- This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from CNN as my President’s parallel reality collapses into itself each time it stumbles into legal forums. Apparently fantasy tweets don’t carry much weight in courtrooms.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reads the Judge’s courtroom scolding of Michael Flynn and finds it remarkable that the right abandons law-and-order rhetoric as soon as one of their own is at the defendant’s table. I have my own thoughts about General Flynn as compared to another military hero who affected American history in a dark way.
- As Ted McLaughlin reports at jobsanger, my President reveals by tweet that over 19,000 text messages were purposely and illegally deleted by FBI anti-Trump partisans who were once part of the Mueller investigation team. Pretty serious. Just one detail turns out to be wrong with the story.
- After watching the recent televised meeting in which Nancy Pelosi participated, North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is inspired to celebrate “the near infinite chain of strong, intelligent, capable women, having to effort to be heard above the hissing, frantic noise of an insecure, less qualified man in her midst, so desperate to silence her.”
- Andy Borowitz reports the dire warnings of the Trump cabinet that, if our President goes through with his threatened shut down, it will make it much harder to steal from the government.
- One of the best minds on the net, Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, untwists and presents the substantial part of Trump world that is on the shady side of the law. Her talent for clever phrasing makes this sad tale entertaining.
- Advertisers are fleeing from Tucker Carlson after particularly vehement anti-immigrant characterizations. Fox News denounces censorship by leftists. At The Moderate Voice David Robertson explains to Fox News what is and what is not censorship.
- Glenn Geist, residing at MadMikesAmerica, goes farther, taking apart Tucker bigotry, then continuing on to demolish Fox News.
- The ability to straighten an insanely complex issue and endow it with the virtue of clarity is an art to be valued. I always look forward to reading any article, paragraph, or sentence written by nojo. At Stinque, nojo takes on the recent convoluted, weird decision outlawing Obamacare. nojo educates us to laugh like hell at the legal logic and be scared as hell at the possible effects.
- Dave Dubya continues his account of debates with my long time friend, conservative T. Paine. Dave does not directly editorialize, instead letting the online record speak for itself. Entertaining.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara argues that the conservative resolve to fight against a war on Christmas and liberal embrace of multiculturalism are both un-American.
- At The Onion, America’s panicked, blood-covered citizens are demanding just one goddamn second to think.
- John Scalzi at Whatever has a weird dream that is interrupted one night and is inspired to make a contribution. OH, and it’s mostly told in tweets.
- The Journal of Improbable Research tells us about a nurse in Salt Lake City leading an initiative to comfort families of patients who have died. She preserves for them an EKG strip of the final heartbeats.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes rants against our human embrace of the single pernicious development that began our separation from true natural health: the chair.
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From Stinque:
“The judge’s ruling states there is no such detachment for the Individual Mandate: If it goes, so does the rest. And that was in fact a prominent argument during the interminable debates, that the ACA was a delicate contraption, that the Mandate was integral to making it work.”
The facts that the tax was, for many people, only ever a fraction of the cost of purchasing insurance through the ACA; that the tax was, for many uninsured, only a fraction of the costs that our country might incur as a result of their medical problems; and that millions of people continue to sign up in the mandate’s absence allow us to argue that the functional importance of the mandate to the law as a whole was overestimated and overstated. If we are looking to the arguments of the ACA’s creators and defenders for guidance in this new question of constitutionality, surely that counts for something.
As for the judge’s opinion, I took a look and was amazed at how much emphasis a conservative placed on feelings over reality. Here is a relevant excerpt:
“The Individual Plaintiffs assert they feel compelled to comply with the law… (“I value compliance with my legal obligations . . . [t]he repeal of the associated health insurance tax penalty did not relieve me of the requirement to purchase health insurance”)… (“I continue to maintain minimum essential health coverage because I am obligated to comply with the [ACA’s] individual mandate”). This should come as no surprise. “It is the attribute of law, of course, that it binds; it states a rule that will be regarded as compulsory for all who come within its jurisdiction.” HADLEY ARKES, FIRST THINGS: AN INQUIRY INTO THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF MORALS AND JUSTICE 11 (1986). Law therefore has an enormous influence on social norms and individual conduct in society. See CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, KEY ISSUES IN ANALYZING MAJOR HEALTH INSURANCE PROPOSALS at 53 (Dec. 2008) (noting compliance “is generally observed, even when there is little or no enforcement”). That is the point.
Undoubtedly, now that the shared-responsibility payment has been eliminated, more
individuals will choose not to comply with the Individual Mandate…. But the fact that many individuals will no longer feel bound by the Individual Mandate does not change either that some individuals will feel so bound—such as the Individual Plaintiffs here—or that the Individual Mandate is still law.”
In other words, some dishonest, shameless conservatives who admit that they recognize that there is no actual penalty for not having health insurance are asserting that they nevertheless feel obligated to follow the law because the law itself creates obligation. The judge is more than sympathetic, taking their stated feelings not only at face value, but as relevant to the question of legality. It’s all rather disgusting.
The argument against the ACA:
(1) A toothless mandate is still a mandate
(2) The ACA mandate is no longer constitutional because it is no longer a tax
(3) The mandate is essential to the ACA
(4) Therefore, the rest of the ACA cannot stand
Premises 1 and 3 can be challenged.