The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
I discovered in 2003 that the state of New Jersey had outlawed the original Marlin Model 60 .22 caliber rifle as an “assault weapon” because its tubular magazine held “more than 10 rounds.” Now New York City has done something similar, but it’s magazine capacity limit is five. And they’re serious about it:
The only effective use of a firearm registry is to make it easier to take guns away from the law abiding.
I will not register. After the first felony, the rest are free.
A couple of weeks ago I received an email from reader GuardDuck, informing me that serial-commenter Markadelphia, who was politely voted off the island three years ago, still seems a little obsessed with me, calling me and by extension my readers out for our “support” for Donald Trump.
I was tempted. Oh so tempted.
But no. I will not respond with an überpost. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks wrestling with the decision and collecting links, but I will resist. Instead, I’m going to post some images and links, and let you build your very own überpost in your head!
Markadelphia asks:
Kevin has spent years writing on his blog about the education system and Yuri Bezmenov, an ex KGB guy, who has warned the US about a totalitarian takeover. Now he and others like him in the right wing blogsphere are ACTUALLY VOTING FOR THIS TO HAPPEN.
Kevin, I had planned on leaving you alone but this complete capitulation to Putin via Trump is such a monumental example of hypocrisy that it necessitate inquiry. You rail against Russia’s influence in the US and now you are going to help make that happen by voting for Putin’s puppet. I have to wonder…WTF, dude? All of the long posts about Bezmenov…the education system…communists plots…ALL now rendered worthless. Where is your integrity, man? I’ll be looking for your response on your site.
Given the right wing bloggers’ penchant for authoritarianism, illustrated quite well in any sort of engagement with them in comments sections, my only guess here is that they are for totalitarianism if the right people are in charge. If they have some naggy liberal trying to make the world a better place and making them do stuff that they don’t wanna, well, fuck that!
But if they have a system where they can keep their guns to guard against government tyranny and still jail people for being against that government and not being patriotic enough then, by gum, the are ALL IN!!!
Knowing through about seven years of dealing with Markadelphia that nothing I say will reach him, I decided I’d try pictures. Here are a few I collected for this post:
Edited to add this very appropriate one via Joe Huffman:
And here are some pieces I really think you ought to read if you’re interested in my position on this election. (That’s directed at my readers, not Markadelphia. I know he cannot grasp the points of these pieces, so it’s not worth wasting his time on them.)
– Excerpt:
Which points to the fifth objection: in giving reasons for Trump, I oppose the Constitution and support “authoritarianism.” First of all, I don’t even know what the latter is—beyond the discredited Adorno study that the Left still uses to tar everyone to its right as Nazis. If we simply go by the Wiki definition—“authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms”—that sounds to me much more like the administrative state than anything Trump has proposed. Or do you mean “fascist”? Then say so. I have some idea of what that is. Or do you mean “tyrant”? I certainly know what that is. Are you saying Trump is one, or wants to be, or that I welcome either?
More risible—downright intelligence-insulting—is to read liberals accuse conservatives of wanting to trash the Constitution. Really. The Left has been insisting for more than a century that our Constitution is fatally flawed, written for another age, outmoded, hypocritical, hopelessly undermined by slavery and racism and sexism and property requirements, and so much else. Conservatives who argue for originalism and strict construction and federalism—sticking exactly to the letter of the Constitution—are called racists because everyone supposedly knows that the former are mere “code words.”
This is a very large topic, and for those interested, there is an equally large body of scholarship that explains it all in detail. For now, let’s just ask ourselves two questions. First, how do the mechanics of government, as written in the Constitution, differ from current practice? Second, how well are the rights Amendments observed? As to the first, we do still have those three branches of government mentioned. But we also have a fourth, hidden in plain sight within the executive, namely the bureaucracy or administrative state. It both usurps legislative power and uses executive power in an unaccountable way. Congress does not use its own powers but meekly defers to the executive and to the bureaucracy. The executive does whatever it wants. The judiciary also usurps legislative and, when it’s really feeling its oats, executive power through the use of consent decrees and the like. And that’s just the feds—before we even get to the relationship between the feds and the states. As to the second, can you think of a single amendment among the Bill of Rights that is not routinely violated—with the acquiescence and approval of the Left? I can’t.
