By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
A panel of three federal judges on Thursday dismissed two challenges to President Obama's landmark health care law — including one spearheaded by Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli — on procedural grounds, becoming the third appeals court to rule on a case likely headed to the highest court in the land.
A judge said Wednesday that he will rule in about two weeks on whether to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a college student who was arrested after stripping to his running shorts at a Richmond International Airport checkpoint to protest security procedures.
A co-defendant in the Michael Vick dogfighting case on Monday was sent back to prison for 11 months for violating terms of his supervised release, including talking to the NFL star at a Virginia Beach nightclub last summer and then lying to his probation officer about it.
My guess is that Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., is an amateur zoologist. Judge Vinson is the federal judge who ruled Monday that those who confected Obamacare cannot compel the citizenry to buy health insurance. Moreover, he found that the way the 2,700-page law was created, without any "severability clause," makes the entire law unconstitutional. The authors of Obamacare declared that without mandatory insurance, the whole bill was unworkable. Mandatory insurance is not severable from the law. Hence, Judge Vinson threw out the whole law because of the way it was constructed. Now it is up to the Supreme Court to breathe life into this legislation or bury it. I say RIP.
Obamacare is unconstitutional. Everybody seems to understand that except Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and President Obama.
Patrick Henry shouted in 1775, "Give me liberty, or give me death." Liberty is the right to behave according to one's personal responsibility without coercion from government. Obamacare thus represents an attack on our liberty.
Congress has used the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight prostitution and domestic violence, to break monopolies and to combat segregation — but its biggest test could come over the Obama administration's claim that it can compel individuals to buy health insurance.
Virginia federal Judge Henry E. Hudson's ruling against the individual mandate in Obamacare - coming just 12 days before Christmas - told Americans, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Constitution."
Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia defended his efforts Sunday to have the state's trial-court victory in its federal health reform lawsuit bypass an appeals court and go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorneys for 20 states fighting the new federal health care law told a judge Thursday it will expand the government's powers in dangerous and unintended ways.
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) | Attorneys for 20 states fighting the new federal health care law told a judge Thursday it will expand the government's powers in dangerous and unintended ways.
Opponents of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are a cheering a federal court ruling that one of its core provisions is unconstitutional. They may not realize that Obama has a fallback option that also could do the job.
Attorneys for 20 states fighting the new federal health care law told a judge Thursday it will expand the government's powers in dangerous and unintended ways.
The U.S. Supreme Court should take the unusual step of bypassing various federal courts of appeal to consider whether the "individual mandate" in Obamacare is unconstitutional. It's important that this action be taken soon because implementation deadlines are looming for major parts of the law. Some provisions, once in place, would be difficult to reverse.
A federal judge rejected a key provision of the Obama administration's health care law as unconstitutional Monday, ruling the government cannot require people to buy insurance, in a dispute that both sides agree will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
"An individual's personal decision to purchase — or decline to purchase — health insurance from a private provider is beyond the historical reach of the Commerce Clause," Judge Hudson wrote at the time.
In December, U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in Richmond declared the individual mandate unconstitutional.
