Right Wing Judge Says ObamaCares is Constitutional

[Grizzly Adams]

Slippery slope fallacy.

How is it a slippery slope fallacy? It's 100% true that controlling precedent in the DC Circuit at this time states that if Congress can prohibit something, it can also mandate it. It is also 100% true that Congress has prohibited commerce in organs for profit.

Given those two 100% true facts, it is therefore 100% true that, according to the DC Circuit, there is no constitutional prohibition against mandating organ donation for just compensation plus a little something extra. What is the fallacy?

I'm not saying this is a law that's imminent or even probable. I'm saying such a ruling is absurd on its face and this is a dangerous reasoning to accept because we shouldn't have to rely on politicians to stay within the bouds of reason on this vast power they've now been given that I can't imagine was ever contemplated by the framers.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

For people who wish to go with the original intention of the Commerce Clause authority (and ignore the well-established case law providing the broader CC authority I've described), what do you do about the original intention of Article 3 (the judicial authority that gives the judiciary authority to resolve all conflicts arising from the law including the Constitution)? Or do we only care about original intention for some bits of the Constitution?

Article III gives justices the authority to interpret the Constitution, but not to make up new powers out of whole cloth. That's up to the people, and that's what amendments are for. Courts should exercise their Article III power to resolve conflicts but they should be restrained by the original meaning of the Constitution.

If they're not, then the Constitution can be twisted to any end and no government exercise of power cannot be justified under some perversion of the words of the document. Just like this whole "general welfare" BS that's going on right here in this thread.

 

[BenBurch]

But you assume that just because they can that they will. That is slippery-slope.

 

[Grizzly Adams]

But you assume that just because they can that they will. That is slippery-slope.

It would be, if I hadn't explicitly not done that:

I'm not saying this is a law that's imminent or even probable.

I didn't say that in my original post on this topic but neither did I say this was going to happen. It was just an illustration of the sweeping new power this decision says the government now has.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

How is it a slippery slope fallacy? It's 100% true that controlling precedent in the DC Circuit at this time states that if Congress can prohibit something, it can also mandate it. It is also 100% true that Congress has prohibited commerce in organs for profit.

Given those two 100% true facts, it is therefore 100% true that, according to the DC Circuit, there is no constitutional prohibition against mandating organ donation for just compensation plus a little something extra. What is the fallacy?

I'm not saying this is a law that's imminent or even probable. I'm saying such a ruling is absurd on its face and this is a dangerous reasoning to accept because we shouldn't have to rely on politicians to stay within the bouds of reason on this vast power they've now been given that I can't imagine was ever contemplated by the framers.

Ok, so, technically, it's not unconstitutional for organ donation/selling to be mandated. What's your point? Just because you don't like something or don't want it to happen doesn't mean it's unconstitutional.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Because it's not related to income. At all. It's only relation to the income tax is the fact that it's assessed at the same time you file your income taxes.

Not true. If you pay no income taxes, there is no tax penalty. (But if you pay no income taxes, you doubtless qualify for free minimum essential coverage anyway.)

I should be surprised you tried to dismiss the inactivity argument by talking about how the court has ruled on activity, but I'm not.


No, you can't spin it that way. Wickard was growing his own wheat. This is an activity. A congruous situation would have been the government mandating that Wickard buy wheat from someone else. Regardless of how 150% retarded I think Wickard is, your characterization of it in relation to this case is even more so.

Actually the basis of the Wichard decision was the impact of not buying the wheat these families (taken collectively) consumed on the open market. [ETA: That sentence was pretty confusing. I'll restate it: the Wickard case said that Congress has the authority to compel you to buy the wheat you consume from the regulated interstate market. Not buying that wheat is the "activity" that was being regulated.] It's as much "inactivity" as participation in the healthcare system is. [ETA: If you want to spin being sometimes uninsured as "inactivity" you can certainly spin the issue in Wickard as "inactivity". You can't distinguish the case based on this point.]

The activity in question (being sometimes uninsured) has a real and measurable effect on interstate commerce when taken collectively.

That doesn't make them right, as any moron with a second-grade literacy level can see by reading the Constitution.

Now there's a well-reasoned argument!

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Article III gives justices the authority to interpret the Constitution, but not to make up new powers out of whole cloth. That's up to the people, and that's what amendments are for. Courts should exercise their Article III power to resolve conflicts but they should be restrained by the original meaning of the Constitution.

If they're not, then the Constitution can be twisted to any end and no government exercise of power cannot be justified under some perversion of the words of the document. Just like this whole "general welfare" BS that's going on right here in this thread.

So who then would resolve the conflict about the exact extent of the Commerce Clause authority? Are we to ignore Article 3, take that authority out of the hands of the Judiciary and give them to. . . you?

The fact is, the broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause authority is not making up new powers out of whole cloth. It's the result of resolving conflicts wrt to the law (including the Commerce Clause of the Constitution), which is in the Judiciary's authority to do.

I've made an argument on another topic that the SCOTUS should decide a certain way based on the point that they would essentially have to create new legislation if they decided the case a certain way (that is, if they accepted the defense's novel Mosaic Theory in the Antoine Jones case--they'd have to say after how many hours or days tracking the movements of a car in public where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy suddenly becomes information for which there is a reasonable expectation of privacy). The judiciary's interpretation of the CC authority is nothing like that. It says that any activity--even activity measured collectively--that has a significant effect on interstate commerce can be regulated by Congress.

It's not an unlimited authority (despite the scare rhetoric claiming that it is).