Friday, March 30, 2012

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watcher's Council Results


The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week's Watcher's Council match up!

This week was an important one in the history of our beloved Republic. The Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for a ruling they'll make in June or so on ObamaCare's constitutionality. It will determine whether the tide of Big Government continues sweeping our freedoms before it or whether the turning of the tide has started.

This week's winner, Joshuapundit's The Supreme Court Begins Hearing Arguments On ObamaCare was an attempt at examining the key issues at stake and giving the reader a preview of how the Court might rule and why. Here's a slice:

President Obama's solicitor general, Donald B. Verrilli Jr. also said the case should move forward, saying, “This case presents issues of great moment, and the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar the court’s consideration of those issues.”

He also argued that the penalties in ObamaCare aren't a tax, which is interesting because one of his main defenses for the individual mandate is that it's legal and constitutional because - wait for it - it falls under congress's authority to levy taxes!

Justice Scalia as usual was quick to see the innate hypocrisy: “Today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you will be back and arguing that the penalty is a tax.”

The individual mandate,the vile heart of ObamaCare is scheduled for arguments tomorrow, and as Justice Scalia pointed out, that's exactly the position Verrilli is going to be in.

Where might the Court ultimately go on this?

They could certainly uphold the law as written, ruling that Congress had the power to enact this law, no matter how the public feels about it. This would endorse the continued distortion of the Commerce Clause and uphold the individual mandate as part of Congress’s power to impose taxes. The court would basically be telling the American people that elections have consequences and that the remedy is to vote out the lawmakers if you want an unpopular law repealed.

Another possibility is that the SCOTUS could find the individual mandate unconstitutional and thus overturn the entire law because the statute doesn’t have a “severability clause” — standard language the Democrats somehow forgot to include that says if one part of the law is overturned, the rest of it is still in force.To me, that would be an absolutely hilarious and appropriate finish. As then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said, "You have to read the bill to see what's in it."

In our non-Council category, the winner was an old Watcher's Council favorite, Sultan Knish with It Doesn't Matter If You're Black or White submitted by The Noisy Room. It's a refreshingly honest look at the race issues surfacing in the Treyvon Martin case. Definitely give it a look.

Here are this week’s full results.Only New Zeal was unable to vote this week, but was not affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners



Non-Council Winners



See you next week! And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter..'cause we're cool like that!
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