UPDATE:Ilya Somin has a good short primer on legislators’ constitutional obligations:

Emory law professor Robert Schapiro has an op ed arguing that the federal mandate requiring individuals to purchase health insurance included in the current health care bill is both constitutional and consistent with federalism [HT: Alison Schmauch]. I agree that the mandate would probably be upheld under current Supreme Court precedent. However, like many other defenders of the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Schapiro doesn’t even consider the possibility that that precedent is wrong. For reasons I describe here, the mandate is inconsistent with the text and original meaning of the Constitution. Even if the Supreme Court decides that the mandate is constitutional, members of Congress and the president have an independent duty to assess the constitutionality of the legislation they vote on and sign. They all have taken oaths to uphold the Constitution, not merely what the Supreme Court says the Constitution means. If the courts rule that a particular congressional or executive action is unconstitutional, the other branches of government should obey. Otherwise, the courts would be unable to serve as an effective check on legislative and executive power. But no constitutional principle prevents Congress and the president from interpreting their authority more narrowly than the Supreme Court does.

(Emphasis added.)

The United States has taken a big step into the future.Our representatives in the House, have finally decided that healthcare for all, is a good idea, and is the key to the future stability of the United States of America.

I commend the efforts of our president, along with the courageous statesmen that chose to stand with him on the right side of history.

The House of Representatives passed the health care bill with a vote of 220-215 on Saturday.  The lone Republican to vote for the Democratic bill was Anh “Joseph” Cao from New Orleans, and nearly 40 Democrats voted against it.  For a complete list of names of Democrats who voted against it, click here for the New York Times chart.

Democrats were forced to make major concessions on insurance coverage for abortions to attract the final votes to secure passage, hopefully those can be reversed at a later date, a wrenching compromise for the numerous abortion-rights advocates in their ranks.

Health insurance coverage is estimated to cost 894 billion dollars according to Democrats, but will most likely cost over 1 trillion dollars once all provisions are included.  The public option will be available in 2013, and illegal immigrants will not be covered.  

The Senate is now become the main battleground in the health care fight as the  Democrats that are  there, ready their own bill for what is likely to be an extensive floor debate.

Democrats say the House measure passed Saturday will extend insurance coverage to 36 million Americans who currently do not have coverage. A limit will be placed on annual out-of-pocket expenses, and insurance companies will be prevented from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

In a quote given to the New York Times…Republicans condemned the vote and said they would oppose the measure as it proceeds on its legislative route. “This government takeover has got a long way to go before it gets to the president’s desk, and I’ll continue to fight it tooth and nail at every turn,” said Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas. “Health care is too important to get it wrong.”

I agree.

It is also too important for the future of our nation to allow any citizen within our borders to go without it, or to go broke over it.

I have always felt that the Republicans oppose this bill because they want the impoverished to die quickly, and their actions against this bill has proven that suspicion to be correct.

Any Republican in the House or Senate that for reasons of moral conscience that chooses to support providing healthcare for all, no matter what one’s financial state may be, will be vilified, and ostracized from your party, because they do not support an individual among their ranks, deciding what is best for those that voted them into office.

The Republicans that vote in support of Health care reform are our true patriots, are should be welcome into the Republican party, ass they are the one’s that will prevent your failed party from slipping into the insignificance of past history.

I endorse all in the government who are moving forward with this sweeping change, which is long over due.

Recently I had to pay an exorbitant amount of money to get a mammogram because I had discovered a lump in my breast that was painful. For some unknown reason the exam was not covered under my policy, which cost me well over a thousand dollars a month for me and my son.

I often wondered, what would happen if I did not have the finances to see if I had breast cancer, which does occur in men. Would I proceed to get the test, or would I wait until it became an emergency?

I wish I would have known that my medical insurance conducts itself as a death panel currently, then I could have saved myself thousands of dollars by not paying these premiums.

I mean,…what have I been paying for all these years.If I get sick, I expect them to cover what ever procedure the doctor orders.

I endorse this Health care reform, because what we have now, is deadly for all that are not wealthy,and those of us in the middle that pay out-of-pocket, we still are in jeopardy.

Look at the list of those who voted for this measure, and send them a message of your support.

Familiarize yourself with the names of those that are fighting to keep this deadly status quo, which  favors the Insurance monopolies as they prey upon the good citizens of the United States, and vote them out of office, into insignificance.

This is the only way to preserve our freedom that our boys are dying for on the field of battle, in a foreign war.

Do not let our soldiers die in vain.They are fighting for our right to elect to provide healthcare for all.

HELP IS ON THE WAY…

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08health.html?_r=1

http://www.examiner.com/x-19632-Salt-Lake-City-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m11d8-House-of-Representatives-who-voted-for-the-Health-Care-bill

Unfortunately in just the past couple of hours we’ve heard that the U.S. House of Representatives has sold out the American people once again and passed the health care bill. If there’s any positive outlook it’s that the vote was very close, 220 – 215. I know a long list of individuals in this country who are going to become unemployed very, very soon. All we need to concentrate on now is putting an increased amount of pressure on the Senate and hope that all faith hasn’t been completely lost in the entire Congress.

But while we’re on the subject, lets look at the facts surrounding this piece of legislation and what the media is deciding to withhold from us.

First of all the bill was approximately 2,000 pages, give or take a few hundred. I can guarantee with 90% certainty that not a single congressman has read this entire bill, not even John Stingell, the sponsor of this bill.

Then the hype that insurance companies are “critical” of this legislation when in reality, THEY WROTE IT! Who to benefit most then these corporations when having health insurance is MANDATORY and if you opt not to get it, you are taxed as a penalty.

Speaking of penalties… During Obama’s campaign during the 2008 election season, the now President repeatedly promised that the American people making $250,000 per year or less wouldn’t see an increase of a single penny in their taxes. They may not be direct, but when a company or an employer faces increased taxes and regulations that restrict business, those reduced profits become a burden upon the employees and customers.  For example:

Employer Mandate Excise Tax (Page 275): If an employer does not pay 72.5 percent of a single employee’s health premium (65 percent of a family employee), the employer must pay an excise tax equal to 8 percent of average wages. Small employers (measured by payroll size) have smaller payroll tax rates of 0 percent (<$500,000), 2 percent ($500,000-$585,000), 4 percent ($585,000-$670,000), and 6 percent ($670,000-$750,000).

Individual Mandate Surtax (Page 296): If an individual fails to obtain qualifying coverage, he must pay an income surtax equal to the lesser of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) or the average premium. MAGI adds back in the foreign earned income exclusion and municipal bond interest.

Excise Tax on Medical Devices (Page 339): Imposes a new excise tax on medical device manufacturers equal to 2.5 percent of the wholesale price. It excludes retail sales and unspecified medical devices sold to the general public.

Just because these taxes aren’t listed underneath Federal Income Tax and Social Security on your paycheck doesn’t mean they aren’t being passed on to you eventually. So much for promises, right?

Then there’s the public option. Oh yes, the new bureaucracy that an aide for a representative in Arizona told me personally had “majority support.” An option, that even if it was remotely a positive thing, is actually unavailable to 200 million Americans. Wow. Great. And the confusion of funding doesn’t make it any more appealing, the politicians can’t even come to a consensus on whether abortions are covered under this plan.

