Law

Challenge Question of the Day

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I would love for anyone on the left, especially the buttmunches like Rep. Grayson to tell me, under which provision of the U.S. Constitution does Congress have the power to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?

Here’s the text of the U.S. Constitution.

And while sadly, the bill being voted on in the Senate Finance Committee is not available for the public to read (transparency), here is the chairman’s mark up report.

Notwithstanding the fact that I challenge anyone who knows the law to tell me what enumerated power applies here. (I know what power the Congress is attempting to use, but it’s weak. But let’s see if all these folks out there (kind of like the ones who don’t know who is paying for those checks they’re getting) have a clue), here is what this bill will propose:

Beginning in 2013, all U.S. citizens and legal residents would be required to purchase coverage through (1) the individual market, a public program such as Medicare, Medicaid, the Children‘s Health Insurance Program, Veteran‘s Health Care Program, or TRICARE or through an employer (or as a dependent of a covered employee) in the small group market, meeting at least the requirements of a bronze plan, or (2) in the large group market, in a plan with first dollar coverage for prevention-related services as recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force – except in cases where value-based insurance design is used and cannot have an unreasonable annual or lifetime limit coverage or a maximum out-of-pocket limit greater than that provided by the standards established for HSA current law limit in order to meet minimum creditable coverage. Exemptions from the requirement to have health coverage would be allowed for religious objections that are consistent with those allowed under Medicare, and for undocumented aliens. An individual enrolled in a grandfathered plan would be deemed to have met the responsibility requirement.

In order to ensure compliance, individuals would be required to report on their Federal income tax return the months for which they maintain the required minimum health coverage for themselves and all dependents under age 18…

Now you know this is to require most young people to purchase insurance. And what if they don’t? The answer will lead you to the hint to the answer to the question above.

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax of $750 per adult in the household. This per adult penalty would be phased in as follows: For 2013, $0; $200 for 2014; $400 for 2015; $600 in 2016 and $750 in 2017.

The excise tax would apply for any period for which the individual is not covered by a health insurance plan with the minimum required benefit but would be prorated for partial years of noncompliance. The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. No excise tax will be assessed for individuals not maintaining health insurance for a period less than or equal to three months in the tax year. However, assessed excise taxes for those not insured for more than three months include the entire duration the individual was uninsured during the tax year.

Non-compliance with the individual responsibility to have health coverage shall incur no criminal penalty; and neither civil penalty nor interest shall accrue for failure to pay such assessment in a timely manner. Collection shall be limited to withholding of federal payments due.

What does the Constitution say?

Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States;

Interesting huh? Now what is interesting as well is, if you don’t get insurance, you have to pay an excise tax. If you don’t pay the tax, under this plan, the only thing the government will do is garnish any tax refund check you may coming to you. Now why is this important folks? You see for this plan to work, everyone has to buy into the system. There’s no teeth to enforcement (granted, the power buttressing the legislation is weak too), so this means the plan will not be adequately funded.

So where is the money going to come from? And what’s even more amusing, this plan will not insure everybody. So you have a massive overhaul; costing gazillions of dollars, which barely changes anything vis a vis coverage from the current situation. Sounds futile no?

Well….I look forward to a healthy exchange of ideas …..

Federal Judge Dismisses Frivolous Birther Lawsuit

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Land Ruling – Rhodes v. Macdonald

As I’ve written in earlier posts,  if you’re gonna win the war, you cannot waste it by picking stupid battles wherein you’re throwing rocks and bottles against targets of no significance.  You have to use your heavy artillery and go after battles where we are right and have the authority to support our position.  If you have the facts and the law behind you, you will prevail.  Not so in these cases which all they do is weaken our position.  This is a fringe argument with no legal basis. I’ve said it all along. I said it last year when the first lawsuit was filed.

This judge is a conservative judge appointed by George W. Bush.  He’s not some sappy liberal.  To win the war against the socialist pricks in the government right now,  we have to speak the truth,  use the law, and be loud.   If you get attacked you then have the weapons to fight back.  If you dwell on frivolous UFO type theories,  you will never get out of the fox hole and they will win because you were not focused. If folks want to associate with the types that file this lawsuit, go ahead. You will have no credibility on the matters that count.

Just my 4 1/2 cents.

Unequal Protection In Philly Thanks to Eric Holder

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Philadelphia's Golden Hour
[Photo of Philadelphia Skyline taken during my photo walk of the City with Babalu’s own and Philly local Claudia4libertad.]

