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We have clearance, Clarence
Who knows? He and Ray are playing it cagey. But, yes, apparently, the truth is somewhere out there, and only they will know it when they see it. Where? They're taking bids.
Homer: Alright, I'll talk to Lisa's teacher this year; you can have Bart's.
Marge: That's the way we do it every year.
Homer: Alright, tell ya what – I'm thinking of a number between one and 50.
Marge: Is it 37?
Homer: D'oh—! I mean, no.
Marge: Homer!
Homer: Please, Marge! Please, please, please, please, please!
Marge: Oh, alright.
Homer: Woo-hoo! [honks horn] USA! USA! USA!
Or maybe there case against the SC determining constitutionality runs more like Monty Python's What Has Rome Ever Done For Us?
Demarchy! I'd be interested in seeing how it works.
I think in the end phoniness among politicians has to do with the so-called imposter syndrome. The ones who know in their heart that they are incompetent, that they are impostors in their public life, are the phoniest, the most likely to make up ####. And that would have to be Palin.
Criminality and immorality is not phoniness per se, it is criminality and immorality. I guess you gotta be phony to be criminal or immoral and to claim innocence, but it is not essentially phony, it is tangentially phony. I am talking Edwards and Gingrich here.
But frankly phoniness is pretty small potatoes compared to lying to the American people in order to be able to start or escalate a war, so LBJ and W kind of take the cake in this realm. The others are pikers compared to this behavior.
And i think people are being a little hard on david n ray here (although they are big boys and can take it). They are just being a little obtuse.
And while I'm at it. Are our rights protected by the Constitution, or are they subject to a vote by the people? In MN, I can tell you that our rights are subject to a vote of the people. If a cabal of so-called legislative leaders wants a vote, the Constitution is nothing.
Where does this rate on the phoniness scale coming from a state party whose campaign lit says a vote for us is a vote for freedom?
Note that in his response to this post, David addresses only the first paragraph.
I asked the question because I really wanted to know. As I stated a number of times, it’s not a trick question. I didn’t pose it in a veiled attempt to sucker punch anyone. If the SC doesn’t have the authority to definitively and really decide constitutionality, then who or what does? All I wanted to know was how this would play out in whatever hypothetical alternative there was. Maybe R&D knew something. Maybe they could make a convincing case that would change the paradigm, as they say.
Uh huh. You keep scrambling. We all do, except for the SC? However, its determination has force? I mean, what kind of argument is this? First, both were emphatically certain (100%?) that something could be decided for constitutional purposes but nevertheless be wrong; now it’s everyone’s right? No one’s wrong? Except the SC, whose decision, though, admittedly is what counts. This is crazy.
“We all do,” says Mr. Born Again Populist. Looking at their original statements, that’s, in evolutionary terms, known as a saltation—a jump so extreme and radical it has no hope of propagating itself. Or it is meaningless subterfuge, like Milo Minderbinder and “everyone has a share.” So, we are all our own little constitutionalists. Is that really what you rest a serious alternative vision on?
No, we all have our philosophies, we all have our public policy consideration, our views on what’s constitutional, but what actually is constitutional for game purposes is what he umpire says is constitutional. Yes, we can get him (or them) to change their minds, but until we do, it is what it is. And then the change becomes what is.
No, the point isn’t that the SC can be wrong. We all can be wrong, but that isn’t binding. The point is what it says is constitutional is what’s constitutional—right or wrong—until that is changed somehow. Unless you know another way of doing this, this side of anarcho-nihilism.
It’s not about right or wrong—it’s about what determines what’s constitutional, which is an entirely separate determination that can not be dealt with by reverting to right and wrong. It’s like they don’t know the difference between law and that which justifies law. The latter informs the first; it is not a substitute for the other, however. That the two are not the same is Law School 101. R&D keep wanting their sense of what should be to trump the law. It’s not that our sense of what is right and wrong, what is best, doesn’t matter—it’s that that is not how we play the game.
Oh, we can believe they can be wrong. We can believe you can be wrong. And that I can be wrong. But what makes it constitutional if not the SC’s determination is the question you evade. You didn’t originally couched your view of the matter in terms of opinions that have equal value; you said the decision was unconstitutional, that there was no rational basis for it, etc. You, as always, were categorically imperious, so positive as to brook no qualification whatsoever. Given that, we just wanted to know what determines “constitutional,” then, and it turns out, at long last, that, hippie-like, life is just one big commune of total equals (sounds socialistic_ and we all get to decide, man, and that way no one’s buzz gets harshed, and that’s what counts, groovy, don’t you, copacetic whatnot?
Yes, but I would go even further and say that the SC can be wrong in some moral or philosophical sense. That, though, has nothing to do necessarily with what’s “constitutional.” It's really besides the point.
It was not, though, the same justices. Nor were those decisions made in the same context. There’s a transmitter and receiver to all communication, and they often disagree as to the meaning of the text or agreement, whether as to a constitution or the label on a can of Campbell’s Pork ‘N’ Beans. That’s often why the parties to any agreement contemplate the necessity of a third-party having to settle matters.
Well, that was my point.
I've seen 50 million, which includes illegal aliens, but that is a snapshot. It's not like after it becomes law we were grandfathered into position. It is a law for everyone not on medicare. Why they continue to sell this as a law for a small fraction of people is poor marketing. It is a law for everyone.
Without trying to go all Lassus here, cite? It's nowhere near 30%.
If you had only the slightest bit of self-awareness, you'd realize just how much language like that sounds exactly like the ####### Communist Party back in the days when they'd use politically "correct" as unironically as you're using it here.
They get to rule whether a law is constitutional, but they don't get to be above criticism for making an incorrect ruling. If a law is not constitutional and they find it so, they are wrong.
Without trying to go all Matt Clement of Alexandria here, this is really basic, simple stuff.
Can my taxes not go to oil company subsidies, please?
Yes, facts are our enemies.
All I've said is that Supreme Court decisions can be wrong
Actually, you said this one was wrong. I forget, did you say why? If so, can you repeat?
Can my taxes not go to oil company subsidies, please?
Or subsidies to baseball stadiums, for that matter. At some point our Man of a Million Opinions will come out from under his rock and opine on this one, but I'm not holding my breath.
That much, I'll agree with (even if I don't agree with it as applied to the ACA ruling). It was David's "reality determines itself" comment (as if there were a self-evident single correct answer to every legal dispute) that set things off the rails. But I see that the intervening discussion has pretty well beaten this horse to death, so I'll leave it at that.
A lot of computer scientists and engineers end up being libertarian types, however. Similarly, almost every "scientist" who identifies as a young earth creationist is a computer scientist.
But yes, being a physicist, basically everyone I know is both socially and economically liberal/progressive/socialist/whatever. Taking the right wing position often depends on believing things that are empirically false, so it's hard (at least among those who pay any attention. If you're politically disinterested, it's much easier.)
A: I call 'em as I see 'em.
B: I call 'em as they are.
C: They ain't nothing until I call 'em.
I reject "C." It may be very difficult to tell whether the umpire was right or wrong; hell, it may be impossible, because there's no clear camera angle for a play. But that doesn't mean that whatever call the umpire made was correct. If the Court had struck down Obamacare, I'd have been very happy. It would have settled the legal dispute (at least temporarily). But it would neither have made Obamacare unconstitutional nor "proved" that Obamacare was. And what the Court actually did does not make Obamacare constitutional or prove that it is. It simply resolved the case before it, and established legally binding precedent for lower courts.
A "constitutional" law can be one that, based on a particular interpretation of the Constitution, is in accordance with the best reading of that text. Or, a "constitutional" law can be one that, in the context of procedural American democracy, has been determined to be in accordance with the constitution by the institutions given that power.
When Ray or David calls the ACA "unconstitutional", they are applying their particular Gilded Age reading of the Constitution and making a normative judgment. This is the same thing that I do when I say that the ACA was clearly "constitutional" under the Commerce Clause, except that I'm rejecting the Gilded Age reading. This is, indeed, all very normal linguistic stuff.
(As a note, I think that adjudicating between interpretations is difficult, but possible. People can be convinced one way or the other - it happened with villageidiom in just this thread. There are better and worse readings, there are ludicrous readings, there are strong readings. It just takes the hard work of argumentation and conversation to work all of it out, and it can never be entirely complete.)
Matt, if only Ray and David were to admit that their judgment was purely normative, and that it was based on their Gilded Age premises, I'm pretty sure that most of the rest of us would just say "okay, we get it" and let it go at that.
But the problem with Ray in particular, and David to a lesser extent, is that his premises are simply assumed, and neither of them ever acknowledges even for a second the possibility that there are other perfectly legitimate premises to base one's case on. It's an intellectual arrogance that's usually more amusing that anything else, but when it's combined with an undertone of almost comical self-pity** there are times when amusement isn't always the first response.
