I am feeling a little burnt out tonight from the healthcare reform debate, the fight is not in me tonight so I will give you a video that has made the rounds in the blogosphere in the past. It is audio from Ronald Reagan in 1961 arguing against socialized medicine. It is amazing how prophetic it sounds in light of the fight that is now upon us. If you haven’t heard this before, it is well worth the ten minutes to just listen to what he warned us about 50 years ago.
Will a 1998 Supreme Court declaration stop the Slaughter solution on healthcare reform?
I have been one who has been leery as to the case being made that the Slaughter solution– otherwise known as deem and pass– for passing healthcare reform without a vote is unconstitutional. The basis of my skepticism is in the location of the wording that is being sited as the means for a consitutional challenge.
In Article 1, Section 7 the constitution states,”But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively.” But it follows language that lays out the process for overturning a presidential veto. I was of the belief that a narrow interpretation of the constitution would uphold the “deem and pass” process as Section 1 Section 5 of the constitution grants both houses the right to make up their own rules for procedures.
It appears as though I might have been just a little too wary of the situation, for it appears in a 1998 declaration the Supreme Court has already stated that the two houses must approve the same exact text before a bill can become law. Writing for the majority in the 1998 declaration, Justice John Paul Stevens said the constitution explicitly requires that the House and Senate approve the exact same text.
However, I cannot shake this feeling that the American people are about to get royally screwed because the Supreme Court could still rule that the two houses approved the same language if the Senate agrees to the “fixes” even though neither house actually voted on the other’s bill. The Supreme Court could rule that the House has the right to “deem” a bill passed because under Article 1, Section 5 the House has the right to make this rule.
I honestly don’t know what to expect, hell I am waffling on this issue even as I write about it. This whole idea that the House could possibly get away with passing a bill they do not vote on has me badly shaken; it goes against everything that I thought America stood for. One second I think that the Supreme Court will have to rule against the Slaughter solution, and the other second I feel as if they may uphold it. But the bottom line is, there needs to be a constitutional challenge to this procedure. It is too important of an issue to let it pass without challenge. I hope that the Supreme Court will rule against this, it is obviously not what the founders had intentioned and frankly it is un-American and is counter to the ideals that America was founded on. I just have a very bad feeling about this that I cannot shake, I hope the Supreme Court proves me wrong, I will gladly admit my error.
This is a mobile post, I will correct any formatting issues, if there are any, later tonight.
I was listening to Boston talk radio this morning and I heard an interview with Massachusetts Democrat congressman Steve Lynch– one of the more sensible Democrats in the Massachusetts legislature, who would have been a much better candidate for senator than Martha Coakly turned out to be, if he had decided to run–and he has announced that he will vote against the healthcare reform bill. This is a loss for Nancy Pelosi, as he voted in favor of the House version of the bill.
He is still in favor of passing the House version of the bill, but he thinks that the Senate version is seriously flawed and actually contains no reform in it. He is unwilling to use “deem and pass” to pass this bill without voting on it as he believes the Senate cannot be trusted to pass the fixes that the House will propose in order to “deem” the bill to be “passed.”
His reason? He claims that there are currently over 290 bills that the House has already passed that have gone nowhere in the Senate. He believes that this bill could just be thrown on the stack where it will linger as has almost every other piece of legislation that the House has passed. This would make the Senate version– which he calls a bad bill– the law.
He also said that he would never insult the intelligence of his constituents by claiming he didn’t vote for healthcare, he only voted to allow “deem and pass” be used to pass the bill without voting on it. And that is what these Democrats are trying to use as cover in the upcoming election, it is good to know there are some in congress who do not think the American people are too stupid to realize that a vote for “deem and pass” is actually a vote for healthcare reform.
I have to wonder how many more Democrats there are in the House that feel the same way as Steve Lynch, there has to be more of them, it is too hard to believe he is the only one that actually thinks his constituents know what is going on. In the end, people like Steve Lynch may be our only chance to stop this bill.