Imagine this folks: Black and Hispanics who wish to exercise their right to vote, are greeted at the polls by 2 armed members of the KKK who say they are just there trying to make sure there is no funny business. Voter intimidation? Yes. Violation of voting rights act? Yes. Deserving of Prosecution? Yes. So let’s flip it around. Two armed members of the Militant Black Panther Party standing in front of the polls so as to intimidate non-blacks. Voter intimidation? Yes. Violation of Voting Rights Act? Yes. Deserving of Prosecution? Of course. So what does Attorney General Eric Holder do in the Black Panther case where the government was about to get default judgments against the militants? (BTW, a default means the government wins automatically). He mysteriously dismisses the charges. Yes, this is from the same dude that had no qualms about sending in the troops against unarmed Cuban Americans, but who will not lift a pinky about prosecuting a blatant and egregious example of voter intimidation. This article by John Fund in the WSJ nails it on the head and merits attention. This my friends is egregious and worse than the firing of attorney generals under W. But is there outrage from the left? Are the leftwing bloggers and Puffington Host folks calling for an inquiry? Answer? Nope. The little pelosis are just too busy blaming Conservatives for everything that goes wrong in the world. What do you expect from such wankers. Here’s the article in its entirety.

Holder’s Black Panther Stonewall
Why did the Justice Department dismiss such a clear case of voter intimidation?
By JOHN FUND

President Obama’s Justice Department continues to stonewall inquiries about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The episode—which Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen”—began on Election Day 2008. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube.)

One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at the entrance and pointed it at voters and both made racial threats. Mr. Bull says he heard one yell “You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!”

In the first week of January, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs. In March, Mr. Bull submitted an affidavit at Justice’s request to support its lawsuit.

When none of the defendants filed any response to the complaint or appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia to answer the suit, it appeared almost certain Justice would have prevailed by default. Instead, the department in May suddenly allowed the party and two of the three defendants to walk away. Against the third defendant, Minister King Samir Shabazz, it sought only an injunction barring him from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of a Philadelphia polling place for the next three years—action that’s already illegal under existing law.

There was outrage over the decision among Congressional Republicans, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division—especially after it was learned one of the defendants who walked was Jerry Jackson, a member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee and a credentialed poll watcher for the Democratic Party last Election Day.

Then the Washington Times reported on July 30 that six career lawyers at Justice who had recommended continuing to pursue the case were overruled by Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli—a top administration political appointee. One of the career attorneys, Appellate Chief Diana Flynn, had urged in an internal memo that a judgment be pressed against the defendants to “prevent the paramilitary style intimidation of voters” in the future.

Justice spokesman Alejandro Miyar says the dismissal was “based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law.” But Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), has been asking for more information. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Welch, for example, claims in a July 13 letter to Mr. Wolf that charges against the New Black Panther Party itself were dropped because there wasn’t “evidentiary support” to prove they “directed” the intimidation. But Mr. Wolf notes in a letter sent to Justice that one defendant, Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, said on Fox News just after the election that his activities at the polling station were part of a nationwide effort. Mr. Shabazz added that the Black Panther activities in Philadelphia were justified due to “an emergency situation.”

Mr. Wolf’s demands that Justice make the career attorneys on the case available for questions have been rebuffed. He also wants the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings. A spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers was noncommittal as to whether any hearing would be held.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted on Aug. 7 to send a letter to Justice expanding its own investigation and demanding more complete answers. “We believe the Department’s defense of its actions thus far undermines respect for rule of law,” its letter stated. It noted “the peculiar logic” of one Justice argument, that defendants’ failure to show up in court was a reason for dismissing the case: “Such an argument sends a perverse message to wrongdoers—that attempts at voter suppression will be tolerated so long as the persons who engage in them are careful not to appear in court to answer the government’s complaint.”

The commission noted that it could subpoena witnesses and documents if Justice doesn’t better explain its actions.

President Obama needs to clear the air. As a former law professor who specialized in voting rights, he is aware of how important even-handed application of the law is to election integrity. In 2007, then-Sen. Obama introduced a bill to protect Americans from tactics that intimidate voters. It also increased the criminal penalty for voter intimidation to five years in prison from one year.

“There is no place for politics in this debate,” he testified before Mr. Conyers’s committee in March, 2007. “Both parties at different periods in our history have been guilty in different regions of preventing people from voting for a tactical advantage. We should be beyond that.”

