ObamaCare Supreme Court Prediction

Prediction time--Blogger Ben Hart thinks that Justice Ginsberg inadvertently spilled the beans, or the broccoli, that the high court has thrown out the individual mandate in ObamaCare, a.k.a. the absurdly named Affordable Care Act:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg did not mean to, but she appears to have said that the Supreme Court has, at a minimum, ruled that the individual mandate in ObamaCare is unconstitutional.

As reported by POLITICO, the liberal Justice told the American Constitutional Society on Friday, June 15 that the one remaining ObamaCare question the Court must decide is is whether the whole law must fall if the individual mandate is unconstitutional — “or may the mandate be chopped, like a head of broccoli, from the rest of it?”

But they would not need to decide this question if they had already ruled that the individual mandate passes Constitutional muster.

This suggests, at a minimum, that the individual mandate is gone.  But it may well be that the court has ruled that the entire ObamaCare law is, therefore, null and void because there is no severability clause...

The High Court's decision, regardlesss of how it goes, is expected to be released next week.

In the meantime, if you want to stay healthy, eat your broccoli.

Added: Per Intrade, there is almost an 80% chance that the individual mandate gets ruled unconstitutional.

Obama Gift Registry: Your Family and Friends Should Pay Their Fair Share

#ObamaGiftRegistrySlogans You may stiff the bride
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) June 23, 2012

Could Team Obama, with its world-class campaign fundraising prowess, be that hard up for cash so they had to launch this tacky gift registry?

Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up?

Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl.

Aside from wedding and birthdays, how would your family feel about Santa visiting the White House rather than your house?

At this writing, there are about 900 comments posted at the registry. Check it out. It's not going well for Team Obama.

Maybe the Obama campaign is falling short of fundraising goals. Per the Wall Street Journal:

The Democrats' official fundraising numbers, released on Wednesday, showed that the $95 million cash-on-hand advantage Obama and the DNC had over the Republicans at the end of April had been cut by two-thirds at the end of May to $33 million. This is in part because the Obama campaign is burning through its war chest so fast and in part because of the impressive $107 million that the Romney campaign and the RNC announced they had on hand at May's end.

Jay Leno weighs in:

Fast and Furious: Executives Have Their Privileges

With the 11th hour assertion by Barack Obama and Eric Holder of executive privilege, it looks like the mainstream media will finally have to cover the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

Prof. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has an excellent summary of the issues:

First Holder pretends he will cooperate, but doesn’t.  Then he stalls with negotiations.  Then he stalls some more by promising to cooperate again, but doesn’t.  Then, when his back is up against the wall because a vote is scheduled to hold him in contempt, he runs to Obama for some legal protection, which will result in the matter being thrown into the courts for more delay.

 As with most things damaging to Obama, all they care about is pushing the bad news off until after the election.

What all this means, of course, is that Holder has been withholding documents responsive to the House subpoena which have not been turned over.  So he has not complied with the House subpoena, since it only was today that he obtained the protection of an Executive Privilege claim from the White House.

 Darrell Issa and his Republican committee members deserve a medal.  Keep pushing.

 Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy of PJ Media weighs in:

Axelrod was Against Presidential Golf Before He was Fore It

Remember when the media went bananas over George Bush's workout regimen? The president even ultimately gave up golf entirely during his the bulk of his presidency.

Yet as far as Obama's record-setting presidential golf outings, once again the sound you are hearing is crickets:

The next time President Obama hits the links, it will be his 100th round of golf since coming to the White House. That’s quite a milestone in just 3 1/2 years. As it takes him about six hours to drive to the greens and complete 18 holes, Mr. Obama has spent the equivalent of four months’ worth of work time golfing. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been stuck in a sand trap...

Mr. Obama had no sense of the inappropriateness of playing 99 rounds of golf while 99 percent of the country couldn’t even afford the cost or time to go once. Now he wants a second term to finish what he started. After the 100th round, voters may want to think twice about giving him a mulligan.

Ironically, back in 1994, future Obama top adviser David Axelrod criticized President G.H.W. Bush for playing too much golf and therefore being too out of touch with the American people:



Note that Axelrod admits that "beating up on Bush is the only thing we have left."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.


 

"One-Term Proposition"

Would you believe a one-term presidency?

Executive Disorder on Immigration

Will Obama's political pandering on the immigration issue via his executive order pay off in November?

NRO's Victor Davis Hanson doesn't think so:

Politically, Obama calculates that some polls showing the current likely Hispanic support for him in the high 50s or low 60s would not provide enough of a margin in critical states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, or perhaps also in Florida and Virginia, to counteract the growing slippage of the independent vote and the energy of the clinger/tea-party activists. Thus, what was not legal or advisable in 2009, 2010, or 2011, suddenly has become critical in mid-2012. No doubt free green cards will quickly lead to citizenship and a million new voters. Will it work politically? 

Obama must assume lots of things: that all Hispanics vote as a block in favoring exempting more illegal aliens from the law, and are without worry that the high unemployment rate hits their community among the hardest; that black voters, stung by his gay-marriage stance, will not resent what may be seen as de facto amnesty, possibly endangering his tiny (and slipping) lead in places like Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And because polls show overwhelming resistance to non-enforcement of immigration law, Obama also figures that the minority who supports his recent action does so far more vehemently than the majority who opposes it. 

Time will tell; but my gut feeling is that his brazen act will enrage far more than it will delight — and for a variety of different reasons. As with all his special-interest efforts — the Keystone cancellation, war-on-women ploy, gay-marriage turnabout, and now de facto amnesty — Obama believes dividing Americans along class, ethnic, gender, and cultural lines will result in a cobbled together majority, far more preferable than a 1996 Clinton-like effort to win over the independents by forging  a bipartisan consensus.

As far as the underlying policy itself, NRO's John Yoo argues that it is a huge overreach by the administration:

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Neil Munro, American Hero

Remember during the Bush administration how the president was being blasted interminably for "shredding the Constitution"?

Fast forward to 2012: What's more rude, a president disregarding separation of powers or a Daily Caller reporter interrupting the president to ask a legitimate question? What's more important, disrespecting Obama or disrespecting the U.S. Constitution?

As far as the media as the media's reaction of this president doing an end-run around the Constitution, it's generally crickets.

It does seem like that after a terrible week, make that a terrible month, on the economic front, the Obama administration wanted to do something to change the subject in a big way.



Leaving aside the merits of granting quasi-amnesty to illegals, does anyone really believe that this executive order will only involve 800,000 persons? When has a government projection--especially in immigration--ever been correct? And do you think the bureaucracy will be competent enough to root out fraudulent claims under this new program?

As far as governing by executive order, even some leftists don't like it: