One of My Greatest Learnings

REPEAL: THE UNMITIGATED DISASTER OF OBAMACARE

REDISTRIBUTION 101: OBAMACARE WILL COST AT&T (CUSTOMERS) OVER ONE BILLION DOLLARS

OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, my online blogging experience has taught me so much as I've spent reams of time catching up on issues and historical realities I walked away from years ago as a knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal, and silly, arrogant newspaper reporter. Today I see things with a far, far different lens and historical perspective than I did back then. As such, I am often shocked by what I'm learning and the sea change I'm still going through. I know I'm not alone in this as many of my fellow bloggers---whacked out libs of the 60s---are waking up with me.

One of the greatest shockers for me is the gargantuan growth of the Federal government over our lives and the workings of various state governments within our federation.

In some ways I feel as if I'm just coming out of a very long sleep and wondering where I am and how I got here? Why wasn't I paying better attention for so long? Where was I? Where were we? Could we have done anything about it if we'd taken the time to read, to think, to re-evaluate our old positions sooner?

I now see my grown children deep asleep too, showing no signs of waking. I shudder to think what it will take for them to wake up as my generation has. It really frightens me to contemplate what has happened to us, our children and grand-children and whether we can turn this behemoth Ship of State around and steer it in a wiser, more sustainable direction for the foreseeable future. This wishful thinking I am engaging in goes far deeper than partisan politics and special interests. It goes to bedrock founding principle. I am not always optimistic.

In picking through the debris of this healthcare debacle, reading piece after piece--- before, during and after--- the fact of this legislation nothing, NOTHING shocks me more than coming to understand one of the most virulent ways the Federal government has spread its boa constrictor tentacles into a smothering grip on our lives. And it's this:

The Commerce clause--its mighty use, rationale and almost unlimited scope for growing big government in our lives from cradle to grave. Is there any stopping this monstrous clause from taking over everything, like The Thing?

I certainly am no historian nor Constitutional expert. But it seems to me that the Commerce clause has been used more than any other phrase in the Constitution to expand, but never contract the scope and size of Big Government. It is the presiding principle on which the HCR was passed. Today it is also the main hope of those of us who wish to Kill the Bill or greatly limit its power over our medical lives.

As such, I intend to look around for good pieces on how HRC might be over-turned in the courts on the basis of The Commerce clause being over-used to force the people of this country to buy a product many don't want to buy. Surely there will be other constitutional challenges but this one is the most interesting to me.

To wit, I found this piece by Charles Lane in the Washington Post (via HotAir) that I think is both hopeful and well-written. I hope you'll take a look and also let me know if you find other articles that I can post here along these lines. Here's another good piece from the WSJ.

In closing I want to quote a favorite paragraph from Lane's piece I find salient:

In recent years, however, the court has also struck down federal laws banning handguns within 1,000 feet of a school and permitting women to sue rapists in federal court. In those cases, the court attempted to set an outer limit on Congress’s Commerce Clause authority, warning that Congress cannot touch non-economic activities, or claim economic impacts that require “inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States.”