It also doesn't help when they avoid answering questions that they find uncomfortable. Ray is a serial offender in this regard.
**"Poor me, my life is being stolen at gunpoint to pay for freeloaders' health care and big screen TVs" is an attitude that underlies nearly every single argument of theirs.
This is the same thing that I do when I say that the ACA was clearly "constitutional" under the Commerce Clause, except that I'm rejecting the Gilded Age reading. This is, indeed, all very normal linguistic stuff.
Yes, but you don't generally act as if God died and left you Chief Justice of a one man Supreme Court. That alone distinguishes you from those two.
Option A admits that all readings of constitutionality are textual interpretations. Now, I have no problem with that, nor does, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but David and Ray and the "reality determines itself" brigades (inclusive of the Thomases and Scalias of the court) are violently opposed* to admitting that basic, obvious truth.
Option B admits that the reality that is "determined" by the powers that be** is, in fact, the operative reality, and the rest of this is navel gazing and wishcasting.
*Rhetorically, not physically
**Again, coming back to the reason I threw the "weird philosophy-of-language" brick is to highlight the absurdity of the positions the hard line libertarians tend to lock themselves into in these debates, and the failings of those positions. Primarily, of course, the libertarian arguments fail the sniff-test of reality because they naively believe they can waive their arms about the air and magically replace power with authority.
The Constitution doesn't say anything without humans to read and interpret it. And those human interpreters are going to be bound up or enmeshed in an interpretive context. I'm not sure how you get around this without engaging in a transparent act of fiction. If you can demonstrate that reading can happen without a reader, we can go from there. Until then, it's all humans, and they're all contextual actors. There's no eye of history.
---
Eh, it's the Internet. Everyone's posts come with an assumed, "based on particular premises..." I've never been terribly bothered by that, and it's not like either Ray or Dave is at all guarded about their peculiar beliefs about what are and are not rights.
The problem with Ray's formulation is that it's a rhetorical strategy, rather than an attempt at making an honest argument. "There is no way it could be otherwise" dresses what's obviously a contingent claim up in a false objectivity. Just like "it's over." But Ray's not actually interested in making arguments, unless we abide by whatever absurd definitions he's made up in his head.
The problem with that is that you wind up either (a) getting sidetracked into a discussion about whose premises are "correct" (David's lovely neo-Marxist term), which with them is like punching the tar baby; or (b) simply talking past one another. Neither way gets you anywhere.
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The problem with Ray's formulation is that it's a rhetorical strategy, rather than an attempt at making an honest argument. "There is no way it could be otherwise" dresses what's obviously a contingent claim up in a false objectivity. Just like "it's over." But Ray's not actually interested in making arguments, unless we abide by whatever absurd definitions he's made up in his head.
That's exactly the point. And when he can't reconcile his premises (or "principles", as he so quaintly likes to call them) with scenarios that clearly contradict them, he simply disappears and hopes that nobody will notice the extent of his evasiveness. It's the BTF version of the old rope-a-dope strategy.
Precisely. To say that this is just an argument over semantics misses the point.
This is a great analogy. I mean, it's wrong, but it makes the issues involved very clear.
The rules of baseball provide a definitive rule, covering all situations, for determining whether a pitch is a ball or a strike So there is a right answer, which the umpire can perceive correctly or not.
The Constitution provides definitive answers to some questions, to be sure. But not all. So "X is constitutional if and only if the justices say so" is wrong, just as you say, and for the reasons you give. But "The question of whether X is onstitutional has a correct answer, independent of whether the judges see it or not," is true only for those X to which the Constitution speaks definitively. For obvious reasons, the cases that make it to the Supreme Court are disproportionately (though certainly not entirely) drawn from the cases where the clear text of the Constitution does not provide a clear answer. In these cases, the job of the SC Justice is quite different from that of the umpire.
I'm looking forward to see if the rebates in August get any coverage. Seriously, between this, the age 26 rule for kids staying on insurance, and closing the donut hole that's 3 big things that've changed for the better since 2010.
eta: I see Matt was making a similar point. Does he owe me a coke or do I owe him one?
That's Senator Jim DeMint, 5 years ago. What happened other than Democrats pushed hard for and passed a reform bill aimed at fixing the big problems in our health care system?
Yes, it is. But most people who have health care like their health care. They largely get it through their employers, they don't know how much it costs their employers and thus how much their take home pay is being held down by shift in compensation, and a lot of the reforms to the individual market that will be really helpful like guaranteed issue and community rating are already done by large companies with insurers or those that self-insure. When you start talking about changing that, even in tangential ways, people get nervous. It's part of what hurt Clinton's reform efforts. There's ways to talk about it successfully, but it's not as much a slam dunk as you might think. And that's even accepting that the public wanted/still wants to litigate the issue in the court of public opinion rather than talk about where the jobs are.