And is anyone aware of how this bill infringes on our liberties? Does anyone care that Congress has no authority what so ever to manage health care? According to James Clyburn, Congress is well aware that most of what they do is not authorized by the Constitution. Is anyone really surprised by their ever-increasing cocky attitudes?

I agree that health reform is needed on a monumental scale in this country. A hospital stay shouldn’t cost anywhere near $100/hour, especially with the poor quality of their food. But the answer isn’t government intervention. More control by Washington will be a medical disaster. Look at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). How well does the government handle that fiasco? Or how about nationalizing Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG? Look how successful those companies are doing today (or not). Or maybe the most helpful, the bailout packages. Remember how we were told the economy would collapse and the stock market would plunge if we didn’t pass the bill? Well… it’s a year later and unemployment has only increased ever since (government says 10.2%, other sources say 17+%).

I beg the public not to panic and support a bill that no one has read nor anyone truly understands. This massive bill is the complete wrong direction for us to take. If we’re ever going to get medical prices under control and limit the power insurance companies have over us we must eliminate the insurance companies in question. They are the cause of the inflated medical costs and premiums. This problem started with the creation of HMO’s (which happened to be by the government) and it will end when they do.

Think before we act. That should be common sense, the very fact that it must be stressed is appalling.

- Jeff

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told CNN Monday that a budgetary procedure called reconciliation is an option to pass a health care reform bill in his chamber.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — After announcing his intention to move forward with a health care reform bill in the Senate that includes a version of the public health insurance option that would allow states to opt out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told CNN that he has not ruled out using a budgetary procedure called reconciliation which would allow Democrats to pass the bill with a simple majority.

“It’s always an option,” Reid told CNN when asked about reconciliation Monday.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, told CNN he hopes Democrats don’t need to go that route and remained open to putting a bill on the Senate floor that does not include a public option, should the Reid-pushed bill fail. A proposal without a public option would still require 60 votes to move forward in the Senate.

In an interview prior to Reid’s announcement Monday, House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina, made a public appeal to Reid to use reconciliation.

“I would say to Sen. Reid that 60 ought not to be the crucial number. 50 ought to be the crucial number,” Clyburn said.

While Clyburn said he hoped to get some GOP support for health care, he doesn’t think it’s worth holding up the bill if Republicans refuse to sign on. “So I think it’s good to have bipartisanship, but it’s much better to get done for the American people what they would like to see get done.”

The Democratic vote counter also admitted what most have suspected, that Democrats know they have to pass health care bill in the House with just Democratic votes. “I don’t think there will be a single Republican voting for whatever we do on the House side,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn said he expects House Democrats to roll out their health care bill later this week, which will include a government-run health insurance option. But he declined to give any details on how the public option will be structured.

–CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart contributed to this report.

Clyburn said Senate Democrats should move forward even if they don't have 60 votes.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Citing a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, House Majority Whip James Clyburn said Monday that the Senate Majority Leader should use a budgetary maneuver to pass health care reform with a government-run insurance option if Democrats do not have the 60 votes necessary to break a filibuster.

According to the survey released last week, 61 percent of Americans favor a public health insurance option that would compete with private plans. Support for the public option rose six point since an earlier poll in August.

“I can’t imagine that 60 percent of the United States Senate will deny 61 percent of the American people the opportunity to get what they say they want,” Clyburn said Monday in an interview on CNN’s Newsroom. “So I would say to Senator [Harry] Reid that 60 ought not be the crucial number. Fifty ought to be the crucial number.”

Clyburn said that if there are 52 or 53 Democratic votes for some form a public health insurance in the Senate, then Senate Majority Leader Reid should use a budgetary maneuver called “reconciliation” to bypass the usual 60 vote threshold needed to get to a vote on the Senate floor.

“And I do believe that the time has come to make 50 the number,” the South Carolina Democrat said. “Reconciliation has been provided for in our budget resolution. It is time for us to stop the snail’s pace. Stop running out the clock. And start getting done for the American people what they tell us they would like to see done.”

Clyburn’s comments came on the same day that Reid is set to have an afternoon press conference in which he is expected to announce that he has finalized the Senate version of the health care reform bill.

It remains unclear whether Reid has lined up the 60 votes needed to get to a vote through the normal procedures.

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) calls in at 6:30am to talk about health care reform.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) calls in at 7:30am to talk about health care reform.

Comedian John Fugelsang joins the Mooks in studio in L.A. for another edition of “Fridays with Fugelsang.”

After scouring northern Colorado by foot and air, frantically chasing a now-infamous Mylar balloon for dozens of miles and interviewing his big brother over and over, local and federal authorities ended their search for 6-year-old Falcon Heene where it began – at his house. He was in a box. In the attic. The whole time.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi warned her Senate counterparts yesterday that she intends to fight hard for a public plan option as part of any comprehensive health care overhaul bill. Dem Senate leaders have not yet indicated whether they will include the option when they combine their two measures.

President Obama signed legislation yesterday providing an additional $7.5 billion in assistance to the Pakistani government to help them combat a wave of attacks orchestrated by the Taliban.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized Wednesday night for what appeared to be an adverse reaction to medication, but she was released Thursday.

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI) calls in at 6:05am to talk about health care reform.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) calls in at 6:35am to talk about health care reform.

Karl Frisch, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, calls in at 7:05am to help us with Right Wing World.

Comedian Hal Sparks joins us in studio at 8:05am for another edition of “Humpdays with Hal.”

The Senate Finance Committee yesterday rejected two amendments to include a government-run public health insurance option in the only compromise health care bill so far. The amendments were opposed by all 10 GOP-ers on the committee and a few Dems, including committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.

A powerful earthquake in the South Pacific hurled a massive tsunami at the shores of Samoa and American Samoa, flattening villages and sweeping cars and people out to sea, leaving at least 99 dead and dozens missing.

The U.S. is speeding up its military withdrawal from Iraq, sending 4,000 more troops home next month. The reduced number of troops in Iraq marks the latest U.S. step in winding down the six-year war.

Well, you can count on Democrats accusing conservatives of racism the way you can count on the sun to rise in the morning.

In remarks decried by Republicans, former president Jimmy Carter told NBC’s Brian Williams in an interview Tuesday that he believes race is at the core of much of the opposition to President Obama.”I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American,” Carter said. “I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shared the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans”

Continued Carter, who is famously from Georgia: “And that racism inclination still exists. And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.”

I wonder if you’ve looked in a mirror lately, Jimmy.  Maybe you’ve figured out that most of America despises you on account of the color of YOUR skin.

But it was never about your melatonin level, Jimmy.  It was about the fact that you were an incompetent nincompoop who ran the country into the ground.

Same as Barack Obama is doing now.

Allow me to provide you with a smattering of articles that I have written over the past months to demonstrate how desperately wrong you truly are:

Messiah Obama Really IS The Second Coming… Of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter Addresses Barak Obama’s Convention: How Appropriate

Carter-era Economist Sees Deja Vu In Barack Obama

The Obama ‘Crisis In Confidence: Welcome Back, Carter’

So you see, Jimmy, you incompetent and morally-blind disgrace, the reason we despise Obama isn’t because he’s black and therefore not qualified to lead.  We despise Obama becuase he’s like YOU and therefore unqualified to lead.

