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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: ObamaCare Appellate Judges Playing Semantic Games The case's central argument is whether ObamaCare can constitutionally mandate virtually every American to have health insurance by 2014, a mandate that forces people to engage in a commercial "activity." By random selection, three Circuit Court judges were picked to hear the appeal -- two judges seated by President Barack Obama and one seated by former President Bill Clinton. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz tried to get Staver to define what "activity" means. Staver explained that it was "something you could see, touch," or "something tangible." People who don't want to buy health insurance, he argued, are engaged only in "idleness," which is beyond Congress's reach under even the open-ended view with which the courts now view the Fourteenth Amendment. But Judge Motz shot back that Daniel Webster (1782-1852) spent four days arguing a case on commerce before the Supreme Court but never mentioned the word "activity." (Of course "activity" wasn't an issue in that nineteenth century case and the Fourteenth Amendment hadn't yet been written.) Judge Motz also pointed out that the Constitution itself does not mention the word "activity"; as a result, she seemed to think there was no binding definition restricting the power of the federal government to only regulate "activity." Judge Motz was ignoring the substantiated historical fact that the U.S. Constitution is a list of enumerated powers -- all that isn't mentioned is retained by the states or the people (per the Tenth Amendment). But this isn't surprising; the basic and honest premise that the federal government is restricted to the powers it has been granted by the Constitution and its amendments is seen as quaint and naïve by today's liberals. So Judge Motz kept asking Staver what is activity. Meanwhile, Circuit Judge Andre M. Davis wondered if "a mental process" is "activity." By doing so he seemed to be implying that a person's specific choice not to buy insurance might be something Congress could regulate; after all the Obama Administration is arguing that everyone will need healthcare sooner or later, so they really can't be inactive. This liberal belief that even our mental activity can be regulated by the federal government was on display last February when Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that ObamaCare is constitutional. Judge Kessler wrote: The Obama Administration's and Judge Kessler's logic is achieved by reading the Fourteenth Amendment's Commerce Clause ("The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes. ... ") to be an open-ended and broad power that includes anything that could conceivably affect commerce. Read the above portion of the Fourteenth Amendment again and ask yourself: does an honest reading of this amendment really allow the government to mandate that people purchase a product, such as health insurance? Of course it doesn't. In fact, this liberal interpretation is scaring conservatives because, according to this view, anytime a person chooses not to act they are still legally "acting." Therefore any decision not to act that could somehow be construed to affect commerce is an action the government can regulate and even require. For example, if the federal government decides it's in the best interest of the country for people to buy cars from GM or solar panels from GE, then it can make them do so -- at least inferentially according to Judge Kessler and the Obama Administration. Like Judge Kessler, the panel of three liberal judges on Fourth Circuit were playing semantics. Just consider that the definitions of "activity" and "inactivity" can be looked up by any schoolchild. Dictionary.com defines "inactive" as 1. not active: an inactive volcano; 2. sedentary or passive: an inactive life; 3. sluggish; indolent. And it defines "activity" as 1. the state or quality of being active: There was not much activity in the stock markettoday. He doesn't have enough physical activity in his life; 2. a specific deed, action, function, or sphere of action: social activities; 3. work, especially in elementary grades at school, that involves direct experience by the student rather than textbook study. However, instead of simply applying the commonsensical dictionary definition to what "activity" is, these liberal justices blurred the meaning of the words in an attempt to get their way. After all, any word questioned far enough can become philosophically opaque. Just consider the definition of the word "chair." Dictionary.com says its: 1. a seat, especially for one person, usually having four legs for support and a rest for the back and often having rests for the arms; 2. something that serves as a chair or supports like a chair: The two men clasped hands to make a chair for their injured companion; 3. a seat of office or authority. The definition of the word "chair" seems simple enough at first, but on further analysis, can a chair be a chair if it has three legs? How about five or six? How high does a chair have to be to be a chair? Must a chair have a back? These questions can go on forever and in the end people will only be able to agree on the more-or-less vague dictionary definition. By using this same approach with the word "activity," liberal justices are attempting to blur the debate to get their way. Despite these semantics, shouldn't what is obviously activity (doing something active) and what is certainly inactivity (choosing not to do something active) be left up to its obvious dictionary definition? Isn't this Clinton-style (remember when former President Bill Clinton questioned what the real definition of the word "is" is) attempt to evade the truth deplorable? One hopes that the most powerful man in America, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy (who seems to be the "swing vote" on all big 5-4 decisions these days) understands that ObamaCare's mandate is undoubtedly unconstitutional. Poster Comment: These "judges" are playing games with words without dealing with the fundamental issue to begin with. 0bamacare has two sides of an important discussion that doesn't really address the politics of a US government "pickle" that LBJ signed into federal law, circa 1965. I am talking about the federal problem of budgeting two failed programs called Medicare and Medicaid as both programs require a disproportionately 'high' amount of Congressional budgeting that was never forecasted, much less imagined. 