You’re telling me that’s in the Constitution?

A letter to President Obama.

Yesterday was a bad day for all the States Attorney General and Wing-Nuts who think that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Lawyers from the conservative Thomas More Law Center (set up by billionaire Catholic wacko Tom Monahan) got slapped around pretty good by District Court Judge George C. Steeh. He completely demolished the spurious arguments in his 20 page decision.

The Thomas Moore Law Center (TMLC) took a shot at the claim most likely to succeed against the ACA, namely that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce did not extend down to mandating that individuals purchase a product.

Basically this argument is that citizens can’t be required to participate in a market. They have to have the right to not participate if they choose to do so for economic reasons. Like nearly all conservative arguments this sounds moderately reasonable as long as you stay inside the frame that it is presented in. When you are just looking at the individual there may be a hardship in being required to purchase insurance. It is not going to be cheap and the subsidies are not going to cover everyone.

That ruling suggests that opinioned bloggers are also journalists, Chapman said.

“I can think of no case where a blogger would be treated differently (than a print journalist under the law),” Chapman said.

Noted Conservative Hack Jonah Goldberg posted a little article tearing into the idea that the Supreme Court is the place where we define what is and is not constitutional. He is defending the new radical Republican talking point that all legislation should have a constitutional justification attached to it. This is the Tenther’s (folks who think that the powers of the Federal Government are completely enumerated in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment gives all other powers to the states individually) favorite meme.

They would use this thinking to end the Federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All the big Tea Party faves have this idea, with Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell really leading the charge.

This idea is nuts on the surface but it is packed full of nutty goodness as you get deeper as well. The whole push for “constitutional fealty” by the Right is a ruse and always has been. The reason that they want to return to so called original intent it so wipe out two centuries of case law that does not suit their radical agenda.

First Amendment efforts

In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, chief amongst these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” at the time it was a radical idea. Today Conservatives think that our gay citizens wanting to redeem this promise for themselves is a still a radical idea. Who would have thought that people who want to wrap themselves in the mantle of the Founders would wind up on the side of the Monarchists?

Biden & Obama use Filibuster Scam to Block Elizabeth Warren from Full Appointment — by NormanB

There is a meme out there in the radical Republican Party about Shariah (Islamic law based on the Qur’an and other works) being imposed here in the United States. It has so much acceptance that a supposed 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, could call for a Federal law banning it, at the Value Voters summit in Washington and get a standing ovation. To say that this kind of crazy gets right up my nose is an understatement on the level of saying the razing of Carthage was a minor property dispute.

It is hard to know where to start in on the stupid on this issue, but let’s begin on a point near and dear to my heart, the Constitution. The First Amendment makes it clear when it says:

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

That means all religions, not just one. There is also the Article VI, Clause 2, the Supremacy Clause which makes the Constitution, Federal Laws and Treaties the supreme law of the land. No other law can supersede these laws, whether they be religious laws or State laws.

This whole “their going to try to impose Shariah!!” hysteria is just that, fear mongering to whip up the base of the increasingly insane Republican Party. What is particularly galling about all of this is the level of unselfconscious hypocrisy that goes along with these fears of religious law being established in the United States.

9/11 evokes so much division and hate in our society. Whereas it should instead evoke unity, harmony and inspiration for a better tomorrow.