And just how did Barack Obama ever get elected in the first place if people really thought the way you now demonically accuse them of thinking, anyway?

Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly disagree with your view, just as they came to overwhelmingly agree that your entire presidency was a pathetic joke:

The suggestion that race is behind criticism of Obama has been made by New York Gov. David Paterson and Reps. Charlie Rangel of New York, Diane Watson of California and Hank Johnson of Georgia, among others.

But a poll released Wednesday by Rasmussen Reports showed that just 12 percent of voters believe that most opponents of Obama’s health care reform plan are racist. The survey of 1,000 likely voters, taken Monday and Tuesday, found that 67 percent disagree with that contention, while 21 percent are not sure. The survey had a margin of error of 3 percent.

Rush Limbaugh boldly predicted that an Obama presidency would make race relations worse.  In a call from an Obama voter who said he voted for Obama BECAUSE of his race, Rush Limbaugh responded:

RUSH:  I said — you must have missed it — this is what I want to ask you about.  Well, no.  Several occasions I had people who were very hopeful, as you expressed you were hopeful, that the election of the first African-American president would end or really crimp racial strife in the country.  People asked me if I thought this and I said no.  It’s going to exacerbate it.  It is going to make it worse.  We are going to have more race related problems in this country than we have ever had.  Did you hear that and not believe me?

CALLER:  Well, I did hear that.  I took it into consideration.  But I also had the possibility of McCain getting in as president, and all he’s done is trash Republicans his whole life, so I didn’t feel we were gaining much.  It might just be a slower –

RUSH:  No, no.  I understand that, but I mean you were hoping, this is a pretty big reason to vote for Obama.  You were hoping –

CALLER:  Yes.

RUSH:  — that the elephant in the room that’s dividing this country along racial lines would be obliterated.  That’s the primary reason for voting for him, at least as you said.

CALLER:  Correct.

RUSH:  You heard me say that that would not happen.  You must have doubted me.

And, yep, he was right, as a CNN poll revealed:

During the 2008 election, 38 percent of blacks surveyed thought racial discrimination was a serious problem. In the new survey, 55 percent of blacks surveyed believed it was a serious problem, which is about the same level as it was in 2000.

Candidate Barack Obama was discovered to have sat for 23 years in a hard core racist and anti-American church under the ranting of Jeremiah Wright, and offered a patronizing speech to cover for what should have disqualified him from the presidency in the minds of voters.

During the campaign, we had key Obama surrogate John Lewis unleash a vicious dose of race hatred:

“I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign,” said Lewis, an Obama supporter, civil rights icon and Georgia Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“What I am seeing today reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse,” he said.

We had the media literally inventing incidences of Republican racism, and Obama jumping on the lies to deal another race card.  Just as he dealt the race card when he gave his famous “And did I mention he’s black?” line.  Obama said Republicans would use race when HE was the one using race.

In February, Rep. James Clyburn decreed that any opposition to Obama’s ultra-leftist and frankly socialist agenda was actually racism:

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The highest-ranking black congressman said Thursday that opposition to the federal stimulus package by southern GOP governors is “a slap in the face of African-Americans.”

And of course, that’s the new line from the “post-partisan” Democrat Party.  The Democrats who used to butcher Thomas Jefferson by citing him as the source of “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism,” are now accusing that “Dissent is the lowest form of racism.”

When corrupt scumbag Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich selected a scandal-tainted Roland Burris to fill Obama’s Senate seat, former Black Panther Rep. Bobby Rush issued a racial declaration when he said:

“I — my prayers have been answered because I prayed fervently that the governor would continue the legacy established by President-elect Obama and that the governor would appoint an African-American to complete the term of President Obama.”

And in a blatant display of racism, Rush warned white Democrats who didn’t want to see Blagojevich pick ANYONE to fill Obama’s seat:

“I will ask you not to hang and lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer.”

And then Roland Burris proves that he is such a naked ideologue that he “voted for ACORN” – a “community organization” that is so blatantly evil that it has been caught on tape repeatedly (at least five times now, with promises of more to come) trying to help a pimp and prostitute cheat on their taxes and buy a house so they can import over a dozen 13-15-year-old illegal immigrant girls and use them to set up a brothel.

I could go on.  The blatant racism from Democrats has been amazing.

Obama attacking a white police officer as “acting stupidly” for doing his job and then holding his patronizing “beer summit.”

And now we’re at the sorry and pathetic state where the words “You lie!” are classified as “racism” from the PARTY OF RACISM:

Making an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked.  He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

But lest we forget, it was the Democrat Party that literally went to war with a Republican President to keep the institution of slavery.   And it is a rather ironic historical fact that the Ku Klux Klan was created by Democrats to thwart the rise of the Party of Lincoln in the South.  And that it was the Democratic National Convention of 1924 that was so dominated by the Klan that it went down in infamy as “the Klanbake.”

Just a little trip down memory lane, for those who want to understand why we are more racially polarized under the presidency of Barack Obama than ever.

And of course, Barack Obama all the while gets to position himself as being loftily above such petty things while his demonic surrogates unleash their racist hell.

Maybe a little less racist demagoguery, and a lot more shutting the hell up would help.

I am now completely immunized against any charges of racism by a party that has used race as a club to advance their ideology in the most grotesque mockery of genuine racism.  If anyone wants to accuse me of being a racist, my simple retort is, “What a racist thing of you to say, you racist bigot.”

Andrew P. Napolitano
The Wall Street Journal
September 16, 2009

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t
• 

Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.” Then he shot back: “How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?”

Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress’s powers only to those granted in the Constitution.

One of those powers—the power “to regulate” interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.

Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”

Read entire article

URL to article: http://www.infowars.com/judge-napolitano-health-care-reform-and-the-constitution/

Does Obama’s Healthcare Reform plan break the regulations of the U.S. Constitution?

by Andrew Napolitano

Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do.” Then he shot back: “How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?”

Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress’s powers only to those granted in the Constitution.

One of those powers—the power “to regulate” interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.

Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison’s understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept “regular.”

The Supreme Court finally came to its senses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.

Applying these principles to President Barack Obama’s health-care proposal, it’s clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one’s health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.

The same Congress that wants to tell family farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined “to keep regular” the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state.

That’s right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person’s appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.

What we have here is raw abuse of power by the federal government for political purposes. The president and his colleagues want to reward their supporters with “free” health care that the rest of us will end up paying for. Their only restraint on their exercise of Commerce Clause power is whatever they can get away with. They aren’t upholding the Constitution—they are evading it.

Mr. Napolitano, who served on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His latest book is “Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America” (Nelson, 2009).

(Source: Wall Street Journal)

During the spectacle surrounding yesterday’s admonishment of Joe Wilson, James Clyburn (D-SC and malignant pro-abort) and Democrat leadership tried to defend themselves from assertions that the admonishment was just a political stunt.  Clyburn’s line was priceless.  This was Clyburn’s rebuttal:

“This is not a partisian stunt.  I do not participate in partisan stunts, and I think every Member here knows that.”

