points of every leftwing hack from Jehmu Greene(another Soros shill on FoxNews,) to James Carney(aptly named as he conducts his three-ring circus in the briefing room of the White House,) the word has gone out from on high: President Obama’s severe policy is not a breach of religious freedoms, but instead the elevation of freedoms for women. This clown-show should not be acknowledged in the usual fashion. This is tyranny writ large, and if you’re still not quite seeing the threat explicit in all this, let me do my best to explain it. We have here two contradictory premises, and one of them is a logical farce, while the other is a natural law. I’m going to solicit your attention while we differentiate among the two.
The right of conscience(freedom of religion, thought, speech, publishing and the like,) arise from the natural fact that no person can control your mind, or what you believe. All they can do is to silence you by coercion and naked aggression, but nothing on Earth can forcibly change your mind if you are determined against it. This gives rise to the old lament that “you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.” I can chide you, I can threaten you, and I can even do you harm, but I cannot compel you to change your mind, and that is the root of that freedom: Your mind and its contents are yours, and solely. No government, no dictator, no King, and no society can command you to change your mind.
Place this against the notion of a “freedom to access contraception.” That sounds great for those who want it, but that’s not where the left ends their hunt. They now make of it a “right to equal access to contraception.” Once you make of a thing a “right,” then nobody can interfere with you legally. However, all of this flies in the face of nature, and therefore the very concept of “rights.” What if there is no contraception available? Is nature violating your rights? Is the market violating your rights? Is the government violating your rights? This abominable argument is based on a nonsensical premise that you can have a right, any right, of any sort or in any context to that which must be provided in some way by others.
There is no such right. There can be no such right. This is not a right, but a wish, or a demand, and call it what you will, but to call it a “right” is to demean and debase what a “right” is. A right is a natural entitlement of liberty that confers no positive obligation upon another, nor requires the consent of another for its free exercise, but arises solely from the natural fact of one’s existence. How can one then claim a condom, or a birth control pill, or a spermicidal gel, or any of the other myriad forms of contraception are a matter of rights? To have such a right would compel others to provide it, and that’s a “positive obligation,” and to exercise it, you would need the consent of no other, but what if none wish to manufacture it, sell it, or prescribe it? It cannot be a right by any measure. There can be no rights to a thing which others must provide.
What is worst among all the criminal edicts implicit in this case is that Obama is instructing institutions of faith that they must provide, as a matter of “rights,” access to contraception via health insurance plans. Now he will command people to provide insurance for coverage they do not wish to provide on grounds of conscience, and as bad as this seems, and it is truly monstrous, I tell you now that this is the result of permitting tin-pot thugs with suits and ties from either party to tell you anything about what you may or must sell or purchase, and under what conditions you may or must do so.
What is being done in this case is not merely an affront to people of faith, but to all people everywhere of every persuasion and of any inclination, except statism. In a nutshell, an actual right, the natural right of conscience, endorsed by our First Amendment, and allegedly guaranteed us by our government, has been trampled in the name of a non-existent, impossible, and unenforceable right to the minds, bodies, souls, and properties of others. This is the radical boot of Barack Obama on the throats of Americans everywhere, and those too foolish to understand the meaning of this assault on their precious liberties are either too young to understand them, or too submissively dependent to care.
I am laying down a challenge to my readers, to be spread as far and wide among institutions of faith, be they churches, mosques, synagogues or temples, or the charity and healthcare facilities and organizations under their umbrellas: Do not yield to this. There is talk of some sort of negotiation. Any who negotiate this point are sell-outs. Any who yield are collaborators. This is not a matter of insurance policies, but a matter of urgent necessity in the name of liberty. I urge resistance. I urge non-compliance. I do not and would not ordinarily undertake such strong language, but I believe it is my duty as an American, knowing full well that this exceeds all boundaries on governmental authority prescribed by our framers, and knowing that this will lead only to more tyrannical edicts issuing forth from the despot’s mouth.
