Quote of the Day

This fairly well sums up this morning's Supreme Court decision regarding the nationalization of health care:

Today marks a sad day in the history of America. With this decision, Americans have lost the right to be left alone, which Justice William O. Douglas once called “the beginning of all freedom.” 

What the justices did was disingenuous, to say the least.  They have upheld the individual mandate to purchase health insurance -- not because the Constitution gives Congress such power under the Commerce Clause -- but because they view the penalty for NOT complying as merely a "tax."

The linked editorial recalls Justice Kennedy's observation that the mandate “changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.”   Indeed.  By grossly expanding the meaning of the "taxation power," the court has opened the path for Congress to penalize choices they disapprove.  It's not too hard to imagine a future point where citizens are "encouraged" to purchase and install windmills or solar panels, and fined (excuse me... taxed) if they don't.  After all, that could be justified for the common good, right?  As has been noted, 'the power to tax is the power to destroy.'  This ruling now opens the way to destroy any choice that doesn't conform to the agenda of our ruling class.

The last shreds of pretense are falling away.  The Supreme Court is more interested in verbal gymnastics than in defending the Constitution, and the rest of the Federal Government has no interest in being bound by that document.

When one party to a contract abrogates it, the other parties eventually realize there's no point in unilateral good faith...