U.S. District Judge Norman Moon, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a challenge to ObamaCare in Virginia this week. This is the second victory for the Obama administration in a wave of lawsuits. Liberty University, the plaintiff in the case, has already decided to appeal in hopes of eclipsing Moon’s decision. “Congress does not have the authority to force every American to purchase a particular kind of health insurance product,” said Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty’s School of Law and an attorney on the case. Liberty argued that the law abuses the Commerce Clause of the Constitution in an attempt to provide the government strict control over the health care market. Their constitutional exegesis is completely sound, but Moon was blinded to that reality.
According to Moon, the law requiring individuals and employers to purchase health insurance falls legally under the Commerce Clause because the lack of the law would drive up costs, “precisely the harms that Congress sought to address with the Act’s regulatory measures.” To this we would ask, if the Commerce Clause can be melded to the whims of the backers of ObamaCare, what powers doesn’t Congress have to continue to shackle the American people?
Along the same lines…
A recent Investor’s Business Daily editorial calls it “the ultimate form of taxation without representation”: the continuing attempts by eco-fascists to force wealth redistribution upon the United States and other “rich” countries. This is all under the guise, of course, of saving the world from the scourge of global warming.
After its abysmal failure in wintry Copenhagen last year, the UN is holding another climate change conference in balmy Cancun, Mexico. There, surrounded by sun and sand, it will once again attempt to convince delegates from 193 countries that, a) the world is in peril and therefore we must drastically reduce emissions; and b) the U.S. and other developed nations must pay poor countries billions of dollars in retribution for the “damage” they caused in becoming, well, developed. The conference will feature the usual fanfare, including 250 presentations about the effects of climate change and proclamations that 2010 is tied for the hottest year since we began keeping records 131 years ago.
This is all smoke and mirrors. German economist Ottmar Edenhofer, who also serves as the pretentiously titled Co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, has openly admitted that “climate change policy is redistributing the world’s wealth.” This would be accomplished in the U.S. with cap-n-trade policies being pushed by Obama and his “progressive” pals in Congress.
Despite the sunny weather, the climate at this conference probably won’t be any friendlier than it was in Denmark. Even before the Republican landslide in last month’s elections, many lawmakers were leery of saddling Americans with more taxes during the recession, especially given the fact that China — the world’s biggest polluter — refuses to make any binding promises about emissions. In addition, in the wake of the Climategate scandal, emerging studies have shot more holes in climate change “science” than in Swiss cheese. Only time will tell, but it looks as if leftists will have to find another way to siphon America’s wealth to other nations.
In related news, House Republicans are set to eliminate the climate change committee created by soon-to-be-ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In Congress at least, the climate has changed.
And yet more commentary on epic fail obama’s choice of czar for BATFE
In another example of the “Chicago Way,” last week Barack Obama tabbed Andrew Traver, currently special agent in charge of the Chicago division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (better known by the ATF acronym), as the bureau’s permanent head. “You might as well put an arsonist in charge of the fire department,” quipped NRA spokesman Chris Cox.
While the gun grabbers at the Brady Center applaud the choice, Second Amendment advocates are predictably aghast. They criticize Traver because of his ties to the gun-control advocating Joyce Foundation and work during a 2007 conference on reducing gun violence sponsored by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, another fervently anti-gun organization. The IACP report includes a call for legislation to allow federal health and safety oversight of the firearms industry. What Second Amendment?
Others question Traver’s lack of senior-level executive experience, but when has that ever stopped anyone in Washington? The Senate may get a chance to question and confirm Traver, who would take over an agency laboring under acting leaders since 2006, unless Obama decides to use him as yet another recess appointment. Certainly Traver would fit right in with the rest of Executive Branch Washington in an era where the president relies on regulation, as opposed to legislation, to enact his agenda.
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