That’s right, I said it. Barack Obama is a despot. Report me to AttackWatch if you don’t like it. Is there any greater treason to be undertaken by any man entrusted with power but to reach out to the consciences of others and demand at gunpoint: “Your thoughts and your beliefs, or your life?” If my readers fail to remember every other word I have written, remember these few: Government is force, and nothing more, and to yield your mind to its threats of force is a surrender to an unnatural dictator at the most fundamental level.
No person should permit this. No person should surrender to this. No person. You have seen now the ultimate bastardization of the concept of “rights,” and it is being done to you as you sit in quiet contemplation of the spectacle, as your appointed leaders contemplate their own surrender in the name of the kingdoms they have built for themselves by the graces of your charity and by your acts in the name of your faith. If they will not lead, and stand up to this tyrant, you must do so by unseating your cardinals, bishops, ministers, priests, reverends, pastors, rabbis, and any other leader to whom you look for guidance on such matters. If they will not lead now, when the cause is greatest, and when you need them most, you need them…not at all.
Once again, at issue is Romneycare, and this time, it’s a piece of video that asks the question: “Is Mitt Romney a Liar?”
This one is going to be problematic for Romney, on the facts, and the idea that he claimed Romneycare is not like Obamacare given the interview with one of his advisers on the legislation, who also worked on Obamacare, is going to make this stick. What is clear is that Romneycare is substantially the model for Obamacare, which raises all sorts of questions about Romney’s integrity on the issue.
Nobody should be surprised to find that Barack Obama would attempt to use Christianity to justify his socialism. It’s what statists do when they run out of other excuses, and it generally takes the form of the brain-addled professions of mis-quoted faith as a substitute for legitimate government actions. In an article on BuzzFeed, they have documented Obama’s attempt to play this card from up his sleeve, but conservatives of Christian faith should not be fooled by the appeal. It’s a lie intended to draw you into statist arguments, and we’ve seen it before, originating from Republicans too. We must reject this, for if ever there was actually a place in which a wall of separation was intended to exist between church and state, Obama’s usage is where that wall must be erected. In part, the President said:
“And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’”
Here is the problem we confront with the fraudulent, anti-Christian argument of the President: Too many people will be too easily misled by this entirely nonsensical argument. You might ask me, “but Mark, isn’t it true that it is Jesus’ command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself?’” To you? Yes. To President Obama, personally, as an individual man? Yes. To the government of the United States? NO! If you are a faithful Christian, you will know that the words of Jesus were not a command to government, but to people. Jesus did not minister to governments or nations, but to people. Christians understand that there can be no understanding in spirit between The Almighty and governments, but only between their God and individual people. Not even a church can claim to speak for its entire flock at once, or know the sincerity of all its members’ faith. Instead, this is the realm of private conscience, literally between you as individuals and God.
What Barack Obama here offers is something else again, in the form of a command intended for individual human hearts and minds, projected onto all of society at once by governmental command. Is this what Jesus taught? If so, I cannot find it. Jesus did not teach that it was government’s duty, but the duty of individual men to love thy neighbor as thyself. When Moses brought forth commandments for the Israelites, not one among the ten prescribed a single word to the state, but instead all to individual actions of people. What the President has done in this case is to make the most absurd parallel between governmental actions and the actions of individual men.
