Obamacare and the Broccoli Mandate

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Like former President George H.W. Bush and millions of other eminently sensible Americans, I have always hated broccoli. And one of the few complaints I can make about a generally idyllic childhood is that, occasionally, I would sit down at the family dinner table and find that my mother had deliberately ruined a perfectly good meal by including that dreaded vegetable among the otherwise palatable fare. My normal strategy for dealing with such maternal perfidy was to ignore the noxious plant, but this was invariably countered by a peremptory command from Mom to eat it immediately. When I further temporized, per my standard policy, she would appeal to my father for a final ruling on what should be done about my refusal to eat something that was so obviously good for me. He inevitably imposed the statutory penalty: failure to comply with the broccoli mandate would result in forfeiture of dessert. I always took the penalty.

Apparently, similar episodes remain green in the memory of U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson. On December 16, while presiding over a hearing in which attorneys representing Florida and nineteen other states challenged Obamacare's individual mandate as unconstitutional, he asked its hapless defenders this question about the powers of Congress: "If they decided everybody needs to eat broccoli because broccoli makes us healthy, they could mandate that everybody has to eat broccoli each week?" Ian Gershengorn, the same Justice Department lawyer who unsuccessfully defended the mandate before U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson in Commonwealth of Virginia v. Sebelius, told Judge Vinson that the health care market has special qualities that somehow necessitate a federal law forcing everyone to buy health insurance: "It is not shoes, it is not cars, it is not broccoli."

[pinz]

I love broccoli, I purchase health insurance, I think this mandate to purchase is an unconstitutional abomination.

[Geee]

I purchase both health insurance and broccoli without government intervention also , that's MY definition of freedom of choice

[Chickadee]

"The act would leave more constitutional damage in its wake than any other statute in our history."

Indeed, the belief that Washington can--and should--supervise us as if we were a nation of children is the core tenet of their nanny-state political philosophy. This is the belief system that prompted First Lady Michelle Obama to say, as her husband signed a law that will regulate what children eat during summer vacations and what can be sold in school vending machines, that child nutrition is something "We can't just leave…up to the parents." Without the "help" of the federal government, some mother might fail to force broccoli on her kids.

 

The mandated insurance as well as the regulations being voted by the FCC today make me fearful for the future of our individual rights and, in fact, the future of the United States. And one more thing that makes me fear for our future is the move, in places like TOS, to form a PAC group to make certain no RHINO is elected in 2012. So many people walking around with blindfolds on is frightening!

[AceRimmer]

The mandated insurance as well as the regulations being voted by the FCC today make me fearful for the future of our individual rights and, in fact, the future of the United States. And one more thing that makes me fear for our future is the move, in places like TOS, to form a PAC group to make certain no RHINO is elected in 2012. So many people walking around with blindfolds on is frightening!

 

Chickadee!

 

I haven't been to TOS in months. They started a PAC?!

 

I'm a solid social and fiscal conservative, but the hardest of the hardcore people there drove me out in '08 when were told who we could and couldn't support during the GOP primaries. I'm old enough to make my own choice.

 

While I agree in principle with the idea of getting rid of the RINOs in Congress, I'm not dumb enough to think it will happen overnight. JimRob must be getting jealous of the attention the LSM pays to those "critical thinkers" at Kos and DUh.