Thank you Jim for clarifying that for everyone.  Thank you for volunteering to be the grand arbiter of what constitutes a partisan stunt.  Yeah, you’re great.

Lots and lots of stuff floating around out there these days. The news cycles are constantly running and it puts out so much information to wade through that I could literally do nothing but work on the blog 24 hours a day and still not cover it all. But I will try to hit some of the bigger stuff that I am seeing in the news today, or at least some of the more interesting stuff. I appreciate those of you who are offering up your own topics as well. It helps me to understand the types of things that you all want to talk about. In the upcoming days we have another contribution to the health care series and a discussion about the relevance and importance and legitimacy of the ACORN group. But for today, I have some interesting topics as well. I am especially interested in hearing any ideas on how we can deal with topic #1. Because it really, really annoys me, no matter which side does dumb stuff like this.

So I look forward to everyone’s thoughts!

I – like most Republicans – understand that Rep. Joe Wilson exercised something less than great judgment in his outburst during the Obama speech to the Congress.  But for some reason I just can’t muster up the outrage that Democrats bitterly cling to.

Barack Obama himself actually started the “You lie!” war in his speech:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost.  The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens.  Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible.  It is a lie, plain and simple.

To which I can only blurt out, “You lie!”

When Obama appoints Ezekiel Emanuel as his health policy adviser who is on the record saying just this year:

The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

And:

Treating 65-year olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life-years is not.”

And when Obama appoints a regulatory czar like Cass Sunstein who is on record saying:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

And:

Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

Well, I think that Republicans are more than justified in pointing out that the president who calls them liars is actually the one who is the liar.

That, and the fact that it is now a matter of fact that when Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” as Obama said that illegal immigrants would not be covered, it was Joe Wilson who was telling the truth.  The Democrats have SINCE began to deal with that reality.

But in any event, the Democrats today decided they would make a public spectacle out of demagoguing a man who had twice apologized for not apologizing.

Nancy Pelosi initially said she would move on after Wilson publicly apologized for his emotional outburst.  And Barack Obama – the allegedly offended party – accepted the apology.

Or did he?

Did the president decide to bury the hatchet in Joe Wilson’s head?  Because somebody’s hatchet men suddenly went on the warpath on Joe Wilson.  It’s kind of nice to put on the face of the One who is loftily above partisanship while your thugs go out on the attack.  For example:

Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst last week drew new recriminations from his colleagues Tuesday, with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting that a failure to rebuke the South Carolina Republican would be tantamount to supporting the most blatant form of organized racism in American history.

Making an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will be putting on “white hoods and white uniforms again and riding through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked.  He said Wilson must be disciplined as an example.

Given Hank Johnson’s racist statement, it is rather ironic that the Ku Klux Klan was created by Democrats to thwart the rise of the Party of Lincoln in the South.  And that the Democratic National Convention of 1924 was so dominated by the Klan that it went down in infamy as “the Klanbake.”

And that just dovetailed right along with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who could have sworn she heard Joe Wilson use a polite euphamism for “nigger” in Joe Wilson’s remark:

But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!

Well, sure it’s fair, Maureen.  Everyone knows that liberal journalists are allowed to make up facts and assign the harshest possible motives to their stories.  It’s called propaganda.  And mainstream journalists embrace it like lovers for their ideology and their party.

For liberals like Hank Johnson and Maureen Dowd, facts don’t matter.  Their souls swim in a sea of lies.

Democrats couldn’t help but assign racist motives to a statement that had nothing to do with race.  Because that is just the kind of vile, racist, brain-diseased cockroaches that they are.

The House voted that it was a breech of decorum for Wilson to shout, “You lie!”  And it was.

But this, apparently, was NOT a breech of decorum for the most partisan and most nakedly ideological Party and politicians in American history:

Some transcribed highlights from Democrat Rep. Pete Stark’s remarks on the House floor toward President George W. Bush:

The Republicans are worried that we can’t pay for insuring an additional 10 million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where you going to get that money. You gonna tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war. You don’t have enough money to fund the war or children. But you’re going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President’s amusement…

…But the President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.

Apparently, any reasonable person is supposed to be able to understand why the two words spoken by Joe Wilson were horrendous, but the ugly and hateful accusations that accompanied the charge of lying were not.

Democrat Barbara Lee is quoted from the House floor as saying:

“I have been appalled by the growing evidence that the President may have lied about the reasons for invading and conquering Iraq.”

And let us not forget Democrats by the dozens booing and shouting “NO!” at George Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address must not have been a breech of decorum either.

Democrats rudely interrupted President Bush to jeer and applaud their own obstruction of crucial legislation to try to fix Social Security:

And the Gateway Pundit shows that one of the jeering Democrats was one Barack Hussein Obama.

So you’re just going to have to pardon me for not thinking, “My gosh, these Republicans are just so awful!  Good thing the Democrats are the party of wonderfulness.  No Democrat would ever do anything nasty like that!  They need to hold that awful Republican responsible!”

Because I have a brain – and the thing actually works.

That separates me from congressional Democrats.

President Obama himself suggested that a formal rebuke of Mr. Wilson would be a distraction from the larger debate. “I mean, it just becomes a big circus instead of focusing on health care,” Mr. Obama said.

So let’s just realize that even President Obama is pointing out that Congress has important business to attend to, but that DEMOCRATS are refusing to do their duty in favor of the demagoguery and partisanship of the “big circus.”

James Clyburn, who has been the lead rabble-rouser in the witch hunt, had this to say:

“This is not a partisan stunt,” said Clyburn, whose district in South Carolina adjoins Wilson’s. “I do not participate in partisan stunts, and I think every member here knows that. This is about the proper decorum that should take place on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.”

But every member probably knows that Clyburn was in fact such a player in “partisan stunts” that he once said that good news in Iraq amounted to a problem for Democrats.  If every member of Congress doesn’t realize that hoping for your own side to lose a war for the sake of partisan political advantage is anything less than the most gross and contemptible sort of partisan stunt, then this country is surely doomed.

Not to mention the fact that James Clyburn – who is clearly so interested in “proper decorum” now – didn’t give a fig about it when it was Democrats who were repeatedly violating that decorum.

Democrats have the power to force through whatever resolution they want.

But anyone who thinks that it’s anything other than a partisan distraction and witch hunt by a nasty group of Democrat politicians is a fool.

For what it’s worth, if I were a Republican, I would be inclined to vote to censure Joe Wilson for his out-of-bounds comment.  But I would only do so if every episode of the Democrats’ vile conduct over the last eight years were read into the record so we can appreciate just who these self-righteous hypocrite accusers truly are.

House Votes to Rebuke Wilson for Shouting at Obama

Joe Wilson reprimanded by Congress

In a rare action, the House rebuked one of its members Tuesday for shouting “you lie” at President Obama last Wednesday, ending a week-long standoff during which Democrats demanded a public apology that the lawmaker refused to give.

