Tough week for Democrats--and it's just Tuesday

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

First, on Monday in Seoul Barack Obama told outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, “After my election, I will have more flexibility.” That gives Republicans an amazing talking point. I have more to say about it in my Wednesday Examiner column.

 

Second, five members of the Supreme Court gave government counsel a hugely difficult time over the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate to buy health insurance. CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin called it a “train wreck for the Obama administration” and added, “All of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong.” Liberals have been assuming this is a slam-dunk win; now they suddenly think they have been deluding themselves. That's what happens when you live in an insulated cocoon.

 

Third, Republicans are doing a bit better in the generic vote for the House of Representatives, and now lead Democrats by a fraction of a percentage point in the realclearpolitics.com average of recent polls. As Republican pollster Chris Wilson explains, an even vote in the generic ballot tends to indicate a Republican majority in the House.

[raygun]

"Chief Justice John Marshall ruled [in his majority opinion - there, fixed it - of SCOTUS] in Gibbons v. Ogden that the power to regulate interstate commerce also included the power to regulate interstate navigation: "Commerce, undoubtedly is traffic, but it is something more—it is intercourse ... [A] power to regulate navigation is as expressly granted, as if that term had been added to the word 'commerce' ... [T]he power of Congress does not stop at the jurisdictional lines of the several states. It would be a very useless power if it could not pass those lines." The Court's decision [majority opinion - there fixed it AGAIN] contains language supporting one important line of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, [opinion editorial at source deleted]...

 

 

The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their identity with the people, and the influence which their constituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war, the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments...."

 

Source: http://en.wikipedia....2.80.931930s.29

 

The Marshal Court pretty much established jurisprudence w/respect to the commerce clause in the sense in the sense that there were regulatory powers inherant to Congressional authority that aren't explictit but can be inferred. It can be argued that the Marshal Court was the beginning of the end of the First Republic. It is unequivocal that the end of the first Republic can be marked with the indeliable punction mark of a period, i.e., the Cival war. From the onset of the Second Republic until about the begining of its end, i.e., Roosevelt/Wilsonian era, SCOTUS was primarily concerned with those powers of Congress previously established and regulation of commerce from the perspective of interstate commerce. The end of the Second Republic is marked by the New Deal in the FDR era.

 

The canary in the coal mine case concering this is Wickard vs Filburn whereby it was the opinion of SCOTUS that the commerce clause extended beyond regulating commerce (as had been thus-far been perceived having Constitutional mandate), to defining what the market actually was, i.e., the market under auspices of Congressional purvue contains entirely intrastate commerce whereby wholly intrastate business can be construed to have interstate ramifications.

 

The end of the third Republic is marked by opinions that neither merely regulate commerce, define what commerce to be regulated is within Congress' purvue, but outright creating the market that itself will be regulated. The next logical step of either socialist, progressive or liberal political philosophies - warned of by Bastiat - is to compell participation in said markets.

 

Question: since revenue generated by taxes on cigarettes are "earmarked" for the children, i.e., SCHIP, can the non-smokeing hoi polloi be compelled to buy cigarettes or face some financial penalty in the form of some IRS contribution levied against them on an annual (or quarterly - depeding on the 99% value) basis?