Legislation is now pending in 37 states to file lawsuits against the federal government over the healthcare reform bill if and when it becomes law. Idaho has become the first state to officially declare it will file a lawsuit over the healthcare mandates that are sure to be included in the bill, and Virginia has now followed suit.
Idaho’s lawsuit will be aimed at the mandate that all Americans will be required to purchase health insurance, while Virginia hasn’t made it official exactly what they will sue over, although the state has already passed a bill declaring it illegal for the federal government to mandate to the American people that they must buy health insurance. It seems likely that that is what the lawsuit will be filed against, but “deem and pass” is also a possible target in my opinion.
As the first article I linked to above states, constitutional lawyers think that the lawsuits are mostly symbolic because federal law trumps state law, and that may be true, but they do serve as a litmus test as to how far the Obama administration and the Democrats in congress have strayed from not only the will of the American people, but also how far they have strayed from the executives of the different states. Anybody in the Democrat party from the president on down who feels that this issue will fade away once the bill is signed into law is sadly mistaken.
The president has divided the American people, the governors of the states, and the Democrat party itself even more so than it was under the Bush administration, while as a candidate he campaigned on the hope of bringing the people together after the Bush administration drove us apart.
This is change we can believe in?
As tiring as the healthcare reform debate has become, this issue is not going away any time soon, especially of the Democrats use “deem and pass” in order to pass the bill without ever voting on it.
As Democrats debate whether to use this insidious process to undermine the very fabric on which America was founded Mark Levin is preparing a constitutional challenge to be ready immediately upon the bill’s passage. Here is what Mark Levin– who besides being a conservative radio host was chief of staff in Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department– said on his radio program about his challenge to the “deem and pass” proposal the Democrats are now considering:
I cannot predict if we would win or lose–this is not as simple as some would have you believe–but I want to put the marker down right now and make it clear to members of the House of Representatives who think the quickest way to pass this is to adopt a rule that assumes that they voted on an underlying bill when they didn’t–that is going to be challenged if they do it.
He continued:
What I’m trying to do, though, is make it very clear to those Democrats who are on the fence, and who think that this somehow is going to protect them, that it won’t because we’re going to expose you
Nancy Pelosi is now on record as being in favor of using “deem and pass” because “people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.” The Senate bill is widely unpopular with the American people and it is becoming more unpopular everyday. She is of the opinion that the House can pass this bill without voting on it and that this manuever will provide Democrats cover by allowing them to pass the unpopular bill while still being able to claim that they didn’t vote for it. If Mark Levin has his way no cover will be provided to these Democrats, he will expose all of them for what they did and what their role was in passing this bill.
It is good to know that someone is preparing a constitutional challenge to this proposal, even if the challenge fails the process alone will expose everyone that was in favor of it for who they are. The American people will know exactly what depths the Democrats have sunk to in order to pass legislation that the American people are so vehemently against.
Democrats are hoping to pass this legislation quickly because they feel that once it goes into effect the people will come around to the issue and will forget about the means in which it was passed. They believe that the American people will forgive them for the manner in which is passed because they believe the American people will eventually realize that this bill is good and the end justifies the means. They hope that it will not be an issue in the upcoming mid-term election.
But this issue is a long way from being settled, even if the bill is passed. There will be constitutional challenges to healthcare mandates, as well as the “deem and pass” manner that the Democrats plan to use to pass this bill. This will be an issue in the upcoming elections, Mark Levin, and the other challengers to the constitutionality of the bill, will make sure that it is. And it should be. This may be an issue for many months to come, and possibly even years.
In 2005 Nancy Pelosi and Louise Slaughter thought “deem and pass” was unconstitutional
As the House gets ready to possibly pass the healthcare reform bill without voting on it, it turns out that there is precedent for this type of maneuver– but just not on a bill of this magnitude.
