The attorneys general offer no serious rebuttal to this reality that Congress has sweeping authority to enact economic regulation, and a requirement that all Americans be insured is economic in nature. Instead, they claim that health reform is unconstitutional merely because it is unusual. In the words of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, “at no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service.”
Cuccinelli is not telling the truth. President George Washington signed the Second Militia Act of 1792, which required a significant percentage of the U.S. civilian population to purchase—at their own expense—“a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack” along with various other items they would need if the president ever called them up to serve in the militia. Many of the members of Congress who voted to enact this law were also members of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution itself.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Hope for Activist Judges
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Hope for Activist Judges
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2 comments:
Not quite true. The law calls for "providing oneself", which could include sewing one's own knapsack or smithing one's own bayonet. If there is a self-insurance option in the health insurance racket protection legislation, I must have glossed over it and would appreciate a pointer.
Nobody in the 18th century made all those things themselves. I object to the new law's not providing national health insurance to buy into, without which it amounts to a giveaway to private corporations.
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