You might doubt me, as mostly God-fearing people, so let me ask it straight away: Do the teachings of Jesus order you to compel other men at gunpoint to do his bidding? Do the commandments brought down by Moses say to you that you must steal, or that you shall not steal? The government in the form Barack Obama here prescribes is one in which the state takes on the characteristics of an individual man, but to do so, must first commit a breach at least one of ten commandments given to individual men. This is not the teaching of Jesus. Jesus did not tell individual men that they should appeal to Caesar to love their neighbor in their stead. The proof of this is to reconstruct the line, and decide what is sensible for Jesus to have intended:
“Government, love thy neighbor as thyself”
Obviously, Jesus was not speaking to government. Instead, if we are to place the assumed addressing of the remark, we must edit it like this:
“You love thy neighbor as thyself”
What more does it take than this to understand that this teaching was intended for individual men and women? This was a direct command to individuals, as all the commands of Jesus. Of course, there exists no shortage of charlatans who pretend that Jesus intended something else. Jesus did not tell men to employ the force of government to steal from other men to love their neighbors on their behalf. Jesus did not minister to a mass, but instead to a sea of individuals, one by one, each in his own conscience. This is precisely in opposition to the message of Obama, who tells us government should act in your place in all things. This is the lie Barack Obama teaches, and while it may soothe those who are amenable to this message, you will find that his motives are to pervert the intentions of Jesus to his own ends. We must not permit this sort of lie to bear false witness against the teachings of Jesus, whether it originates with Democrats or Republicans.
It’s horrible when you realize that one who you had thought had been conservative makes a point of proving your belief wrong, while insisting otherwise. The meaning of the word “disappointment” hardly covers what has gone wrong with Ann Coulter’s writing over the last year, but when you realize that she has sidled up to the GOP establishment, the truth becomes undeniably clear. Proving that Ann Coulter is willing to forsake all her principles in favor of the latest establishment candidate, she has written a piece that is not only manipulative, but purposefully omits several important facts. Worse still, at one point, Coulter flatly lies, and no excuse of incomplete information can possibly cover it. Coulter wishes Three Cheers For Romneycare, but I know her cheers are really for Mitt Romney, and this cobbled-together nonsense constitutes a lie Ann Coulter ought not to have told.
Coulter couldn’t wait to posit the lie, but it’s such a well-known lie, she buried it at the end of a paragraph leaning on Rick Santorum for out-of-context, irrelevant support:
“Romney, incidentally, has always said his plan would be a bad idea nationally.”
This is demonstrably untrue, but what is stunning about this claim is the un-writing of history it proposes. My readers will doubtless remember the flap over the line pulled from the second printing of Mitt Romney’s book, where he originally made this very argument. This was of such controversy that it has been mentioned in the debates, so how is it possible that Ann Coulter ignored this while depositing this steaming pile in your midst. The original text of Romney’s book(H/T ABCNews) included the following text:
“We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care.” -No Apology- Mitt Romney (emphasis added)
As you can plainly see, Ann Coulter lied, and it angers me that not only did she lie, but that I was forced to dig up a link from the ABCNews site to prove it. This also demonstrates another point, and it’s an important one you should note: While Ann Coulter tells lies on Romney’s behalf, the radical left will give him no such pass in the general election should he become our nominee. Shame on Coulter for this lie in obstinate denial of well-known and widely-viewed fact. If Coulter doesn’t know this, I can only wonder how, since it’s clear that she reported watching the debate in which Governor Rick Perry(R-TX) raised the issue.
“No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.”
Really? I am claiming it. I am. Several states and individuals are suing over this requirement of Obamacare. That Coulter doesn’t seem to notice that many Americans aren’t claiming a right not to buy it, but that this is the result of the opposite concept – that government has no authority to force us to buy it – makes it perfectly clear that Coulter now holds a view of individual liberties perfectly compatible with Barack Obama’s views on so-called “negative rights.” That Coulter is now reduced to making the backward argument of leftist filth-mongers should tell you all you really need to know, but I am still shocked by it. Nevertheless, unable to deal with reality, she throws out this laughable tripe:
“The only reason the “individual mandate” has become a malediction is because the legal argument against Obamacare is that Congress has no constitutional authority to force citizens to buy a particular product.”