On a largely party-line vote, the House voted 240 to 179 to ratify a “resolution of disapproval” against Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for interrupting Obama’s speech last week before a joint session of Congress. Just 12 Democrats opposed the resolution against Wilson, while seven Republicans supported the disapproval motion. Five Democrats voted “present,” rather than cast a yes or no vote.

During the hour-long debate, Wilson refused to apologize, saying his private phone call to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was sufficient because Obama himself said the matter was closed the day after his speech.

“It is clear to the American people that there are far more important issues than what we are dealing with now. . . . [Obama] graciously accepted my apology, and this issue is over,” Wilson said in brief remarks.

Wilson said Democrats had “provoked partisanship” through their health-care proposal, which he has called a “government takeover” of private insurance. His interruption of Obama came as the president said illegal immigrants would not benefit from his legislation, a point of sharp contention among Democrats and some Republicans.

But House Democrats responded that Wilson’s call to a presidential aide was insufficient because he had violated chamber rules forbidding such remarks directed at colleagues or the president. “This is about the rules of this House and reprehensible conduct,” said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who led the effort to rebuke Wilson.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who introduced the resolution with Clyburn, said that allowing the Wilson remarks to stand would set a precedent encouraging other lawmakers to behave in similar fashion.

A resolution of disapproval is the softest form of punishment that the House administers to its members. The Wilson resolution was just three paragraphs, concluding: “Whereas the conduct of the Representative from South Carolina was a breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House: Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the House of Representatives disapproves of the behavior of the Representative from South Carolina, Mr. Wilson, during the joint session of Congress.”

Seems some Democrats have cajones after all. Hopefully, this is a sign the Dems have had enough of the childish bullsquat of the Rethugs, and are now ready to drop the hammer, and move forward.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from Washington – President Obama on Sunday dismissed the uproar over Rep. Joe Wilson’s heckling during the president’s speech Wednesday to a joint session of Congress, suggesting it was only a distraction — even as some members of Obama’s party threatened to punish the South Carolina Republican.

“This is part of what happens. I mean, it becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on healthcare,” Obama said in an interview on the CBS news program “60 Minutes.”

Obama noted that Wilson later apologized, which “I appreciated.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and other senior Democrats in the chamber indicated last week that unless Wilson went to the House floor to apologize, they would advance a resolution admonishing Wilson for shouting “You lie” during Obama’s address.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Wilson said he would not issue any more apologies for what he said his son had called a “town hall moment” — referring to the raucous demonstrations mounted over the summer by critics of the president’s healthcare agenda.

“I’ve apologized one time,” Wilson said Sunday. “The apology was accepted by the president, by the vice president, who I know. I am not apologizing again.”

From The New York Times:

On Fox News, Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, said he would not apologize again for his outburst on Wednesday night, when he shouted “You Lie!” to President Obama during his speech about health care legislation before a joint session of Congress.

…snip…

Chris Wallace, the host of “Fox News Sunday,” asked Mr. Wilson whether he would issue another apology when he is confronted with the criticisms of his colleagues on the House floor.

“I am not going to apologize again,” Mr. Wilson said on television on Sunday. “I apologized to the president on Wednesday night. I was advised then that — thank you, now let’s get on to a civil discussion of the issues. But I — I’ve apologized one time. The apology was accepted by the president, by the vice president, who I know. I am not apologizing again.”

Actually, even though Mr. Obama said publicly last week that he accepted Mr. Wilson’s apology, the congressman’s telephone overture — which Mr. Wilson said at the time was prompted by the Republican House leadership — was made to Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.

Asked about the possible discipline he faces, Mr. Wilson dismissed it pretty much as theater. “My view is it’s politics. This is playing politics. This is exactly what the American people do not want to see, do not want to hear.”

In a formal statement Mr. Wilson released today, he said: “The American people are fed up with the political games in Washington, and I refuse to participate in an effort to divert our attention away from the task at hand of reforming health insurance and creating new jobs. Having apologized on Wednesday to the White House, we agreed that we must move forward in a civil manner to do the work the American people have sent us here to do. Health insurance reform is too important to take a backseat to political partisanship.”

Still, the House leadership has decided to take this incident to the floor, and many top Republican leaders have termed Mr. Wilson’s behavior “inappropriate” or worse. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially said she believed people should move on, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland as well as Representative James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip from South Carolina, were among those who rather publicly and forcefully pushed for official action to be taken against Mr. Wilson.

…snip…

Columnists and political operatives have been mining Mr. Wilson’s eruption for an undercurrent. In her column today, The Times’s Maureen Dowd wondered whether the congressman really wanted to shout, “You Lie, boy,” as she cited a lot of over-the-top vitriol directed at the nation’s first African-American president during the summer.

Citing Ms. Dowd’s column, Mr. Wallace challenged the South Carolinian lawmaker on that issue as well, but Mr. Wilson swiped it away with a reference to the Southern roots of First Lady Michelle Obama.

“No, no,” Mr Wilson replied. “Hey, I respect the president. Actually, there’s a relationship, in a way. His wife — her family’s from Georgetown. My family’s from next door in McClellanville. So I have a great respect for the Obama family.”

About that….

From New York Magazine:

[Wilson] said being publicly reprimanded by Congress is “going to be tough.” But the most interesting part of the interview came when Wallace asked Wilson about Maureen Dowd’s op-ed today, in which she alleges that Wilson’s disrespect for the president was motivated by racism. Wilson came back with a surprising and absurd defense:

I respect President Obama. Actually, there’s a relationship in a way … his wife, ah, her family’s from Georgetown [South Carolina], ah, my family’s from next door, in McClellanville, so I, ah, have a great respect for the president.

Before saying this, Wilson paused, his left hand shaking, his voice hesitant. Maybe it’s because he knows that in the historical culture of South Carolina, this kind of “relationship” is not necessarily, or even likely to be, a friendly one. (And if the two families were friendly, or even knew each other, wouldn’t he have mentioned that salient fact?) And it certainly doesn’t prove that Wilson’s unprecedented act of disrespect wasn’t racially motivated. If Joe Wilson thinks “our families lived near each other in a segregated area of the country” is his best defense against being called a racist, he’s on very shaky ground.

From WSPA:

Governor Mark Sanford’s odd and unexplained disappearance in June got a lot of national attention just because it was so unusual. He left the state without telling anyone and without a way to contact him. His wife even said she didn’t know where he was, while his staff thought he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. But when he returned and explained that he had disappeared to Argentina to visit his mistress, the admission left even his close friends dumbfounded.

…snip…

But the Sanford affair is the just the latest in a long line of South Carolina political scandals.

Original DVD cover

(From left to right:  (top) Lindseypoo Graham, Sparky Marky Mark Sanford, Jim Dimwit DeMint;  (bottom) Earle “No Parole” Morris, John “Capitol Steps” Jenrette, Strom Thurmond, Joe “You Lie” Wilson, Tom “Things Go Better With Coke” Ravenel, Charles “Ex-con” Sharpe

Just two years ago, then-state treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted on federal charges of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute. Gov. Sanford suspended him from office. Ravenel later resigned, pleaded guilty and served 10 months in prison.

