» Obama’s Signing Statement on NDAA: ‘I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t’ Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!

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Shocking. Okay, not really. Obama signs the NDAA. The sad thing is the partisan sheep who believe there is a difference between Obama and Bush will should until they are blue in the face that “this is different”, or “Obama said he’d not use the power” or some other such nonsense.

» Obama’s Signing Statement on NDAA: ‘I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t’ Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

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Healthcare mandate is constitutional?

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I just came across an article in the LA Times written by a law professor claiming the Obama health care law is constitutional. Now, this in itself does not surprise me. Many law professors confuse legal training with education (something you shouldn’t do) and many law school graduates are trained in the nationalist version of American history (yes Virginia, there are more versions to the story of US history than your teacher told you). While I expected he would use both the so-called Supremacy Clause and the Commerce Clause, he only resorted the latter.

So lets look at the professors argument. He starts off asserting the law is legal and then wonders wether the Supreme court will look to legal precedent or partisanship as it’s guide when adjudicating this case. Surely there are more options? What he is doing is framing the debate (or so he hopes) on his own terms. Either you see it based on the logic of precedent or you are a partisan (and obviously he is implying right wing) hack. Of course, one should be careful of legal precedent, as judges are NOT infallible (never mind that is exactly what the supreme court stated in Cooper vs. Aaron 1958).

Anyway, the argument he presents goes on to bring up the commerce clause and the fact that (in his mind) everyone purchases health care at some point as giving Congress (under the commerce clause) the right to force people to purchase health insurance. If you can’t see the problem with this logic, then I really don’t know what to say. What I want to deal with here is his use of the commerce clause and the historical innacuracy this represents.

First of all, a study of the references to commerce at the Constitutional Convention, in the Federalist, or in any of the state ratifying conventions will show you that by commerce the founders meant “trade or exchange”. Furthermore, to regulate, in the 18th Century, did not mean anything more than to make regular, or to function in an orderly manner. So the point of the clause is that it was the job of Congress to make the trade and/or exchange of goods regular. Period. Not that Congress could force someone to purchase something simply because, at some point in the past or the future they will or have entered the health care market. If this were the case, then why doesn’t the government mandate the purchase of firearms for self defense? We could play this game all day.

The rest of the professors argument falls apart and is not worthy of debate as it is based upon a historical fallacy, one which he is either ignorant of, or chooses to ignore. Either way, this article is not scholarly or intellectual, and is not even worthy of being written by someone with a Ph.D. But then again, what should I expect? It did, after all, appear in the LA Times.