0bamacare, of course, attempted to integrate the two programs within an standard unified approach for universal health-care to relieve federal budgeting while maintaining an improved health-care system for all in the USA; hence, the requirement for mandated or required individual responsibilities for subscription. The issue to me is not mandatory medicare subscription violating an individual choice OR the government requiring individuals to subscribe to a product or service. The issue is: how in the world does America operate? It is always shortsighted based on political BS and then is not properly budgeted or funded which eventually requires some sort of patchwork or re-framing of laws to plug up a problem. Why in the world, doesn't Congress have the guts to pass properly funded bills to begin with before poking in these HUGE programs (such as Medicare/Medicaid) creating the pickle to begin with? There was another ramification of Medicare/Medicaid programs that is rarely considered, too. Both programs lead to increased socialization of medicine and medical services INCREASING the costs for individuals which radicalized the medical insurance industry. The costs are so ENORMOUS anymore (the medical industry is essentially a US government controlled monopoly) that there is little competition in the free-market nearly requiring many individuals to seek out insurance programs for "just in case" as opposed to preventative care. Again, the most important issue to me is how the US government can continue to franchise these enormous programs without mandating individual contributions. Irrespective of the outcome of any court ruling, the US government is BROKE. The US government intervention into individual rights occured before 0bamacare was enacted last year; it all started in 1965 with Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs are pervasive to begin with and are based on unfunded budgeting requiring more and More, MORE government intervention. And, there is no "fix" for the US government to simply stop it. After 45 years, the system has been BROKE, is BROKE and will ALWAYS be BROKE.
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#1. To: buckeroo (#0)
What the court is doing in this interpretation is in effect saying that the Federal Government has complete and total control over the actions of the formerly free citizens. In other words it is saying that you are a chattel of the government who may be at the command of the central government directed to, conceivably, and be required to follow any course of action the central government dictates. A dictatorship by any other name ... This also implies thought control i.e., that the 14th amendment confers upon the government to restrict thought and communication as it might possibly, conceivably, have an effect upon commerce. What the amendment actually says hinges upon the word among which according to my Oxford American Dictionary the applicable definition (4.) is involving a decision or choice or diffentiation between 3 or more participants. The participants herein are clearly defined as foreign countries, the States, and the Indian Tribes. Nowhere are individual citizens party to this. There is a deeper game behind this ruling and it is being dictated by someone other than the judges who should be impeached, tarred and feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail.
Despite the rest of your post, I am in full agreement with your above quote. I want to say that this "interstate commerce clause" is repeated several times by the court (Kessler) and that the idea of "inactivity" can be defined as an "action" which is total non-sense to me and most Americans. And, it goes without saying that the "interstate commerce clause" has been used in countless ways of ensuring enormous power by the federal government through the courts. The original goals of the "interstate commerce clause" was to provide an applied set of consistent federal standards of goods/services between states to ensure efficient transfer of the same. It had nothing to do with the removal of individual liberties and freedoms or the individual freedom to make a personal judgment about those same goods/services as in a decision to buy a product or service; it can be suggested that the US Postal Service was the only constitutional "company" as a result of the "interstate commerce clause." The idea of "regulation" on interstate commerce for goods/services by Kessler's recent judgment is total nonsense based on lunacy to include "activity" or "inactivity" about one's decision pro/con for a product/service even if that same product/service was franchised by the government (as in the US Postal Service) or even in private enterprise, such as the "pony express" or "Wells Fargo." Regulation was an even handed structural concept to "make regular" that is to say, to ensure a consistent set of applied standards for the transport of goods/services between states as in the interstate commerce clause. If this notion of regulation by Kessler was around two hundred years ago, EVERYONE would have been forced to buy US Postal Service stamps whether they used them or not! But, this is the literal lunacy of our court system today; they have no understanding of the basic tenets of and about individual liberties and freedoms; they either failed the class or slept through it while in law school.
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