Ron Paul On The "Health Care" Frankenstein Passage

We lost a chunk of freedom tonight as we continue the process of putting enough weight on our own shoulders that we collapse under its mass.

I can't bring myself to talk about this health care travesty. It's just so sad, immoral and unsustainable. To quote Congressman Ron Paul when asked what it will take to repeal the health care bill, "the bankruptcy of this country will repeal it... It will end, it will end badly and it will hurt the people that many [other] people are very seriously trying to help with medical care... Every country in the world today is on the verge of bankruptcy..."

Anyway, I'll let Congressman Ron Paul tell you about this debacle:

State Of The Union - Summary: "It's A Shitshow Out There"

Watching Obama's debacle of a State of the Union address reminds us of Thomas Sowell's prescient analysis from almost a year and a half ago.

Sowell link.

As an aside, did anyone else find Obama referencing the Constitution at the beginning of his speech ironic?

George Will: Forcing Citizens To Buy A Product Is Unconstitutional

What George Will doesn't understand is that the Constitution is simply a recommended set of best practices; not the underlying foundation of our legal and governmental system. That latter concept has been misunderstood by freedom loving Americans for two-plus centuries. TILB suspects we're about to be collectively clued into the fact the former is the new truth.

Orwell would be proud.

Here's the link to Will's WaPo Opinion Piece.

Here's a highlight:

The court says the constitutional privacy right protects personal "autonomy" regarding "the most intimate and personal choices." The right was enunciated largely at the behest of liberals eager to establish abortion rights. Liberals may think, but the court has never held, that the privacy right protects only doctor-patient transactions pertaining to abortion. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, Justice Department officials under the Reagan and first Bush administrations, ask: If government cannot proscribe or even "unduly burden" -- the court's formulation -- access to abortion, how can government limit other important medical choices?

Democrats' health bills depend on forcing individuals to buy insurance or face severe fines or imprisonment. In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office said forcing individuals to buy insurance would be "an unprecedented form of federal action," adding: "The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States."

This year, the Congressional Research Service delicately said "it is a novel issue whether Congress may use the [commerce] Clause to require an individual to purchase a good or service." Congress has the constitutional power to "regulate commerce . . . among the several states." But a Federalist Society study by Peter Urbanowicz and Dennis Smith judges it perverse to exercise coercion under the commerce clause "on an individual who chooses not to undertake a commercial transaction." As Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) says, there is "a fundamental difference between regulating activities in which individuals choose to engage" -- e.g., drivers can be required to buy auto insurance -- "and requiring such activities" just because an individual exists.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) says Congress can tax -- i.e., punish -- people who do not buy insurance because the Constitution empowers Congress to tax for "the general welfare." So, could Congress tax persons who do not exercise or eat their spinach?

Liberty Quote Of The Day: The First Amendment

Our ongoing series in quotes on liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility is going to occasionally remind us of the rights we are granted simply by waking up as citizens of these United States. The Bill of Rights (or the first ten amendments to the Constitution) were first authored by James Madison. Today, we begin with the First Amendment which guarantees no laws establishing a national religion, no restrictions on your exercise of religion, and no laws restricting your speech (including via a free press and the right to peaceably assemble):

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

-First Amendment of The U.S. Constitution

Liberty Quote Of The Day: James Madison

It turns out that James Madison, the primary author of the constitution and thus a somewhat reasonable source for interpreting the great document, was an early constitutionalist. Hard to argue with the man, given his position in history.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."

- James Madison