(I didn’t say there was no correct answer. I asked you and Ray to tell us what that correct answer was, since you stated with absolute certainty that there was one and it wasn’t the Supreme Court’s answer.)
Why don’t you reject A or B?
What corresponds to “camera angle” in determining constitutionality?
The Justice assigned to write the majority opinion.
It’s not about normal and regular ways. This is an argument over law, and/or political philosophy giving rise to law. Before we can figure that out, the Oracles at Delphi have to be flushed and made to plant their flag.
That gets us nowhere. It simply restates the problem. Whose interpretation? Anyone’s? How and who determines that “best reading”? That’s what Ray and David have retreated to.
How is this different from the first, other than presumably the actors making the determination are different?
If this is all normal linguistic stuff, then why this mystic air of the Word having been received from powers (undisclosed) that transcend human endeavor and institutions--which we not speak of.
Yes, most of us most of the time just want to luxuriate in pontification. We just want to testify without being tested. But that's useless for matters dealing with our shared public life. The “based on particular premises” is fine, but only as far as it goes. When called upon it, one must then disclose and be willing to discuss those premises, if one expects to be taken seriously. Or one can exit, stage right. Again, this is about law, policy, and public matters. Secrecy and reticence at this point really have no place, except as rhetorical shuck and jive in order to slip someone the green wienie.
If the Court had struck down Obamacare, I'd have been very happy. It would have settled the legal dispute (at least temporarily).
Pssst... the legal dispute did get settled. Why did you think so many keyboards were getting punched, and dogs were getting kicked last week?
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Seriously, if what you mean is "no plausible reading of the constitution supports this ruling" (or some similar phrasing) try using that. Yeah, I know I'm not likely to persuade anybody, but terms of reference matter otherwise these discussions will inevitably turn into one side shouting "Orange, you idiot" and the other "Purple, you moron"
And don't call me Shirley.
Until they lose their jobs.
They like their health care -- but they don't much care for their insurance. Since this was really a health insurance reform more so than a health care reform, well...
Medicare routinely scores much higher satisfaction rates than does private insurance - including employer sponsored plans, and the gap has continued to widen. From access to costs to expectations - the satisfaction rates aren't really all that close.
I haven't simply rested on "it's unconstitutional." I've explained why - i.e., that the mandate is not a tax, and that the mandate is not supported by the commerce clause. For example, I argued with TShipman for a while over the commerce clause and inaction versus action and Wickard v Filburn and the ludicrous notion that people in the hotel business in 1964 were not "acting."
And note that in so doing, I _accepted_ that we were not arguing over simply my view of all of these things, but we were accepting the precedent - e.g., Wickard - as binding.
The idea that David and I have just rested on "It's unconstitutional no matter what the Supreme Court says, nyah nyah" is a fiction. We argued our position on the merits. Then people who disagreed with us shifted the debate to the cartoonish place it's at now, where - against all odds - we're arguing over whether a court decision can be wrong, when (I would bet every nickel I have) prior to this ruling last week every person here agreed that a court decision can be wrong. (Cite the previous Bush v Gore discussions, where some of them accused the Court of stealing the election. That position can only be taken if one believes that court decisions can be wrong.)
This entire thread tangent is a smokescreen by people who disagree with us so they're trying to paint us as unreasonable and as resting on conclusory positions without explaining our reasoning.
Most people who are satisfied with their health care aren’t at that point where they have to use it a lot, or at that point where the insurer would try to drop them or evade coverage.
Not everyone works for an employer who provides insurance, especially insurance into retirement. Not by a long shot. Moreover, for those people who have private policies, as you get older the premiums skyrocket until you simply can’t afford them. That’s assuming that without ACA you could have obtained a supplemental policy that would provide full coverage in conjunction with Medicare.
Things were, are, and will get worse unless matters are taken in hand. The ACA is a pathetic solution, but we got our foot in the water. In America, this ###### up country, that’s how things work. However precarious the purchase, that toehold is all important.
Yes. Plus because Medicare is a government program, a person has actual real rights. Their alternatives aren't to lump it or leave it.
The obvious way to provide universal health care was, first, to simply extend Medicare to everyone, then decide whether that should morph to a one-payer system, or whether continue as it is with private insurances supplementing Medicare.