All this happened because, for more than a century, the Left has been working at best to “change” and “update” the Constitution, and at worst to ignore it or get around it. This agenda is not hidden but announced and boasted of. Yet when someone on the Right points out that the Constitution—by design—no longer works as designed, that the U.S. government does not in practice function as a Constitutional republic, we are lambasted as “authoritarian.”
That’s a malicious lie. The truth is that the Left pushed and dragged us here. You wanted this. We didn’t. You didn’t like the original Constitution. We did and do. You didn’t want it to operate as designed because when it does it too often prevents you from doing what you want to do. So you actively worked to give the courts and the bureaucracy the last word, some of you for high-minded reasons of sincere conviction, but most of you simply because you know they’re on your side. You said it would be better this way. When we opposed you, you called us “racists.” Now that you’ve got what you wanted, and we acknowledge your success, you call us “authoritarian” and “anti-Constitutionalist.” This is gaslighting on the level of “If you like your health care, you can keep your health care.” Exasperating and infuriating, yet impressive in its shamelessness. But that’s the Left for you: l’audace, l’audace—toujours l’audace.
– Excerpt:
So when Clinton supporters ask me how I could support a “fascist,” the answer is that he isn’t one. Clinton’s team, with the help of Godzilla, have effectively persuaded the public to see Trump as scary. The persuasion works because Trump’s “pacing” system is not obvious to the public. They see his “first offers” as evidence of evil. They are not. They are technique.
And being chummy with Putin is more likely to keep us safe, whether you find that distasteful or not. Clinton wants to insult Putin into doing what we want. That approach seems dangerous as hell to me.
Those two pieces pretty much encompass my response to the Putin/Tyranny question, but they do far more than just that, and I recommend you read them in their entirety.
With respect to Clinton and gun control, please look at these:
– Excerpt:
When it comes to gun control, Hillary Clinton said last Friday, “Australia is a good example” for the United States to follow. That comment suggested the leading Democratic presidential candidate’s plans in this area are much more ambitious than she usually lets on—so ambitious that implementing them would require ignoring or repealing the Second Amendment. By Monday a spokeswoman for the former secretary of state was already backpedaling, saying Clinton did not mean to endorse mass gun confiscation, a central element of Australia’s approach to firearms. But if that was not Clinton’s intent, she has an alarmingly cavalier attitude toward laws that impinge on constitutional rights: The details don’t matter as long as you mean well.
– Excerpt:
What would you do to address terrorism?
Hillary Clinton: Well, these are legitimate fears. I believe that people are rightly concerned about violence. Terrorism is part of that violence, and we have to do the best job we can to keep America safe. So I’ve laid out a very comprehensive plan about taking on the terrorists, going after them where they operate, doing everything we can to take away their territories so they can’t mastermind attacks from afar. But we also have to go after them online because that is where they recruit, radicalize and direct attacks. And we need to do a better job of getting there early, rooting out people who are vulnerable and preventing that from happening. But I’m looking at violence broadly.… It’s also why I’ve advocated gun-safety reform, like comprehensive background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, closing the online loophole—because, you know, it’s not only terrorists we need to be worried about. Terrorism is part of it, but gun violence kills 33,000 Americans a year…We’ve got to get serious about stemming violence and terrorism in every way we can.
Even if it violates the Second Amendment, apparently. And remember, over half of those “gun violence” deaths are suicides, but the real numbers aren’t scary enough for some reason. Probably because of this:
And equally apparent, it would appear that Australia’s much-vaunted gun control laws have helped as much in Melbourne as they have in Chicago: Young, Dumb and armed: How Melbourne became a gun city. Excerpt:
In June, word spread that an AK-47 was available for $20,000.
The Soviet-era assault rifle is the weapon of choice for Third World armies and terrorists, but this one was destined for the streets of Melbourne.
The notion that a military-grade weapon could be in the hands of local criminals is shocking, but police have already seized at least five machine guns and assault rifles in the past 18 months. The AK-47 was not among them.
Only a fortnight ago, law enforcement authorities announced they were hunting another seven assault rifles recently smuggled into the country. Weapons from the shipment have been used in armed robberies and drive-by shootings.
These are just a handful of the thousands of illicit guns fuelling a wave of violent crime in the world’s most liveable city.
Apparently Hillary missed the Econ 101 portion of Fr. Guido Sarducci’s 5-Minute University:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c00GPvns31U?rel=0&showinfo=0]
Supply and Demand. That’s it.
