Court Favors Obama Care

To me, this decision is just dang scary. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the most controversial part of Obama, the mandate that basically forces people to purchase health care, as constitutional.

What makes this so worrisome for me is the now the door is open to a completely repressive government telling you what you can and cannot do. Congress could conceivably use the Commerce Clause to mandate anything they wish. Even going as far as overturning other amendments. You want to purchase a gun? No, sorry, you already have one. You want to purchase a bag of M&Ms? Don’t think so because you had a candy bar last week. You want to drive your car to visit your parents? Nope, we, the federal government, deem it is better that you ride the train or bus.

Imagine running a blog that accepts advertising. This blog you are reading doesn’t have any advertisers, per se. But Google will put up commercial ad links based on the content of the blog. So if someone in the federal government deemed my blog (or any other) as too “something”, it could possibly pass a law regulating my content based on the Commerce Clause. Congress could justify their actions based on advertising (commerce) that comes across my pages.

What was most surprising in the decision today was that one of the judges that ruled in favor of Obama care, Jeffrey Sutton, was a Bush appointee. I have never really put any trust in a liberal-minded judge to interpret the Constitution as it was written. But to have a supposed Constitutional scholar think it's OK for Congress to regulate non-action of a person as permissible under the Constitution has me concerned.

This concern runs deeper too. The SCOTUS is pretty split evenly between those who believe the Constitution as written and those who either think it is a “living, breathing document” or disregard it altogether. There is one member, and I can’t remember his name (dang it), who is a wild card. He has been back and forth on these kinds of matters, making him a little unpredictable. With this 6th Circuit Bush appointee going against the Constitution (as I see it), trepidation begins to seep in that a more "liberal" conservative may deem it OK to regulate your inactivity. This would tip the balance.

On the plus side of all this, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling really doesn’t mean a whole lot. This is going to be decided at the SCOTUS when the multi-state case that started in Florida hits the docket.