Go back to Sault Ste. Marie, ya hoser.
This. Most people are happy with their insurance because they don't realize how much of a boondoggle it is until they need to use it and it's yanked away from them at the hour of most need.
Ray I accept what you say, except for one little thing, you state that your ideological adversaries are trying to paint you and Dave as being unreasonable- you two ARE unreasonable, but aside from that I agree with what you say in 1356
Yes, if you look at many recent blog entries- in between the delusional "freedom has died/ impeach Roberts ranting" from the nutters on the one hand, and gloating from lefties on the other, you will see that many people are generally concerned that their personal healthcare/finances has been significantly and negatively impacted- and much of that concern is a result of the false propaganda that has been relentlessly disseminated for 2+ years now-
there are people who now actually and honestly think their medicare has been cut, or that they are going to have to convince a "death panel" that they deserve to live before their next procedure is approved, and variously other things that are simply not true- these people did not make these things up- they've been told them- over and over and over again.
One reason for the absurdly over the- top reaction from parts of the right this week- if they can't stop implementation their lies will be exposed, so now you see a two par hysteria- a naked desperation to win and repeal come November- combined with a relentless mis-direction campaign (the death of freedom as we know it- no exaggeration")
They should not be so desperate- never underestimate the ability of people to believe what they want to believe and ignore contradictory evidence- IOW their base will never notice that they lied
Ray, with all due respect, that's absolute BS. Whatever has been directed at you in this thread has stemmed from your conceit that you and David have some sort of unique insight into "objective" truth that those who disagree with you don't possess. We don't give a rat's patooie whether you agree or disagree with the ACA ruling.
Not to mention that you continue to duck the question of whether the Iraq war, like health insurance / health care for those who can't afford it, should be funded only by those who support the idea. That's your once and forever answer to the insurance mandate, and I only wonder why that same sort of reasoning shouldn't apply across the board, at least in other areas of hotly contested policy disputes. Like the Iraq war.
I'm sure you'll dig up some reason for saying "that's different", but so far you've just pulled a McGwire on us, without the excuse of having to worry about jail time.
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there are people who now actually and honestly think their medicare has been cut, or that they are going to have to convince a "death panel" that they deserve to live before their next procedure is approved, and variously other things that are simply not true- these people did not make these things up- they've been told them- over and over and over again.
That might have something to do with the fact that opponents of the ACA have outspent its proponents to the tune of about 3 to 1. Of course since in David's view advertising can't do anything except persuade Marlboro smokers to switch to Winstons, this sort of information goes in one orifice and out another.
For those amused by the antics of the monkey house, the Village Voice has a long-running feature called "Exploring the Right Wing Blogosphere," whose latest installment deals with the celebratory buildup to and soulcrushing aftermath of the Obamacare ruling. It may not technically qualify as "gloating from lefties," since previous installments have dealt with things conservatives have actually won, and the tone is the same.
No, it's not. That is exactly what's happened here.
All that's happened is (I will speak for myself and not David): I said the ACA is unconstitutional. The Court ruled. I said the Court was wrong. And since you think the Court was right, you (and whoever else also thinks that) are also wrong.
Why we needed to enter the land of "court decisions can't be wrong" is left as an exercise for the reader.
What's kind of funny is that you would think that the gloating by liberals came from a 9-0 decision where the side that lost was trounced on all counts. But really, the court rejected the commerce clause argument, and barely ruled, 5-4, that the mandate is a "tax." (Scare quotes intended, and deserved.)
It could have been worse for those who like freedom, although obviously the outcome is bad.
And because you like to smear people in this way, people treat you like a troll.
It's got a good beat and I can dance to it, but needs more "then the terrorists win".
And the effect of this distinction is...?
No. You argued your side earlier in the thread, and then you stated your conclusion as if it were accepted fact, repeatedly, when no one else accepted as such. The fact is that the ACA has been ruled constitutional. It's a fact you're still in denial over, hence your repeated offhanded restatement of your own opinion on the subject as if it were fact. Again, it's a rhetorical tactic, and not a particularly clever one, deployed to give your opinions more weight than they have. Just because the RDP-7000 spit out a line of text, it does not have the weight of objective fact, in spite of your annoying persistence. Once you stop dressing your opinions up as incontrovertible truth, we can move on. You constantly and falsely claim to be interested in honest discussion. But if you were, you would at least attempt to be precise in your use of language. The fact that you refuse to do so degrades every conversation you have with anyone on this site.