One might wonder what is controversial in conservative circles about the idea of the unconstitutionality of an individual mandate, except for the fact that Ann now seems to support the notion. I almost cannot believe that Coulter has written this, as she urges the nomination of Mitt Romney as our only chance to repeal Obamacare. Why? Why repeal it, Ms. Coulter? Her article suggests she has absolutely no problem with it. I’ve told my readers over the last few days that I believe the GOP establishment doesn’t want to repeal Obamacare, and that Mitt Romney is the Trojan horse to make sure repeal never happens, but now Coulter comes along to virtually flaunt this in our faces.
Incredibly, she concludes her article after paragraphs of misdirection, manipulation, and at least one flat-out lie with the following:
“The problem isn’t health insurance mandates. The problem isn’t Romneycare. The problem isn’t welfare reform. The problem is Democrats.”
The problem is the health insurance mandate. The problem includes Romneycare. Democrats are indeed a party to this problem, but by this incredible piece of dishonesty posted under the banner of what had been thought to be a conservative writer, what we now know the real problem is that we can no longer tell how Ms. Coulter is any different from those who would rule over us. If this is Ann Coulter’s version of conservatism, she can keep it along with the rest of her lies.
It’s getting so that we can no longer discern when Coulter is telling the truth or a lie, since she now carries Romney’s water in ludicrous pieces like this one, but less than one year ago, before Christie bowed out, Coulter insisted to us that Mitt Romney could not win. Take Coulter with a grain of salt. This episode makes me question all the things she has ever written, never mind what she’s said. I remember her attacks on Sarah Palin, but at least we now know why, don’t we? Of course, I did believe she meant it when she implied that the Tea Party consisted of emotionally driven morons. Coulter has a sad obsession with the GOP establishment, but we have known that for some time.
Do I believe you, Ms. Coulter? No, I must state emphatically now that the real problem we face as conservatives lies also in part with you.
For those of you who wonder how sincere Mitt Romney is about wanting to repeal Obama-care, as I have concluded in the past, there’s no way he will fight for it. The Gateway Pundit is carrying an excellent report on this fact, and one of Romney’s surrogates, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, went “On The Record” with Greta Van Susteren Friday night, and what she said more or less lets the cat out of the bag. If you want to know why it’s unlikely Romney will ever act to fully repeal Obamacare, or simply why so many believe he’s insincere on the issue, you’ll want to read this. It’s an excellent catch by the Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft, and I’d urge you to surf on over and give the story and included video its due consideration. Excellent reporting!
As a fellow who is a student of economics, one of my pet peeves is the confusion that often arises when economic concepts are misused out of context to justify political ends. In the discussion and debate leading up to the passage of Obama-care, it was famously noted by Sarah Palin that “death panels” are a feature of that plan. In short, the death panels would make “ethical decisions” based not on what was ethical with respect to individuals, but with respect to what was ethical in choosing on behalf of society at large, i.e, the government. The supporters of the Obama-care program maintained that “there were already death panels” imposed by insurers, and that in any event, rationing would always take place as a matter of economics. In this last point, they were correct in the strictest terms, but they were wrong to compare government actions to the actions of individuals and private businesses in the free market. This is one example of the abuse of economics by politicians, so let us examine it more closely.
In economics, everything is rationed, because it is assumed that there is a basic unlimited demand for all goods and services. Since there exists no infinite supply of anything, it is necessarily true that all things are rationed in some fashion. Gasoline is rationed. It’s happening right this moment. Food is rationed. Housing is rationed. There is no good or service that isn’t rationed, and the primary instrument for determining the allocation of the limited supply in a free market is money. The smaller the supply of a thing, relative to the quantity demanded by the market, the greater will be the price. This is the manner in which everything is rationed: There is a only so much money, and he who possesses enough of it can tap into the limited supply. This form of rationing is natural, or free market-based, meaning that this happens organically with or without formal rules, and always has, even before the notion of money as a medium of exchange had occurred to primitive cultures and barter systems still dominated commerce and trade. Strictly speaking, in economic terms, it is true to say that all things are rationed somehow. This is how we reconcile the basic premise underlying modern economics as the study of an unlimited wishes in pursuit of finite supplies.