There’s more, but as I said, I don’t want to write another überpost. If you read the attached links, you can write your own in your head, but if that’s not enough, you might want to peruse these too:
Missouri: The Shoot Me State – yes the NYT still waves the gun-control banner. I fisked this piece already.
A couple of pieces on Hillary’s health:
One from Instapundit with multiple links and one about her recent bout with “pneumonia.”
And one more image I just had to share:
Firehand tagged me over at Bookface, pointing me at this piece by Adaptive Curmudgeon, Thoughts On Z-Blog’s “On Being Revolting in the Modern Age.” Said Z-Man post is here.
I wish I’d written Adaptive Curmudgeon’s post. Excerpt (but by all means, read the whole thing):
My big observation of the “Hillary’s private server with State secrets affair” wasn’t about the press. It was about the people; or rather roughly half of the people. A moment passed that felt colder and more unsettling than the usual “they’ve fucked us again” situation.
Think about it like this; the FBI infuriated half the electorate and that half… did nothing. Yet it wasn’t a moment of defeat. It wasn’t a wail of despair, not gloom, not anger, not resignation, not desperation. It was a subdued tone of quiet finality. An acceptance that corruption is so deep that no one, nobody at all, can pretend otherwise.
Go. Read.
OK, this one was new to me. Not exactly the same scene from the film Downfall we’re used to seeing:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prls6Iz3B3E?rel=0&showinfo=0&vq=hd720]
Today they just admitted it out loud.
So, over at Quora someone asked, What would you do if guns became illegal in the US? I responded:
As the saying goes, “When guns are outlawed, only the government and outlaws will have guns.”
There’s another saying: “After the first felony, the rest are free.”
But there’s an even more appropriate saying: “…an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.” (Marbury v. Madison, 1803) And yes, I believe I understand what is and isn’t “repugnant to the Constitution,” and more importantly, I have the right to make that judgement.
That drew this comment:
I agree with most of what you have written Kevin, right up to the end. You DON’T have a right to make that judgment. That decision is reserved for the courts and until such time as a lawfully passed law has been approved, it is the law of the land. Once the courts declare it unconstitutional, then it is no longer a law.
This is the whole scenario with the wackadoos out at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and with the Bundys in Nevada. You are not free to interpret the Constitution nor the laws in any way you choose…
To which I replied:
“You DON’T have a right to make that judgment. That decision is reserved for the courts and until such time as a lawfully passed law has been approved, it is the law of the land. Once the courts declare it unconstitutional, then it is no longer a law.“
Here I’ll quote Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:
“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”
If I wait for “the courts to declare it unconstitutional” I would already be disarmed.
Fuck. That.
The response?
Yeah sorry Kevin….didn’t realize you were part of the tin foil hat crowd. Please just nevermind.
You know me, I couldn’t stop there:
No, not the tinfoil hat crowd. They think Armageddon is imminent. I’m with the tinfoil yarmulke crowd. We don’t think it likely, (see “exceptionally rare circumstances” above) but we also don’t consider it impossible. We’ve read history.
Apparently he wasn’t finished either:
LOL…OK, poor analogy on my part !
But while I recognize that laws can be unconstitutional, PEOPLE don’t get to decide that. That is the purpose of the court system…
So I decided to take him to school:
Yes, PEOPLE do. As law professor Mike O’Shea put it, “So the Constitution says Roe, but it doesn’t say I have the right to keep a gun to defend my home, huh?”
The court system is made up of PEOPLE. People we should hold to a higher standard, but people nonetheless. Have you ever READ any court decisions? Here’s another of my favorite Kozinski quotes:
“Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that “speech, or…the press” also means the Internet…and that “persons, houses, papers, and effects” also means public telephone booths….When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases – or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.
“It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it’s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.“
What you’re advocating is surrender to authority. You’ve abandoned your responsibility as a citizen to understand and defend your rights “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” when you insist that we’re just supposed to accept what five black-robed officials on a panel decide. You can read, study, and understand what you’ve been promised by the system that was set up to protect those rights yourself.
Your argument boils down to “You’re not qualified!”
Like hell we’re not.
That got him warmed up:
Not a question of “qualified” Kevin. It is a question of what our Constitution says is how our government works. You don’t have to like the Roe vs. Wade decision anymore than I like the Heller decision. But those are the law of the land now since they are the decisions of the SUPREME Court. I capitalize that for a reason, because it is the ULTIMATE decider and serves as a check on the Legislative and Executive Branches.