In 2005 the Republicans used “deem and pass”– the official name for this manuever– to pass a raising of the debt level through reconciliation. A group wrote a legal brief in order to challenge the constitutionality of the “deem and pass” strategy then being employed by Republicans. The brief read in part:
Some constitutional provisions are open to interpretation. One constitutional requirement that is not ambiguous, however, is the requirement that every bill pass both houses of Congress before it can be presented to the President and become law. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (“DRA”) was presented to the President in violation of that requirement: The Senate passed one version of a bill, the House another, and then the Senate’s version was presented to the President, who signed it. Under the Constitution, that bill has not become a law.
Stating emphatically that a bill had to be passed by both houses of congress before it could become law under the constitution, this brief was signed by several Democrats. The interesting part about this is who some of the Democrats were who at the time agreed that “deem and pass” was unconstitutional. None other than Louise Slaughter– who is the architect of the current attempt at using “deem and pass” to pass healthcare reform at the time thought that it was unconstitutional. As did Nancy Pelosi, who now claims, “I like it” when asked about the Slaughter solution as a possibility to pass healthcare reform “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”
Funny how two of the people most responsible for the possibility of using “deem and pass” as a viable option now, thought that it was unconstitutional just five short years ago, isn’t it?
The hypocrisy of these two individuals is on full display here, and frankly it is quite appalling, but telling. Will anybody in the media find this story newsworthy? I think we know the answer to that question.
When I first heard about– and wrote about— the possibility that the House would pass the healthcare reform bill without even voting on it I was skeptical. I was skeptical about the source, the rumor, and the reality that this could possibly be true. But with Nancy Pelosi’s admission that the “Slaughter solution” is one of about four different options that the House is considering in order to pass healthcare reform, it is time to revisit this issue.
The “Slaughter solution” goes something like this: the president would have to sign into law the Senate version of the bill, the House would vote on “fixes” to the bill and if these “fixes” passed the House, it would “deem” the Senate bill passed, the Senate would then have to reconcile the House “fixes” and incorporate them in the final bill, all based on a promise that they would do so. This would allow the House Democrats who are in tough re-election campaigns to claim that they never voted for the unpopular Senate bill and provide them cover in case the Senate did not pass their “fixes,” allowing the Senate bill to be the final version of the bill.
According to Nancy Pelosi, this is an attractive option because it will protect House members politically who are unwilling to support the bill publically, claiming that it is ” more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know.” In other words, if they pass the bill she is hoping that people aren’t paying attention to HOW they passed it, they just will know that the bill passed. She is hoping that people are not paying attention to their actions. She continues by saying she also likes this option, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”
That should tell us all that we need to know not only about the Senate bill’s popularity and flaws, but also about the mindset of the house leadership. She knows that this bill is unpopular, she knows that the American people are opposed to the bill, yet she is willing to stoop to this level to pass it. And she thinks that the American people are so stupid that once the bill passes and is law that we will not realize that by not voting directly for or against this bill that they actually voted for it. I can’t even begin to describe how obnoxious and arrogant I find the Speaker’s position on this issue and her disdain for the intelligence of the American people.
Since it has become public knowledge about this nefarious plot to pass healthcare reform without voting on it, the question has been raised about whether this is constitutional or not. On the surface it would seem that there is no way that this can be constitutional. This question is based on Article 1, Section 7 of the constitution, which states that the “Votes of both Houses shall be determined by Yeas and Nays.” But that language follows the language that describes the process for overriding a presidential veto, does this apply to legislation that is sent to the president in the first place, or just to legislation that has already been vetoed by the president? I am not sure. And then there is Article 1, Section 5 of the constitution which states that “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings.”
It is based on this section that I have never questioned the constitutionality of using reconciliation to pass healthcare reform, even though I disagree with the notion. If the houses have the means to determine their own rules, the Senate must have the right to determine how many votes it takes to pass legislation. Does this not give the House the right to pass a bill without voting on it?
