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« on: December 21, 2019, 05:10:34 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 12-19-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Dec. 19, 2019
https://patriotpost.us/digests/67497-mid-day-digest-2019-12-19
THE FOUNDATION
“[Impeachment] will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” —Alexander Hamilton (1788)
https://patriotpost.us/fqd/67496-founders-quote-daily-2019-12-19
IN TODAY’S EDITION
Democrat impeach Trump, but they’ve really only helped him.1
ObamaCare individual mandate is unconstitutional, says Fifth Circuit.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.
IN BRIEF
Trump Impeached — Now Ahead of All Dem Candidates10
On the eve of the House Democrats’ somber gleeful vote to impeach President Donald Trump, a new poll showed him beating every potential Democrat candidate in hypothetical head-to-head contests in 2020. The USA Today/Suffolk University Poll observed, “The national survey, taken as the House of Representatives planned an impeachment vote and the Senate a trial, showed Trump defeating former Vice President Joe Biden by 3 percentage points, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by 5 points, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 8 points.” Clearly, the Democrats’ partisan impeachment gamble has not played out as they had hoped.
Having gone all-in, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and company were left with little choice but to continue the charade, so on Wednesday the House held the impeachment vote. As expected, both articles of impeachment passed. Pelosi sought to moralize the vote, boasting, “I could not be prouder or more inspired by the moral courage of the House Democrats. We never asked one of [them] how they were going to vote. We never whipped this vote.” She honestly expects us to believe she had no idea how this would turn out?
More significantly, Pelosi failed to garner the bipartisan support she had previously insisted was necessary when considering such a serious move as impeachment. In fact, it is the Republicans who can claim the bipartisan banner, as two Democrats crossed the aisle to vote against the “abuse of power” charge, and a third Democrat joined them in opposing the charge of “obstructing Congress.”
It’s now official — Democrats have successfully lowered the bar on impeachment to now include partisan policy disagreements. Furthermore, Pelosi plans to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she deems Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rules to be “fair.” This is a clear play by Pelosi to continue the false narrative initiated by Chuck Schumer, who vacuously claims that Republicans aren’t playing fair. Apparently, the Democrats’ definition of “fairness” is to acquiesce to their every demand.
But McConnell, who is no stranger to the Democrats’ long history of disingenuous demands for “fairness,” pointedly responded: “House Democrats embarked on the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history. The framers built the Senate to provide stability … to keep partisan passions from boiling over. Moments like this are why the United States Senate exists.” In other words, take a hike.
Trump took the occasion in stride. As Democrats were voting, he held a rally before a packed house in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he taunted the Democrats: “It doesn’t really feel like we’re being impeached.” He further blasted “the do-nothing Democrats” who he noted “do nothing” beyond “declaring their deep hatred and disdain for [the] American voter.” He added that their impeachment is “political suicide.”
During his speech, a staffer interrupted Trump to inform him of the final vote, to which he commented, “The Republicans have never been so affronted but they’ve never been so united as they are right now.” He then observed, “I’m the first person to ever get impeached and there’s no crime!”
Finally, while Democrats and the Leftmedia spent the evening gleefully relishing the House’s partisan impeachment vote, in the broader scheme of things they have just increased the likelihood of Trump winning in 2020.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/67495-trump-impeached-now-ahead-of-all-dem-candidates
ObamaCare Loses in Court — Again11
The Fifth Circuit Court answered four important questions regarding ObamaCare yesterday — including ruling the individual mandate unconstitutional — but ultimately punted the case back down to a lower court to reconsider the broader implications for the entire law. Two years ago, the Republican-controlled Congress made the “tax” penalty for not buying health insurance $0, which the Fifth Circuit Court decided means it isn’t a tax and thus was beyond Congress’s power to legislate. ObamaCare defenders insist the $0 penalty makes the question moot. Remember, the only reason the penalty was considered a tax in the first place was because of the machinations of Chief Justice John Roberts, who in 2012 rewrote ObamaCare in order to save it12.
From the court’s ruling:
First, there is a live case or controversy because the intervenor-defendant states have standing to appeal and, even if they did not, there remains a live case or controversy between the plaintiffs and the federal defendants. Second, the plaintiffs have Article III standing to bring this challenge to the ACA; the individual mandate injures both the individual plaintiffs, by requiring them to buy insurance that they do not want, and the state plaintiffs, by increasing their costs of complying with the reporting requirements that accompany the individual mandate. Third, the individual mandate is unconstitutional because it can no longer be read as a tax, and there is no other constitutional provision that justifies this exercise of congressional power. Fourth, on the severability question, we remand to the district court to provide additional analysis of the provisions of the ACA as they currently exist.
Expanding on the tax question, the court reasoned, “Now that the shared responsibility payment amount is set at zero, the provision’s saving construction is no longer available. The four central attributes that once saved the statute because it could be read as a tax no longer exist. Most fundamentally, the provision no longer yields the ‘essential feature of any tax’ because it does not produce ‘at least some revenue for the Government.’”
On severability, what the court means is this: Without the individual mandate to force everyone into participating in the law, can the law as a whole still stand? We’d argue the clear answer is and always should have been that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. The federal government has no enumerated power to force citizens into any kind of commerce. That such an opinion is not universally held is a testament to many things — chiefly, a woefully inadequate educational system that fails to instruct students on basic civics, as well as the socialist bent of one of our two major political parties, which redefines “rights” to mean “things someone else has to provide for me.”
Legally, however, the severability question must now be answered by a district court — the court where District Court Judge Reed O'Connor last year ruled the law was unconstitutional13. Then the law will inevitably be reconsidered by the Fifth Circuit and then, perhaps, the Supreme Court. Maybe John Roberts will end up with a chance to redeem himself, albeit a decade too late.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/67493-obamacare-loses-in-court-again-2019-12-19 |