Kozinski can write whatever he wants to, just like you or I can. The difference is that his writings nor yours or mine carry any legal weight. If you want to change the Constitution to make the way the US government operates different, that is fine and there is a procedure for amending it that is clearly laid out in the document itself. But as a citizen of this country, you are governed by the laws passed in your state and by the federal government. No place in any of those laws does it say you get to interpret the laws as you personally see fit.
“What you’re advocating is surrender to authority”. Yes, that is exactly what living in a country is all about. We have a common system of laws that supposedly apply equally to call citizens and visitors. You don’t get to make up your own laws, nor disregard those made up by the governments who govern where you are.
Your last paragraph is exactly what the Cliven Bundy’s and LaVoy Finicums of the world believe. “The law doesn’t apply to me if I don’t agree with it”. Well, YES IT DOES! If you don’t like it, then there is a procedure for changing the laws of this country and you need to get a majority of the people to support the changes you want to make. This is a democracy on some levels and a republic on others. Why are you willing to argue about your individual rights, while completely ignoring the process by which you were granted those rights. The true disconnect is when people (and that would include you in this discussion) think they get to define their own rights as being different from that which others believe them to be. That is the purpose of the court system…to make sure we are all on the same page as to what is and what isn’t acceptable. You don’t get to make that call unfortunately, no matter how much you may not like it.
Not deterred, I fired back:
“You don’t get to make up your own laws, nor disregard those made up by the governments who govern where you are.“
Do you routinely drive faster than the posted speed limit? Are you aware that, most likely, you commit Three Felonies a Day?
“Why are you willing to argue about your individual rights, while completely ignoring the process by which you were granted those rights.“
See, that’s what defines the difference between our worldviews. I wasn’t granted anything. I’m supposed to be living under a government established with the duty to protect the rights I have simply by existing.
How’s that working out? Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and Orwell’s 1984 were supposed to be warnings, not instruction manuals.
“The true disconnect is when people (and that would include you in this discussion) think they get to define their own rights as being different from that which others believe them to be.“
Now here we are somewhat in agreement. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and writing about rights, and at one point I wrote:
A “right” is what the majority of a society believes it is.
To that, however, I added this:
What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if it gets you put in jail? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” if using a firearm to defend yourself or someone else results in the loss of your freedom, or at least your property? What good is a “right to keep and bear arms” when you live in a city that denies you the ability to keep a gun in your home for self protection?
This is a battle for public opinion, make no mistake.
It is a battle the powerful and their useful idiots have been winning.
Your rights are meaningless when the system under which you live does not recognize them. Or worse, scorns them.
If you want to keep your rights, it is up to YOU to fight for them. Liberty is NEVER unalienable. You must always fight for it.
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill
Welcome to the battle for public opinion. We appear to be on different sides.
That put him off:
Thanks for the dialog. Speeding is not a felony, and as soon as you started quoting Ayn Rand that ended my interest in continuing the discussion. Keep fighting the good fight.
But I wasn’t done yet:
Point of fact: I didn’t “quote” Rand. I gave the title of one of her books, along with the title of one of Orwell’s. With respect to Rand, I like this quote (about, not by her):
“Perhaps the biggest mistake an intellectual can make is to try to parlay his one brilliant insight into a unified theory of existence. Ayn Rand made this mistake with Objectivism. Objectivism was useful for thinking in certain limited realms, but Rand sought to apply Objectivist thinking to every aspect of the human experience, including love. The result is a sterile philosophical landscape, extending out of sight in all directions.Tellingly, Rand was unable to live according to her ideals. This is part of what makes Rand so disagreeable; the almost hysterical denial of subjectivity’s inevitable, essential role in our lives. And it makes her not only disagreeable, but wrong.“
The fact that you reacted so viscerally to the mere mention of her name says more about you than about me.
Now I will quote Rand so you can feel justified in abandoning the dialog:
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.“
To which he replied:
Kevin, we just see the world very differently and arguing about that on Quora does neither of us any good. The title of this whole thread was “What would you do if guns became illegal in the US”. In order for that to happen, there would need to be a constitutional amendment and that requires a 2/3 vote of the states, so I don’t see that happening.
We obviously disagree on the role of the courts in interpreting the constitution and the laws passed by the legislative branches of government. That’s fine. We are each entitled to our own beliefs.