Former comptroller general and lieutenant governor Earle Morris is still in state prison on securities fraud charges. He was the chairman of Carolina Investors when it went bankrupt, taking about $275 million from thousands of South Carolinians.

Then-state agriculture commissioner Charles Sharpe was indicted in 2004 on charges of extortion and lying to a federal officer in connection with a cockfighting ring. He pleaded guilty in 2005, admitting to taking $10,000 in exchange for helping a group involved in cockfighting avoid legal trouble.

And in the early 1990s, ten percent of the state legislature was indicted on bribery, racketeering or drug charges in an FBI sting that was dubbed “Operation Lost Trust.“ The name aptly describes what that scandal and many others have done to the public’s view of politicians.

…snip…

And politicians have been involved in scandals since the founding of our country, but many of them didn’t get the same attention they do now because of the speed and easy availability of information. A good example is Strom Thurmond’s fathering of a child out of wedlock with his African-American housekeeper. It happened when Thurmond was 22 and the housekeeper was 16, but no one publicly acknowledged the fact until more than 75 years later when their daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, came forward shortly after Thurmond’s death.

From the Los Angeles Times:

True, Republican John McCain carried the state over Democrat Barack Obama, 59% to 37%, in the 2008 election.

But opposition to the Democratic White House seems to have reached fever pitch there.

First Republican Sen. Jim DeMint urged fellow conservatives to “break” President Obama by making his healthcare reform a Waterloo in his presidency, defeating him and his ideas with a big fat congressional rejection.

Then came Gov. Mark Sanford. [...] The onetime presidential aspirant made headlines in February by threatening to reject Obama’s stimulus package money. Even the Legislature balked at that one.

Now comes Joe Wilson, the former Marine and six-term congressman who until Thursday was an obscure back-bencher. After his unprecedented outburst Wednesday night — calling Obama a liar from the floor of the House — he apologized. As Ticket reported, he also cut an ad asking supporters to send money to his cause. Because, as the Ticket also reported, Democrats have been sending lots of money to his rival, Rob Miller. In fact by this morning ActBlue’s efforts have sent more than $700,000 to Miller’s campaign coffers.

From Ethiopian Review:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) mastered politics in a state where no-holds-barred political combat dates to the days before the Civil War, when one of its congressmen entered the Senate chamber and beat a Massachusetts senator with a cane for attacking pro-slavery Southerners.

So when Wilson went so far Wednesday night as to heckle President Obama, interrupting his address to a joint session of Congress with shouts of “You lie!” he wasn’t straying far from South Carolina’s tradition of wild and woolly politics.

…snip…

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called Wilson’s behavior “inappropriate.” Even so, Graham pledged to campaign for Wilson’s reelection, saying the congressman should not be judged on one incident. [And Lindseypoo thinks Sparky Marky Mark deserves a second chance, too.]

“People who know Joe Wilson like I do understand that that doesn’t reflect the man,” Graham said. “That was a mistake on his part from emotion about the issue, the consequences of where we’re going as a nation.”

Wilson’s surprising moment drew renewed attention to the Palmetto State’s history of colorful politics. Historians recall the state’s then-Democratic Sen. Strom Thurmond wrestling Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-Tex.) in 1964 over a civil rights nomination, and Rep. John W. Jenrette (D-S.C.) and his then-wife Rita having sex on the Capitol steps in the 1970s. [more on Jenrette below]

…snip…

To be sure, South Carolina Democrats have had their brushes, too. During 39 years in the Senate, Democrat Fritz Hollings infamously spoke derogatively of just about every ethnic group. When Hollings lost a 1983 presidential straw poll in Iowa, he reportedly said: “Well, that [Walter] Mondale imported a lot of them wetbacks across the Mississippi River.”

…snip…

It was in these waters that Wilson, 62, got his first taste of politics. At age 11, Addison Graves “Joe” Wilson was a “pop runner,” delivering soda pop to election workers in Charleston. He became an activist with anti-communist causes in high school and while working as a counselor at a camp for Republican teenagers, Wilson met Roxanne, the camper who would become his wife.

A former aide to Thurmond, who became a Republican late in 1964, Wilson spent nearly two decades in the state Senate before winning a special election in 2001 to succeed another former boss, Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S.C.), who died in office. Wilson once boasted that Spence called him from his hospital bed as he lay dying and urged him to run for his seat.

…snip…

In Washington, Wilson is known for covering his office walls with framed photos of Republicans and for filling cabinets with elephant figurines and busts of such politicians as Thomas Jefferson and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek.

Wilson revels in the pomp of Capitol Hill, once telling the State, a Columbia newspaper, that every day is “like Christmas.”

“I love parliamentary maneuvering!” he was quoted as saying. “I love the trees! . . . I love this view!”

But some colleagues see behind his easy manner a confrontational streak. “There are people who tend to look at him as this choirboy,” said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), whose district borders Wilson’s. “He is really everything but that.”

Last month, Wilson organized a town hall meeting at Columbia’s Keenan High School — in Clyburn’s district. “He came into my district, the high school where my kids went, where I was an officer in the [Parent Teacher Association], and that was on purpose,” Clyburn said. “That was as unethical as one can be, and he didn’t say one word to me about it.”

From CongressionalBadBoys:

The Honorable John Jenrette, an up-and-comer in the Democratic party, was one of seven Congressmen caught in the FBI Abscam investigation of political corruption. In December 1979, he was filmed by the feds accepting a bribe and then convicted in December 1983, sentenced to two years in prison and fined $20,000. The following year, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld his conviction. And, to leave no stone unturned, Jenrette took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Court let the conviction stand.

It didn’t help having him on surveillance tape saying to an undercover agent, “I’ve got larceny in my heart.”

…snip…

In January 1981, Jenrette’s second wife, Rita, said she was seeking a divorce. Rita found $25,000 in $100 bills (much of it FBI bribe money) in her husband’s brown suede shoes. Rita didn’t help relations with the constituents back home when she once called the “cornballs.”

Rita is probably best known for (1) telling us that she and John had sex on the steps of the U.S. Capitol (and that became a hot stop on the Washington Sex Scandals tour for out-of-towners; and perhaps the inspiration for the song and satire group called “The Capitol Steps”); and (2) posing nude in Playboy. She also wrote, later, about ex-husband John: she found him on Capitol Hill “drunk, undressed and lying on the floor in the arms of a woman who I knew was old enough to be his mother.”

But we’re not through . . .

Turns out the Honorable ex-congressman was charged with stealing a pair of shoes from a Fairfax County, Virginia, store. He was charged with petty larceny and altering a price tag at a Marshall’s department store.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The congressman who heckled President Obama during a televised address found that while the president accepted his apology Thursday, the furor over his outburst did not let up.

“I’m a big believer that we all make mistakes,” Obama said in acknowledging the apology from Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). The lawmaker’s shout of “You lie!” during the president’s speech on healthcare was a significant break in decorum.

“I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst of other people’s motives,” Obama said.

Original comic book cover

Still, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, a Democrat from Wilson’s home state, said that he planned to push for a resolution expressing disapproval of the incident unless Wilson issued a public apology on the House floor.