One way to get there is for Mr. Obama to insist his Justice Department reinstate the Black Panther case or provide a full explanation for why it was dropped.

More BS Propaganda on New Supreme Court Pick

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Howdy infidels.

I can’t help but pee in my shorts from laughing at the news stories, the blog stories, and the editorials out there, almost exclusively from those on the left, and those who want to suck up to the left, on the issue of the new “Latina” Supreme Court Nominee.

This is the spin from these neanderthal wankers:

1. The GOP would be remiss in voting against the first Latina Supreme Court Nominee;
2. A vote against the first Latina Supreme Court Nominee would further alienate the GOP and it’s shrinking base;
3. The only way the GOP can reach out to Hispanics is to vote for the Latina Supreme Court nominee;
4. The GOP are a bunch of old white men who cannot stand the thought of a Latina Supreme Court Justice.

First of all, let’s get serious here. The premise behind all these editorials, rants, and piles of poppycock is buttressed on a fallacy. I guarantee you that you would be hard pressed to find “tres gatos” who are registered voters in the United States who would come to the conclusion, “I will not vote for the GOP candidate because they voted against Judge Sotomayor.” What are these people smoking? Other than a few of us in the legal profession and know-nothing pundits, no one pays any attention to the Supreme Court. No one watches the confirmation hearings other than lawyers and dorks, and no one has a friggin clue about the legal system anyway. Frankly, unless someone is involved in the legal process, they don’t give it the time of day. To put it in simplistic terms so that liberals can understand, the public doesn’t give a s*it about the Supreme Court nominee. They do not understand the legal principals behind an opinion. They don’t understand the different levels of scrutiny to be applied towards the constitutionality of laws and ordinances. They don’t understand the tenets of statutory construction. Why don’t they get it? It’s because they are not in the profession. You see, I don’t understand the principals and tenets behind what must take place in cardiovascular surgery. Why? It’s cause I’m not a friggin doctor, I’m a lawyer dammit.

I mean, let’s get real. Is Juan Pelotas in East LA, or Armando Torres in Hialeah, or is Pedro Navaja in the Bronx, or Antonio Come Bola in El Paso, going to seriously vote on a candidate based on how the GOP voted to confirm or deny a Supreme Court nominee? Because if this was the case, then all the Dems would have lost tons of votes when they rejected Hispanic justice Miguel Estrada from the Court of Appeals. And using this same logic, the Dems would have lost tons of votes when they voted to reject Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, who happens to be of color. Heck, how about all those million of catholic voters who changed their vote from Dem to GOP because the Dems voted against Sam Alito?

You see infidels, the argument is presumptuous and simply idiotic. Yet this same argument keeps spreading faster than the flu.

So please, spare us the bullcrap. As I said yesterday, the nominee is qualified. However, her judicial philosophy and temperament is questionable. She should not be confirmed or receive a yea vote because simply because she is a “Latina”. Just like Justice Roberts and Alito should not have received a nay vote because they were white Catholics. You either agree with their philosophy or you don’t. In the old days, you gave deference to the President. In the modern day, as a result of the Liberals inventing the term “Borking” a nominee because they found his views inconsistent with theirs, as demonstrated most recently with their nay votes on Alito and Roberts, two qualified judges, hopefully all of the GOP members of the Senate vote nay on this judge. If Obama and Big Mouth Joe could vote nay on two qualified candidates because they did not agree with their philosophy, we as those who disfavor judicial activism should have that same right, no? Or is it only a right of the liberal left to be able to vote nay on a judge? Do they have a monopoly on the ability to vote nay? You would think they have. And hopefully, the members of the Senate are smart enough to disregard this leftist tripe fallacy that their voting nay against a candidate for the Supreme Court will count for a hill of beans in any election. Because as history has always shown us, it’s the economy stupid.

Tah tah infidels.

UPDATE: – Gigi reminded me of this incident which showed how Durbin and the left thwarted and filibustered Estrada because he was Hispanic or “Latino” because the left did not want Bush to score points with Hispanics and because they were afraid that a conservative Hispanic on the DC Circuit would be on a short list to the Supremes as shown in these leaked memos. Again, this is ok for the Dems to do (and this is much worse than anything the GOP has done against any nominee by a Dem Prez). Yet the wankers portray conservatives as out of touch and evil. All I can say is that they are simply a bunch of come p**gas!