My concern is with people who somehow view our government as evil and restricting their freedom. The USA is one of the freest places on the planet. I believe that in my heart. If you don’t, then so be it, again, your choice, but I don’t know what individual rights you believe you are not getting in this country.
Good luck and again, thanks for the dialog.
One more final parting shot by me:
“Kevin, we just see the world very differently and arguing about that on Quora does neither of us any good.“
Odd, I thought that was what the internet was for!
😉
“My concern is with people who somehow view our government as evil and restricting their freedom.“
You haven’t studied history much, have you? I don’t view our government as evil and restricting of freedom, I view all government as evil and restricting of freedom. I share that opinion with Thomas Paine:
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer…”
However, I am not an anarchist – note the qualifier that government is a necessary evil.
“The USA is one of the freest places on the planet. I believe that in my heart.“
So do I. But as a friend asked once, “When was the last time you built a bonfire on a beach, openly drank a beer and the presence of a policeman was absolutely no cause for concern? Hmmm?”
I am also constantly reminded of John Philpot Curran’s warning:
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”
I’m an atheist, but the sentiment rings true.
“…I don’t know what individual rights you believe you are not getting in this country.“
It’s not the ones I’m not getting, it’s the ones I have I’m fighting to ensure I don’t lose. Ask the (former) residents of New London, CT about their property rights. Ask the Tea Party victims of the IRS about their free speech rights. Look into the abrogation of your 4th Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable search and seizure with respect to vehicle searches and “asset forfeiture.” Read Glenn Reynold’s Columbia Law review piece Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything Is a Crime. Speeding isn’t a felony, no, but study the expansion of felony law. Were you aware that in some jurisdictions walking out of a restaurant on a $25 check is a felony? Or staying in a multiplex cinema and catching a second feature without paying for it?
You are aware of the loss of rights that goes along with a felony conviction, aren’t you?
Yes, the USA is one of the freest places on the planet, but government is power concentrated in the hands of a few, and power corrupts and attracts the already corrupt. Ignore that fact at your peril.
Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand once wrote, “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.”
Does arguing on Quora do any good? Maybe not for you, but I’m not writing to convert you. I’m writing so that others who read these threads might get exposed to ideas that they had not previously considered, and that might actually get them to think and study for themselves.
THAT is what I think the Internet is really for.
I don’t expect him to reply again, but you never know.
UPDATE, 3/27: There were some other commenters, which started this final thread:
You seem very happy to subject yourself to the authority of others.
Interesting, but not applicable to anyone else.
To which our respondent replied:
I subject myself to the legally passed laws of the Republic Robert. It is the nut jobs out there who seem to think they have the ability/right/duty or whatever else you want to call it to selectively decide which laws apply to them or must be followed.
Given that opening, I asked him:
So Rosa Parks should have stayed in the back of the bus, then. Check. And I assume you’ve never heard of Jury Nullification?
He seemed surprised by this:
What does this have to do with Rosa Parks or Jury Nullification? Nevermind…forget that I asked…
But I wasn’t letting him off that easily.
No, no! Let’s pursue this logic train all the way to the end of the tracks! You stated that you subject yourself to the legally passed laws of the Republic. The law that forced Rosa Parks to the back of the bus was one such law. You’re stating that she should have obeyed it – that she had no ability/right/duty to “selectively decide” that it didn’t apply to her, and that when brought to trial the jury didn’t have the ability/right/duty to decide – in the face of the law and the judge – to acquit her because she had clearly violated the legally passed law, right? That we mere individual citizens don’t have the RIGHT to judge those laws for ourselves.
I can draw no other conclusion from your statements. YOU can draw no other conclusion from your statements. Rosa Parks had no right to violate the legally passed law of the Republic. Period.
Or explain to me how I’m misinterpreting your position.
This was ignored or unseen until someone else asked him about it later, and I pointed him to the question.
You can almost hear the Cognitive Dissonance grinding between his ears:
Kevin, I have no interest in continuing this discussion with you so please stop posting responses to me. Civil disobedience is not a Constitutional issue and that is where this conversation began. Again, thank you for the dialog, but I do not wish to hear from you further.
Hell, I thought what were discussing WAS civil disobedience. Here’s another place to quote someone quotable – Winston Churchill: “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” Anyway, I’ve apparently hurt his brain enough, and he’s served his illustrative purpose, so I let him go:
I think you just answered my question, so thank you, and I’ll leave you to yourself.