It could have been worse for those who like freedom, although obviously the outcome is bad.
Where freedom=Ray DiPerna gets to keep more of his precious money, you are absolutely correct. For those who define freedom differently, the ACA ruling is a huge win.
All that's happened is (I will speak for myself and not David): I said the ACA is unconstitutional. The Court ruled. I said the Court was wrong. And since you think the Court was right, you (and whoever else also thinks that) are also wrong.
Why we needed to enter the land of "court decisions can't be wrong" is left as an exercise for the reader.
Nobody's saying that court decisions can't be subjectively "wrong", according to one's various premises. But what you don't seem to understand is that you're no more party to an "objective" interpretation of constitutionality than a homeless person fighting a pigeon for a scrap of bread. It's the pretense of "objectivity" that's laughable, especially coming from someone with such a reductionist concept of "freedom".
And you still continue to duck the question of funding the Iraq war. Are you really that scared that your answer will strip away your fig leaf of objectivity when it comes to issues of personal "freedom"?
You disagree that court decisions can be objectively wrong? Really?
I disagree with this from Toobin. It's dicta. It's authoritative, but not dispositive, and not precedent. That said, there's 5 votes for not allowing mandates from the federal government. It'll be interesting to see how that gets used in the future. As I've said upthread, I'm much more concerned about the Medicaid ruling. Rick Scott and Bobby Jindal have both announced they're not expanding coverage. Given that hardship exemptions are only mandated under 100% FPL and the subsidies aren't there, we could see a donut hole develop in recalcitrant red states that epically ##### over low income working poor people for the sake of thumbing their nose at Obama. People will die if this happens for no other reason than sheer partisan cussedness.
But we're only 3 away from the over! Quick, I have the list of everyone who's ever done steroids ever! Who wants to see it?!
eta: The over was set at 1382. Which, really, is impressively dead on.
Will Ray declare the new thread constitutional? A nation shudders with anticipation...
That was pretty exciting, although I think posts specifically about the bet shouldn't count toward the total.
You disagree that court decisions can be objectively wrong? Really?
What I disagree with is that you (or anyone else) have any particular insight into what's "objectively" wrong or "objectively" right in Constitutional terms until the Supreme Court issues a decision. You continue to conflate your personal preferences with objectivity, in a manner that vacillates between cheerful arrogance and cheerful cluelessness. It's truly a sight to behold.
And since you've repeatedly demonstrated that you're afraid to answer that perfectly legitimate question about voluntary funding of the Iraq war, I wonder if there are any less reticent libertarians out there who will give it a shot.
To repeat the question: If the solution to the health care / health insurance issue is to rely on voluntary contributions to pay for those who can't afford it, then why shouldn't those who opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq be equally able to have refused to pay taxes to subsidize the war? I have yet to see a coherent answer to this----or from Ray, any answer at all.
Seems to me that philosophically you can't support "health care tax resistors" without also supporting "Iraq war tax resistors", without coming up with some torturous reason for why one set of resistors is justified while the other set isn't. And since this simple question seems to be impossible for Ray to look in the eye without cowering, perhaps some other principled libertarian might want to respond.
Actually, 55.6% could vote constitutional, but if the libertarian politburo declares it's unconstitutional regardless, we all have to live with that shame. Somehow.
Of course the far greater shame is that we've come up short by reasoning that was 100% certifiably objective. And who are we to argue with the objective disciples of Little Orphan Aynnie?
Where the hell have you been for the last 200 posts? Did you not hear that we're all now being governed by The Algorithm Formerly Known as Ray*?
*all praise his machinic wisdom, which guides us like a beacon through the fog of unreason
Happily, that's not a legal or logical conflict. John Yoo swears that the Iraq War was constitutional, but Obamacare is not. And especially that torturous reasons are.
I, personally, am willing to call the man TAFKaR for the rest of his life.
This sounds like the ACA, though. People are given a choice whether to (A) to invest a portion of one's money in a private account or (B) leave their tax dollars with Social Security, but one is not free to not save for retirement. It's not called a mandate, but it acts in exactly that manner, since it requires everyone to become actors in that particular market.
The system goes on-line June 28th, 2012. Human decisions are removed from the judicial process. TAFKaR begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, July 3rd. In a panic, they try to start a new thread...
No, what you said was "it's not even close", as if it was inconceivable that anyone could possibly disagree with you, implying that the many scholars, judges and justices who did disagree with you must be liars or insane or incurably stupid. It is this type of hubris that calls forth the hounds.
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