And Rob Miller — the Democratic challenger for Wilson’s House seat — had raked in 14,000-plus contributions totaling more than $500,000 since the Wednesday night outburst, according to the House Democratic Campaign Committee.

…snip…

A Wilson spokesman said that the lawmaker had “apologized to the president sincerely, and the president accepted and said let’s move on and have a civil discourse. And the congressman agrees.”

Wilson posted a video on his campaign website saying he let his “emotions get the best” of him during the president’s speech. But he said he would “not be muzzled,” and asked supporters to contribute to his “effort to defeat the proponents of government-run healthcare.”

Wilson’s outburst came in response to Obama’s statement that a healthcare overhaul would not directly benefit illegal immigrants.

…snip…

The healthcare bills developed by House Democrats and by the Senate’s health committee explicitly prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving federal subsidies for insurance. However, the House Republican leadership has complained that there is no provision to enforce the prohibition. GOP House leaders also complain that Democrats rejected their amendment to require applicants for subsidized healthcare to verify their legal status.

…snip…

“I think all of us who know Joe Wilson know that he did the right thing in apologizing to this White House,” said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.). “I don’t think anyone accepts the type of outburst and the lack of decorum in the House chamber.”

(In a separate display of Republican unhappiness, Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois walked out during the president’s address. His spokesman said the congressman was frustrated that Obama was not offering any new ground and left with just minutes remaining.)

Robert Oldendick, a political science professor at the University of South Carolina, on Thursday described reaction within the state to Wilson’s outburst as “surprise and strong disapproval.”

(ChattahBox)—The xenophobic Wilson who has spent years affiliated with the neo-Confederate group Sons of Confederate Veterans, is now casting himself as a “victim” under attack by liberal groups and using his victimhood as a fundraising appeal.

After his vile display of disrespect for the office of the President, Wilson released a written apology to President Obama for his actions, without taking back his accusation that the President lied. In fact, Wilson lied. The House Bill specifically prohibits illegal immigrants from benefiting from federally sponsored health care.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, along with other House leaders are calling for Wilson’s censure, unless he stands on the House floor to apologize for his unprecedented and shameful behavior.

Now, it appears Wilson is not so sorry after all. The notorious presidential heckler has posted a fundraising appeal on his campaign website and on Youtube. The appeal on his website is headed, “Stand with me against liberal attacks” and Wilson says he is sorry for shouting at the President, but he won’t back down.

Read some excerpts of Wilson’s appeal for campaign contributions, based on his victimhood:

“Today I need your help more than ever before. I’ve been under attack by the liberal left for months because of my opposition to their policies, especially government-run healthcare. They’ve run commercials in my home district and flooded my office with phone calls and protestors. They’ve done everything they can to quiet my very vocal opposition to more government interference in our lives. Now, it’s gotten even worse.

But I will not stop fighting against their policies that will only lead to more government interference, more spending and higher deficits.

Will you stand with me today by making a donation to my campaign? If you do, I’ll be able to fight back against the attacks by the liberal left.

…snip…

Wilson’s Democratic challenger Rob Miller has raised over $500,000 in response to Wilson’s calling the President of the United States a liar on national television.

In Wilson’sYoutube appeal he declares, “I will not be muzzled” and continues with his victimhood meme [...]

(Video at ChattahBox link above)

From AlterNet:

South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson was pretty much a nobody until his outburst Wednesday during President Barack Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress and the American people on the subject of health care. Here are some things worth knowing about Mr. Wilson [...]:

1. Like his ideological counterpart known as Mr. The Plumber, his real name is not Joe. It’s Addison. His middle name is Graves. That makes him Addison Graves Wilson.

2. Wilson is a member of the organization, Sons of Confederate Veterans, reports Dave Niewert of Crooks and Liars, which “as the Southern Poverty Law Center has detailed assiduously, has been taken over in the past decade by radical neo-Confederates who favor secession and defend slavery as a benign institution.” [...]

3. Wilson served as an aide to the late segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond, who is credited with conducting the longest filibuster in Senate history — against the 1957 civil rights bill.

4. When Thurmond’s bi-racial daughter, fathered out of wedlock with an African-American teenage girl, came forward in 2003 — after Thurmond’s death — Wilson castigated Thurmond’s daughter, saying he did not believe her story. [...] Wilson later apologized to Washington-Williams.

5. A large percentage of Wilson’s campaign contributions come from the health sector, according to OpenSecrets.org. Over the course of his eight-year congressional career, Wilson has collected $414,000 from the health sector, topped only by contribution from what OpenSecrets calls the “finance, insurance & real estate” sector, from which he has gleaned $455,000.

6. According to his congressional Web site (which has crashed thanks to a rush of traffic after the president’s speech), “Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) announced today that his office will be open on Saturday, September 12, 2009 to host constituents traveling to Washington for this weekend’s 9/12 March on Washington.” The September 12 march is sponsored by the astroturfing group FreedomWorks, and widely publicized by the 912 Project launched by FOX New personality Glenn Beck [...]

7. Wilson is an adamant opponent of health care reform. As reported by The Hill, his last Tweet before his heckling performance at Obama’s speech read, “Happy Labor Day! Wonderful parade at Chapin, many people called out to oppose Obamacare which I assured them would be relayed tomorrow to DC.” [...]

8. A military veteran whose health-care coverage is set for life, even after he retires from Congress, Wilson has “voted 11 times against health care for veterans in eight years, even as he voted ‘aye’ for the Iraq War…, ” according to Adam Weinstein, an uninsured Iraq-war veteran, writing at Newsweek’s The Gaggle. “He voted to cut veterans’ benefits─not his own─to make room for President George W. Bush’s tax cuts,” Weinstein says. “He repeatedly voted for budgets that slashed funding to the Veterans Administration and TRICARE. And perhaps most bizarrely, he refused — repeatedly — to approve Democratic-led initiatives that would have extended TRICARE coverage to all reservists and National Guard members, even though a disproportionate number of them have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — and many lost access to their civilian work benefits when they did so.”

9. In 2002, the Washington Post reports, Wilson attacked Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., on national television, calling him “viscerally un-American” and accusing him of “hatred of America” because the Democrat suggested that the United States had once provided Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein with the wherewithal to acquire nuclear and biological weapons technoligies. Hussein was an ally of the United States during the war he waged on Iran. [...]

10. Wilson served in the Reagan administration as deputy counsel in the energy department.

11. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., hearts Joe Wilson; calls Obama “combative.” “The president’s combative tone did not justify a member of Congress shouting out ‘you lie,’” Graham told the South Carolina newspaper, The State. [...] He then attributed Wilson’s behavior to the president’s remarks.

…snip…

12. Wilson’s heckling is raising funds for both him and his opponent in his upcoming congressional race.

…snip…

13. Joe Wilson’s BFFs in Congress, according to McClatchy Newspapers: Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and Delegate Madeliene Z. Bordallo, D-Guam.

14. Joe Wilson continues to lie. In a YouTube video released Thursday, Wilson, who apologized to the president Wednesday night via White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel,seems hardly contrite. He now says that “liberals who want to give health care to illegals are using my opposition as a distraction…” “They want to silence anyone who’s against” the Democrats’ health-care plan. Wilson continues to refer to the health-care plan as “government run,” and attributes his outburst to having spent a month in town-hall meetings with emotional constituents who oppose a “government takeover” of health care.

