ran 4.4 miles
Today’s discussion of the ObamaCare mandate will go down in American history as one of the most important and pivotal dialogues of our nation’s twenty-first century. There are four liberal justices and five conservative justices, however, two of the conservative justices, Roberts and Kennedy, are viewed by Obamacare supporters as swing votes. Justice Anthony Kennedy was deemed to be the most likely to uphold the mandate with the four liberal justices, but he seemed to be the most doubtful of all the justices to rule it constitutional.
If today was any sign of what direction the Supreme Court is leaning then things are looking really bad for Barack Obama.
"Could you define the market? Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli."
Justice Antonin Scalia
"So can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services?"
Chief Justice John Roberts
"All right, suppose that you and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour and we found a couple of healthy young people and we stopped them and we said, 'You know what you're doing? You are financing your burial services right now because eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're going to shift the cost to somebody else'. Isn't that a very artificial way of talking about what somebody is doing?"
Justice Samuel Alito
"The reason this is concerning, is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts our tradition, our law, has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy
"Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?" and "So the Federal government says everybody has to join an exercise club?"
Justice Anthony Kennedy
One last thing, here is, possibly, the biggest flip-flop in Obama history, which is of the same substance our justices are arguing against the mandate with. Speaking against Hillary Clinton’s plan for health care during the 2008 Primaries, Barack Obama argued against an individual mandate stating, "A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. ... But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can't afford it. And that's why my plan emphasizes lowering costs."
At that time Barack Obama felt that solving the issue of the uninsured with an individual mandate was as logical as ending homelessness by ordering people to purchase a home. And he was right. It is likely his own argument from 2008 will be instrumental in the demise of his own landmark legislation.
In July of 2009, "During the campaign I was opposed to this idea because my general attitude was the reason people don't have health insurance is not because they don't want it, it's because they can't afford it. And if you make it affordable, then they'll come. I am now in favor of some sort of individual mandate as long as there's a hardship exemption."
If Barack Obama loses this mandate then ObamaCare falls apart. If ObamaCare falls apart it would be devastating to his already mere 50/50 shot at re-election. Essentially, these justices, these nine individuals are going to set this presidential election on a course that will be difficult to reroute.
307.4 miles to go.
Here is what happened one year ago on Day211.