Thomas Sowell has endorsed Ted Cruz:
The vacancy created on the Supreme Court makes painfully clear the huge stakes involved when we choose a President of the United States, just one of whose many powers is the power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court.
Justice Scalia’s passing would be a great loss at any time. But at this crucial juncture in the history of the nation — with 5-to-4 Supreme Court decisions determining what kind of country America will be — Scalia’s death can be catastrophic in its consequences, depending on who is chosen to be his successor.
Given the advanced ages of other justices, the next president is likely to have enough vacancies to fill to be able to shape the future of the court that helps shape the future of America.
—
Senator Ted Cruz has been criticized in this column before, and will undoubtedly be criticized here again. But we can only make our choices among those actually available, and Senator Cruz is the one who comes to mind when depth and steadfastness come to mind.
As someone who once clerked for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he will know how important choosing Justice Scalia’s replacement will be. And he has the intellect to understand much more.
Can’t argue with any of that. Cruz it is.
Let’s hope the Spineless Senate can hold out until after the election.
Antonin Scalia, the last Justice of the Supreme Court to receive a unanimous approval from the Senate, has died. While I have not always agreed with his decisions, he was one of the very few practicing Originalists on the Court, and his dissents were exceptionally clear, concise and (more to the point) precise.
Take, for example, his dissent in King v. Burwell:
This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it. In order to receive any money under §36B, an individual must enroll in an insurance plan through an “Exchange established by the State.” The Secretary of Health and Human Services is not a State. So an Exchange established by the Secretary is not an Exchange established by the State—which means people who buy health insurance through such an Exchange get no money under §36B.
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.” It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges. “[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
We’ve lost one of the five votes that prevailed in Heller and McDonald, and now Obama gets to appoint his successor.
I guess we get to see how much spine the Republican majority in the Senate has.
Oh, wait….
RIP, Tony. Thanks for everything you did.
I’ve covered the Obamacare debacle here at TSM for quite a while, with the earliest post on the topic being Multiply by the Zip Code from 2009, and going on from there. The “Primum, Non Nocere” (First, do no harm) T-shirts (2010) are still available, too.
In 2013 I reviewed some Obamacare Predictions. A bit later in the year, the GeekWithA.45 provided post materials with a comment on the state of the healthcare industry. His conclusion: American healthcare is all over but the screaming.
Obamacare survived not one, but two Supreme Court challenges that were decided on the basis of – well, let Antonin Scalia say it, from his scathing dissent to King v. Burwell:
Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.
But it cannot be saved from itself.
Investors Business Daily reports this week:
Aetna Joins Growing Chorus Warning About ObamaCare Failing
A chorus, I’m sure, that has about as many members as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at this point. IBD reports:
ObamaCare was supposed to be on a roll by now, promising 20 million signing up, low cost and stable premiums. Turns out it’s on a roll all right. It’s rolling towards the cliff.
Insurance giant Aetna (AET) has joined a growing number of insurers warning that the ObamaCare exchanges are failing in just the way critics said they would. (My emphasis – Ed.) This year’s anemic enrollment won’t help.
This week, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini warned that “we continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges.” Aetna lost more than $100 million last year on the 750,000 enrollees it has through ObamaCare exchanges.
Bertolini’s warning comes after UnitedHealth Group (UNH) announced that it might pull out of ObamaCare entirely next year, after getting hit with a $475 million loss in 2015. It expects to lose another $500 million this year. Last fall, CEO Stephen Hemsley said that “we can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.” That, he said, “basically is an industry-wide proposition.”
Now, refer back to the GeekWithA.45’s comment from 2013, where he said:
Coming off my yearly engagement with the think tanks, I’ve heard, for the first time, a series of data points coming from hospital CEOs that add up to one thing: the admission that exercising a hospital’s primary function is no longer a source of value and revenue, it is viewed as entirely cost, risk, and liability. Consequently, they are no longer building any capacity, and are in fact looking for ways to reduce their capacity and eliminate hospital beds.
The aging boomers are gonna love that when it comes home to roost.
Again, I think it bears repeating: the healthcare industry now views exercising its particular expertise and primary function as primarily a source of cost, risk, and liability.
That, as they say, isn’t sustainable.
Reality is what exists even when you stop believing in it.
But the Affordable Care Act must be saved!
The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is now approved to perform marriages in New Zealand!
Texas Pastafarians are allowed to wear the sacred colander on their heads when getting photographed for driver’s licenses, will marriage here in the States be far behind?
