President Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago. Chicago politically is an ugly city, and the President needs to learn some manners now that he is in the White House. His remarks about the Supreme Court yesterday were inappropriate and uncalled for.
Yesterday the Daily Caller posted a story on the President’s remarks. The President stated:
[…] I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with pre-existing conditions can actually get health care. So there’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this, but there’s a human element to this. And I hope that’s not forgotten in this political debate.
[…] for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly-constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step.
We need to remember that there are other ways to ensure that people have access to health insurance–a government takeover is not the only option. We also need to remember that overturning a bad law is not judicial activism.
The President also stated that Obamacare was passed by a strong majority. That is a lie. It was passed by a parliamentary trick because they did not have the votes to send it back to the Senate after reconciliation. The election of Scott Brown was a glaring example of how unpopular the legislation was. The popularity of a law has nothing to do with whether or not it is constitutional, but we do live in a representative republic where the laws are expected to reflect the desires of the governed.
The question in Obamacare is whether or not the government can force you to buy something you may not want to buy. If that principle stands, it is the end of our freedom as we know it. In passing Obamacare, Congress overstepped its bounds. It is now up to the Supreme Court to put things back in order.