The question then arises whether natural allocation(or rationing) is “fair.” Since fairness is a wholly subjective term, it cannot be answered in the realm of economics, but instead becomes a matter of politics. This is where the trouble begins, because what politicians most frequently do is to apply their own subjective notions of what is fair in place of the much more objective standard of a natural market. They concoct these notions to satisfy political constituencies, but the twist and turn in order to define the question as a matter of economics. Inevitably, they do so by reducing the question to the subjective grounds of a particular individual, or group, and ask whether it is “fair” that so-and-so cannot afford such-and-such. In this sense, the economics they are discussing are applicable to small groups, but not to the whole market.
What government schemers for socialized medicine have done is to insert government coercion into the place of the natural market allocation. If you say to me, “It is sad that Johnny cannot get his surgery because he has not the money,” if my answer is based on the free market, I must say “it may be sad, but it is fair because he could have obtained the money by previous work, insurance, charity, or even credit.” The fact that Johnny hadn’t the money for the surgery is not a justification to disclaim the objective fairness of the free market system, but sadly, that is how it is used by politicians. Enter the statist, and he will proclaim that he can reintroduce “human fairness” or “social justice” or some such enfeebling concept by virtue of government coercion. If Johnny hasn’t the money, the politician will take it from somebody else at gunpoint to pay for Johnny’s surgery, provided Johnny meets any requirements they may have enacted.
Perhaps the surgery Johnny needs is a kidney transplant, but rather than expend the resources, since Johnny is also a wheelchair-bound, elderly man, the government may say “You’re not worth saving.” Worse, if the government denies Johnny the ability to obtain his own health-care by his own means outside the government system, what the government is doing is to pronounce a sentence of death on Johnny. If Johnny happens to be a recent college graduate in his twenties, in otherwise good health, the government will view it as a good investment in many cases since he will pay much more in taxes over his expected lifetime than the surgery may cost. Notice that the decision criteria is entirely social, and based on the economics of government expenditures, which actually means: Political considerations. It is also the reason that every system of socialized medicine ultimately leads to many more people dying prematurely as they are denied treatments of which they would have availed themselves in an open market. If this were not true, we would not see so many from around the socialized world flocking here to pay cash for treatments they cannot obtain by any means in their home countries.
You might contend, as the leftists do, that this is done by private insurers routinely. There is some truth to this, but it is also substantially dishonest. As a participant in a free market system, you are free to choose an insurer and pay such premiums as you are willing and able, to cover everything to some gargantuan limit, or you may choose a policy less expensive, but also less thorough. In this manner, the rationing occurs because you have enough money, or you don’t, but that is up to your own resourcefulness and diligence and all the factors that frequently make the difference between relative poverty and relative affluence. You might decide at this point to take me back to the argument of the “unfairness of money,” but as I’ve already explained, in a free market, fairness is measured differently than in your subjective wishes.
If it was my choice as to which system I would endure, I would prefer to take my chances in the free market system, because I believe I can manage to afford the coverage I might need, but in a government system, no matter how diligent and efficacious had been my own labors, I might be told “sorry, you’re outside the limits established for this procedure,” and be denied treatment irrespective of my ability to pay. I would always choose this latter option, because it affords me the greater measure of freedom, and if it winds up that I was unable to provide the coverage I actually wound up needing, at least I will have nobody else to blame. That’s where the politicians come in, again.
Hallelujah! Finally, one of the non-Romneys has noticed what I’ve been saying in various forms for some time, and something I repeated Sunday: Mitt Romney’s Romney-care plan disqualifies him because it robs Republicans of the biggest issue they have on their side. More than 60% of Americans are opposed to Obama-care, and Romney’s own Massachusetts health-care reform was the model for Obama-care. Congratulations to Rick Santorum for recognizing this important truth.
