ACA and the Constitution

For those interested in Constitutional law.

Something to Argue About

By George F. Will - Washington Post

Monday, Jan. 23, 2012

http://www.thestate.com/2012/01/23/2121625/something-to-argue-about.html#storylink=cpy

This Court case will be interesting and far more important than most people realize.  Perfectly sensible people “hope” that the Court won’t find the insurance mandate unConstitutional but how on earth could they not?  If this is ok, they can make us eat our spinach folks – be afraid, be very afraid.  [And lefties, remember that someday it’ll be the Republican crazies instead of the Pelosi crazies – you’ll have mandatory prayer in the work place and creationism taught as science.]

This reminds me of Roe v Wade. 

·         I believe that all women should have the absolute right to decide what happens to their body and pregnancies [even though I think birth control by abortion is disgusting]. 

So in that sense, the SCOTUS made the right decision.  It would have taken generations to guarantee this right of women under ordinary law across all states – think gay marriage. 

·         But if we read the Constitution, there simply is no right to an abortion in that document.  As a matter of law, the SCOTUS was wrong. 

To suggest that a woman’s right to privacy gives her a RIGHT to an abortion suggests that parents and spouses might have other rights over one another outside the womb but behind closed doors. 

But more importantly, for the SCOTUS to decide that there should be something in the Constitution that is not there is a blatant violation of the separation of powers and can lead only to chaos. The end does not justify the means.

This issue was and should again someday be the business of lawmakers, not courts and I mean local law makers not federal ones.  

Similarly, the right thing for America is that everybody buys health insurance but it is even more essential in a nation founded on individual liberty that the Court finds this insurance mandate unConstitutional.

George Will is right about the second issue in the ACA as well.  Medicare was once optional for states but now we take the new rules under ACA or lose our existing money as well as the new money.  That has to be unConstitutional. 

I am no libertarian and I see important roles for the federal government beyond defense.  But everywhere I look, it seems to me that since WW2 both the federal government and the courts have steadily increased their role to the point where they now far exceed their authority and are seriously interfering with the nation’s growth and well being.  I feel the same about Congress’ continued abdication of its duties and responsibilities to the Executive Branch. 

Sooner or later we’ll have to deal with this.  And like it or not, the SCOTUS will be in the hot seat before November.

P.S.  If you read the Constitution, I don’t see how anyone can conclude anything other than that anyone can marry anyone.  If some people can marry then everyone can.  There is simply no way in my view that any high Court can allow this kind of discrimination.  The religious will just have to suck it up.  Gay activists should go to court;  they can’t lose.