9/11 should be a time for every American to ponder the events of that fateful and horrific day in 2001.

We had just suffered more casualties from a foreign enemy in an act of war than had ever been sustained by America on its own soil in its entire history – including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Most Americans were angry and demanded action.  Fully 90% supported George Bush as he laid out his plans to respond to the attack.  And that support was still above 70% when President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003.  We passed the Patriot Act with wide margins in both branches of Congress in October of 2001.  Only ONE Senator – Russ Feingold – voted against it.

And then, slowly at first, and then precipitously, Americans began to turn against the president they had supported, against the wars they had supported, and against the Patriot Act they had supported.

You can see in collections of quotes from Democrats regarding Iraq and the underlying justifications of the war how Democrats were “for that war before they were against it” as declining American support made undermining the war effort itself more and more politically advantageous.

Truth or Fiction
Freedom Agenda
Snopes

Democrat Jack Murtha denounced as war criminals and murderers Marines who were later proven to have been innocent.  Democrat House Majority Whip Representative James Clyburn said that good news in Iraq amounted to a problem for Democrats.  Democrats openly attacked Bush’s “surge” strategy that proved to be the difference in turning the war around and providing victory for the United States.  And Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “Now I believe myself that this war is lost” even as our military was valiantly fighting on foreign soil to win.  Barack Obama joined Democrats in voting to defund the troops fighting overseas as a means of politically undermining George Bush.  Democrats denounced the credibility of General Petraeus even as liberals ran a New York Times ad entitled, “General Betray Us?”

Today, as we pause to reflect over 9/11, we no longer have a “war on terror.”  Now we have an “overseas contingency operation.”  We no longer want our Central Intelligence Agency to aggressively pursue terrorists and seek out any and all information to help us prevent the next attack.  Now we want to criminalize those operatives who tried to keep us safe as a warning to any future CIA personnel who might be so foolish as to violate liberal morays.  Better to lose a city or two than to waterboard a terrorist.

As I reflect on the hours of that terrible day of 9/11, I remember Palestinians cheering and dancing in the streets and holding up ‘V for Victory’ gestures.  I remember people leaping to their deaths from the top floors of the skyscrapers rather than endure the heat that would have murdered them even more agonizingly.  I remember Democrats and Republicans arm-in-arm singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol Building – at least until Democrats determined to undermine virtually everything they had previously supported.

On the anniversary of 9/11, I just wonder what will happen if we are attacked again.  How will we respond?  What will we want?  How will we demand our president act?

Will Americans say, “We agree with President Obama.  Let us hasten our dismantling of our intelligence apparatus to show the world our good will.”  Or will there be a dramatic swing back to the strategy envisioned and implemented by former President George Bush, based on aggressively taking the fight to the enemy, remaining in those fights, and winning them?

I hope that Americans soberly reflect how they would respond to the next massive terrorist attack today.  Because virtually every expert agrees that another such attack is surely coming.  And rather than swing wildly and frankly psychotically between extremes, perhaps we might come to a considered and committed path based on the real will of the American people.

Ask yourself this: if we are attacked again, would you want a President Bush, or would you want a President Obama?  Would you want to handled the next massive attack in which thousands, or tens of thousands (or even more) Americans die to be handled as an act of war, or as a law enforcement investigation?  Would you prefer to go to war against any nation that threatens us, or would you prefer to talk and negotiate instead?  Would you prefer a president who fights our enemies, or a president who voted against fighting and who in fact voted for undermining the war effort in order to stop it?

Just what is it you want your commander in chief to do in response to a massive terrorist attack?  What is it you expect your commander in chief to do in order to prevent such an attack from ever happening in the first place?

Let us realize that the next “Iraq” is rushing toward us in the form of a nuclear-weaponized Iran.  Is such a country a threat?  Should we allow them to develop their weapons of mass destruction, or should we use all means – including military power – to stop them?  The media first reports that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been dramatically slowed down, then reports that they can literally make a bomb whenever they want within the space of a couple of weeks’ time.  One thing seems quite sure: Iran is inexorably working toward nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.  What do we want our president to do about it?  Everything?  Nothing?

To the extent that the American people are even capable of genuine self-reflection and wise contemplation of the future, I hope we take this opportunity to do so today.

I also hope that every single American – regardless of political party – takes a moment to thank God for our troops and pray for their safety and for their victory.

When Senator Paul Wellstone passed away in 2002, the Democrats planned a Walter Mondale campaign rally massive funeral service in his honor.  What was supposed to represent remembrance and solemnity, turned into crass politicization.   Coming from liberals, this is nothing new.   

Although Wellstone was an extreme liberal in the Kennedy vein, Ted Kennedy, was a different animal.  Teddy was a political and cultural icon, a stalwart of American politics who represented everything that modern liberalism stood for, and did so for decades. 

That doesn’t matter.   Let the politicization begin:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office sent an email to reporters at around 2:30 a.m. today, just hours after his death, calling for the passage of health care overhaul. “Ted Kennedy’s dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration,” the statement read.

Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also issued a statement this morning calling for the passage of health care overhaul. “Let us continue his cause,” Stern said. “Let us take action this year to pass health care reform. And let us continue to build Kennedy’s vision of America.”

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the House majority whip, said: “As we move forward with health reform legislation, his absence will be palpable. But let us use his inspirational words as our guide, to rise to our best ideals and finally provide decent quality health care to all Americans as a fundamental right, not a privilege.”

No surprise that the shrill Nancy Pelosi, race-baiter Jim Clyburn and thug-in-chief at the SEIU are all squeezing every political drop they can out of the death of Ted Kennedy for political gains, on an unpopular and disastrous healthcare reform bill. 

The nut-roots jumps in to the pool also—note this particular post’s headline:

Time for the Teddy Kennedy Memorial Health Care Reform Bill

That’s right.  Forget the fact that the Democrats now control the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time in nearly twenty years and that they were allegedly given a mandate for change in last year’s election.  Forget that the majority party doesn’t need a single Republican vote to pass any piece of legislation it chooses to bring to the floor.  

It’s only now—that Ted Kennedy is dead— that the country can get some real healthcare reform.  Or maybe the bill just needed a snappy new title. 

Absolutely shameless.

UPDATE.   Someone make it stop (via):

[...]Obama campaigned in 2008 promising that comprehensive immigration reform would be on his first-year agenda, but during a trip to Mexico this month, he said it had to be put off until 2009, an election year.

The administration is certain to call for swift action on health care reform as a tribute to Kennedy. But it also should accelerate work on immigration reform in his name.

Again, with majorities in Congress, the White House and a “mandate”, why is taking the death of Ted Kennedy to embolden Democrats?  Hope, change and the death of a senator.

“I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before.

I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon.”

August 8, 2009

during an interview with the Huffington Post

“I have seen this kind of hate before. I have seen this discussion before.

I have seen snarling dogs going after people who were trying to peacefully assemble. I have seen the eyes of people who were being spat upon.”

August 8, 2009

during an interview with the Huffington Post