Thursday, June 28, 2012

Constitutionality

With the Supreme Court's scheduled ruling today on the Affordable Care Act, I fully expected to be terribly disappointed however the ruling came down.  Surprisingly, I'm much better pleased than I expected... the health-care mandate was preserved without resorting to arguments that Congress can force you to buy whatever they want you to, by re-framing the concept as a tax matter, for all everyone involved postured about no new taxes being involved.  Amazingly, it was a ruling of "try and call it what you want, this is what it really is", which I honestly never expected to see in my lifetime at that level of the judiciary... with Chief Justice Roberts playing the deciding role, no less (link).

But, for every pleasant surprise out of Washington, it seems there needs to be at least as much derp.  To wit, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, with his office's "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so" statement (link).  Yeah... funny thing, when the majority says so, really it does make it so.  That's kind of their job.