Said Senator Santorum in an interview with Fox News on Sunday:
“Romneycare is a real scarlet letter here,” he said. “We can’t have a nominee that takes away the most important issue in this election, which is an explosion of the federal government and robbing of people’s freedom on the federal level with Obamacare.”
Senator Santorum gets it. I am ecstatic that one of these candidates understands how critically important the issue of Obama-care will be to defeating Barack Obama. He is right to suggest that giving away this issue is political “malpractice.” Unless and until the conservative base of the party realizes this, and walks away from Romney as they should, they’re doomed to repeat 2008 in 2012, only worse.
One of the problems with our current Republicans field is that its putative front-runner effectively nullifies the entire issue of Obama-care as an effective election issue on which to defeat Barack Obama. This is because Mitt Romney’s own Massachusetts health-care reform law, known widely as “Romney-care,” is essentially the forerunner of President Obama’s own signature legislation, known widely as Obama-care. I need Republicans to listen closely: If you want to defeat Obama in November, and have any chance of repealing Obama-care, you need to focus on this as an electoral issue in the primaries.
You can talk about the economy, jobs, and all the rest, but there is no single issue on which you have more clear-cut support, and no other issue that has two-thirds of the American populace behind you. To nominate Mitt Romney is to mute yourselves on this issue, because Romney-care is essentially the same thing. You won’t win with this lousy contradiction stalking your every step, and until you confront the fact that your best winning issue is Obama-care, you’re doomed. If in 1992, as James Carville then said, “It’s the economy, stupid,” then in 2012, the refrain must echo in the rafters, if Republicans are to win: “It’s Obama-care, stupid!”
Of course, as Doug Brady over at C4P writes, there’s reason to believe that some in the GOP establishment are increasingly comfortable with the idea of Obama-care remaining the law. Once you consider that companies contributing to establishment Republicans are happy with the arrangements provided under Obama-care, you start to realize how the fix might well be in. Ann Coulter has offered that repeal of Obama-care will never happen if Obama is re-elected, and she’s right, but she offers this as rationale for why you should support Mitt Romney. The problem with this argument on her part is that it is precisely the Romney-supporting establishment wing of the GOP that really wouldn’t mind if Obama-care went into full effect. Even if they did oppose Obama-care as thoroughly as do most Americans, Mitt is the wrong person to make this case since he actually implemented a plan on the state of Massachusetts that is every bit as crippling to that state’s economy as Obama-care will be to the entire nation, and similarly dictatorial with its individual health insurance mandate. How will Romney argue with Obama over this? The simple answer is that he won’t. He can’t. He’s neutered on the issue, and if you pick him as the party’s nominee, it’s over.
Some of you are hoping the Supreme Court will ditch Obama-care, but as Brady links to an article by Andrew McCarthy, it was McCarthy who pointed out back in November that Obama-care may well pass muster before the Supreme Court. If that disaster occurs, then there will be only one way to overturn that piece of tyrannical legislation and it will be by full repeal by Congress, signed into law by a president. If that President is still Obama, you can forget it, and if the program stays in place through its full implementation, you can forget it, because nobody will repeal it seven years after-the-fact, just like there was no stopping the other entitlement programs once they were up and running. This truly is your last chance, and it will depend upon defeating Obama this coming November with a candidate who is a credible opponent to Obama-care, and who will make that a focus of the campaign. Anything else will leave the GOP picking around the margins of a host of issues, but if any of them happen to break in Obama’s favor, he’ll win the day.
