Hard Drugs

It is rich, but Raich has come back to haunt those hoping for a legal answer to Obama Care. Just as I predicted in Letter to a Friend.

Reason Magazine has the news.

According to a federal judge in Virginia, ObamaCare’s individual mandate to purchase health insurance is constitutional under the Commerce Clause because, under precedents set by previous cases, “Congress has broad power to regulate purely local matters that have substantial economic effects, even where the regulated individuals claim not to participate in interstate commerce.” The ruling, which was released yesterday, dismissed an argument by Liberty University, a Christian school based in the state, that the law should be invalidated because, among other reasons, it unconstitutionally requires individuals to purchase health insurance.

The section of the decision dealing with the mandate leans heavily on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, a case in which the Court decided that, under the Commerce Clause, Congress could criminalize growing marijuana at home for personal use because failure to do so would upend a legitimate regulatory activity. Yesterday’s ruling by Judge Norman K. Moon quotes Raich to argue that Congress may regulate “purely intrastate activity that is not itself ‘commercial’...if it concludes that failure to regulate that class of activity would undercut the regulation of the interstate market in that commodity."

With the previous understanding the government was merely leasing the taxpayers. It now owns them. But you have to admit the dopers got what was coming to them. And now the rest of us are going to get it. Good and hard.

The Raich case was about pot. So maybe Marijuana is a hard drug after all. Evidently in aggregate it will be hardest on those who don't use it. A very peculiar drug to be sure.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Save Democracy, Impeach a Judge

We have a new group in America dedicated to getting the proper rulings out of judges. It is being reported in the Washington Post. There is also a link to the group's www site at the Daily Briefing.

You see they think too many activist judges are coming to the wrong conclusions. Except when they are not activist enough and come to the wrong conclusions. So because of the incoherence of their previous philosophy they have a new name for it:

[Phyllis] Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

Now these folks have some really good ideas. They want to eliminate the common law from American jurisprudence by eliminating precedent i.e. following previous decisions unless there is error or some very good reason not to follow those decisions. This also means the end of settled law. Now it is very hard to do business in a place where there is no settled law. What are these people thinking?

Farris said he would block judicial power by abolishing the concept of binding judicial precedents, by allowing Congress to vacate court decisions, and by impeaching judges such as Kennedy, who seems to have replaced Justice David H. Souter as the target of conservative ire. "If about 40 of them get impeached, suddenly a lot of these guys would be retiring," he said.

Well my limited understanding of human nature says if they start intimidating judges fewer will retire.

And if they want Congress to be able to vacate Court decisions they are going to have one little problem:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

That would be in Article 1 Section 9 of the US Constitution. What it means is that trying to do an end run around judges is generally frowned upon. I'm sure Ann Althouse could go into much more detail.

Now ordinarily these sorts of folks are screaming that we should follow the Constitution. I guess like the left they allow for one exception: when it doesn't get them the results they want.

via Instapundit.