So while the constitutionality of this maneuver is up in the air– it may or may not be constitutional– there is one thing that we know for sure; this is an unscrupulous, insidious, un-American frontal assault on what a representative republic is supposed to stand for and the American people should not stand for it.
As if Democrats who are either on the fence on healthcare reform or are a definite “no” vote on healthcare reform needed any more incentive to vote against the bill, they got it today anyway. Barack Obama is threatening– or given his track record, promising– that he will not campaign for any Democrat who votes no on healthcare reform.
Considering the fact that every candidate that the president has campaigned for in recent months has lost, this should be enough incentive for any undecided Democrat to vote against this bill. His absence from their campaign would probably be a good thing at this point, it would allow the candidate to show the people that they voted against the president and with the people on an issue that the vast majority of the people disagree with the president on.
The only people Barack Obama’s snub would have any positive effect on (positive in the president’s eyes) would be the far left in the party and where are they going to go? They will either have to vote for the candidate or stay home. Even so, the votes that might be won in the more moderate circles by opposing Obamacare would possibly be enough to re-elect the candidate that Barack Obama didn’t campaign for.
And if the moderate votes end up voting Republican, what has the president gained by this? Nothing, other than proving that he is so stubborn that he cost his party seats based on one issue, while that stubbornness may have stopped any chance he had of pushing forward his remaining domestic agenda by electing the opposition party.
Unless the undecided Democrats succumb to the president’s threat/promise, I don’t see any upside to this and I really don’t think the undecided Democrats are going to vote “yes” on healthcare reform just on this threat/promise alone.
Emails show that the military thought Nidal Hasan was unfit to serve, but no action was taken
According to this article, higher ups in the United States military thought that the Fort Hood terrorist, Nidal Hasan, was unfit for military service, yet no action was ever taken to remove him from service. Instead he was allowed to finish his training, was promoted, and then sent to Fort Hood where he committed his terrorist attack.
They also knew that Nidal Hasan was in email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaki– who advocated for his followers the join a terrorist group and kill Americans– but they wrote this off as part of his psychiatric counseling of other GIs.
It appears as if all of the warning signs were there but that they were ignored; this was an attack that was preventable and you have to wonder why the military was either too slow or unwilling to act before it was too late. I have to look at political correctness as a possible reason for the military’s reluctance to do anything with this killer. It seems that they were afraid to come across as anti-Muslim if they were to reprimand and remove this man from the military, so they ignored what should have clearly been warning signs.
The questions that need to be asked are, who were they afraid to offend; was this simply a case of the military being afraid to offend Muslims in the countries in which we are fighting terrorists, or where they afraid to appear to be anti-Muslim to the people at home? Where they afraid that if they reprimanded Nidal Hasan, it would give the radical Muslims a rallying cry and a recruitment tool? Did the order come down from even higher that the country couldn’t afford to “target” a Muslim in the United States military because of the message that Barack Obama is trying to send to the world that we are a “kinder, gentler,” nation and this would go against his outreach effort to Muslims across the world?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they need to be asked. We lost American heroes on that day that should be alive today– and would be alive today if the proper action was taken in time– and somebody needs to be held accountable.
Cocaine users are causing global warming
As the global warming myth evaporates into thin air with the revelation of Climategate the global warming alarmists are not backing down, in fact they are doubling down. The believe that the end justifies the means and that even if the global warming agenda is based on a lie– or lies– the fact remains that we should still give in to them because it is still for the good of the planet.
The latest example in the alarmists plan to use everything and everybody as a cause for this “crisis” which does not exist comes from the statement that people who use cocaine are contributing to global warming. The theory goes like this; because people use cocaine people have to produce cocaine, and by producing cocaine the rainforests in Columbia are being cut down.
As the case for man made global warming crumbles around them they continue to reach new absurdities in their quest to control what everyone in the world does. I am not condoning cocaine use, I am merely stating the fact that these people will stop at nothing when reaching for excuses and people to blame the warming of the planet on– even as the planet is cooling and their lies have been exposed.
America's Watchtower 