There’s no way around this: If you select Romney as the nominee of the Republican party, not only will you never repeal Obama-care, but you will never win the election in November. Obama has it in his power to rig job numbers, and the expected vote fraud of his legions of illegal immigrants will undoubtedly help him in the fraud at the polls. Romney will not be able to make the argument against Obama-care, and by last measure of which I am aware, over 60% of the American people want it repealed. Nominating Romney is Obama’s great hope, because it enables him to neuter the Republicans across the board. He may even re-take the House, since a losing Romney would certainly offer no coat-tails.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to shake the trees and rattle the cages: If Mitt Romney is permitted to win the nomination, the country is over. It’s really as simple as that, and the sooner you grasp how badly Obama wants Romney to be the nominee, the better the chance you will be able to change that outcome, and give Obama something he does not want: A candidate who will be able to oppose him effectively on his signature legislation, that the vast majority of the American people hate, and want repealed. Just as we shouldn’t permit 20-30% of political thinking in the country dominate our health-care choices, neither should we permit 20-30% of the thinking in the Republican party dominate our electoral choices. It’s time that we stand up to the threat posed by Romney’s timid, evasive posturing as a conservative, and remind the establishment of the GOP that we are the deciders. Not them. No to Obama-care, and no to Romney. The two go hand-in-hand.
There really are not many conservative legal activists committed to standing up for Americans on such a consistent basis, by arguing against unconstitutional legislation or fighting to shine disinfecting daylight on government actions, but Landmark Legal Foundation is one of those rare organizations. Despite its small size, Landmark is currently involved in at least four major issues of interest, including efforts to stop the implementation of Obamacare, challenging the Obama-Holder Department of Justice interference with states on the issue of illegal immigration, stopping the EPA from usurping congressional authority in regulating “greenhouse gases” like carbon dioxide, and defending the right of states like Wisconsin to limit collective bargaining for public sector employees and the unions that often drive the process to the detriment of tax-payers.
These are all obviously critical issues of significant importance to the American people, and if Landmark Legal seems familiar to you, it may because its president is none other than radio talk-show phenomenon Mark Levin. More than being the conservative answer to groups like the ACLU, Landmark takes on cases from the standpoint of defeating the leftists’ agenda in the courts where all too often, the left has been so successful in foisting its agenda on the American people.
If you’re not familiar with Levin, his radio show is certainly one great place to hear him speak, and you will learn a great deal about these and countless other critical issues from his show. Levin served eight years in the Reagan Administration, including his service as the Attorney General’s chief of staff, and Deputy Solicitor of the Department of the Interior, along with many other roles. He’s the author of several New York Times best-selling books including Liberty and Tyranny – A Conservative Manifesto, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish, and Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America. He also has a new book about to hit the shelves: Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, which is due out within two weeks. I have pre-ordered this latest book myself, since I own the other three, and they were each worth every penny.
Landmark Legal’s actions on Obamacare is perhaps the most critical to conservatives, because that legislation threatens to fundamentally reorder American society toward a European healthcare delivery model, or worse in some estimates, and in so doing will create a vast new entitlement program complete with the infamous mandate about which you have read. You can read the complete Landmark Legal amicus curaie brief filed in the Obamacare case here. One of the most important questions raised by the brief is whether the court will recognize any limits on federal power, when the commerce or the necessary and proper clauses are concerned. This is a vital question, because if the federal government can compel you to purchase health insurance, there is no effective limit, and the constitution is utterly meaningless.
Other arguments against Obamacare include the question of the severability of the insurance mandate, ultimately suggesting that since the Congress made no provision in the law for separating any particular clause, the whole law must be affirmed or rejected as a single entity.
These are the sorts of cases we conservatives care most fervently to see taken up, and I make contributions to this noble enterprise that fights on behalf of our individual liberties, and in the name of responsible, ethical, limited government open to examination by citizens. Reviewing the material they provide to the courts in this form leads me to believe that there are few legal advocacy organizations on our side of the philosophical and political divide that do anything like the work of Landmark Legal. You can read more extensively about Landmark and the cases in which it is currently involved at its website. It’s one of the very few conservative legal advocacy groups in existence, and its performance on other issues demonstrates its effectiveness despite its small size. In this time of expansive governmental aggression against individual liberties, we need all the advocates for limited government we can get, and Landmark is definitely among the best.
