Welcome to your Wednesday open thread. I hope you’re having a good humpday. What’s on your mind? Share it below in our open thread.
I expect the media is going to make a big deal out of the latest health care ruling? In case you can’t tell, I’m joking – the media is only interested in what the Tea Party is interested in.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler has become the third federal judge to rule that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, and that Congress was within its constitutional authority to regulate health insurance under the Commerce Caluse.
“It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not ‘acting,’ especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice,” Kessler writes. “Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.”
Kessler, however, rejected the argument that Congress had the authority to enact the Affordable Care Act under the General Welfare Clause because Congress “did not intend [the law] to operate as a tax.”
Like the previous rulings, I’m ignoring it. This will ultimately be decided by how Anthony Kennedy’s feeling.
Remember when Bush became president and they told us not to worry about his inexperience because he was advised by very experienced, serious adults? Matt Yglesias highlights this 2003 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, calling it the greatest memo of all time:
Perhaps the week after they’ve solved Syria, Libya and Korea they could tackle world hunger, too.