These Five People Just Saved Millions Of Americans By Protecting Health Care

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Supreme Court Health Care Decision: Individual Mandate Survives

HuffPost

By- Mike Sacks

Posted: 06/28/2012 10:10 am Updated: 06/28/2012 11:16 am

WASHINGTON — The individual health insurance mandate is constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, upholding the central provision of President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act.

The controlling opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the mandate as a tax, although concluded it was not valid as an exercise of Congress’ commerce clause power. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined in the outcome.

The decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius comes as something of a surprise after the generally hostile reception the law received during the six hours of oral arguments held over three days in March. But by siding with the court’s four Democratic appointees, Chief Justice Roberts avoided the delegitimizing taint of politics that surrounds a party-line vote while passing Obamacare’s fate back to the elected branches. GOP candidates and incumbents will surely spend the rest of the 2012 campaign season running against the Supreme Court and for repeal of the law.

Five justices concluded that the mandate, which requires virtually all Americans to obtain minimum health insurance coverage or pay a penalty, falls within Congress’ power under the Constitution to “lay and collect taxes.”

“The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause,” Roberts wrote. “That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax.”

Ginsburg, writing separately for the four liberals, said they would have upheld the mandate under the commerce clause too. “Unlike the market for almost any other product or service, the market for medical care is one in which all individuals inevitably participate,” she wrote. “Virtually every person residing in the United States, sooner or later, will visit a doctor or other health care professional.”

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined in a dissent.

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Romney: Strike Down Of Health Care Law Would Be ‘Right Thing’

CNN Politics

Political Ticker

June 11th, 2012

08:55 PM ET

Posted by  CNN’s Ashley Killough

(CNN) – Mitt Romney on Monday said he hopes the Supreme Court does the “right thing” and overturns President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care reform.

“Gosh I hope they do the right thing and turn this thing down,” Romney told donors in Atlanta, according to pool reports. “And say it’s unconstitutional because it is.” – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker

– Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November.

This month, the high court is expected to announce its decision on the legality of the Affordable Care Act, a measure passed by Congressional Democrats and signed into law by Obama in 2010.

While Romney has not recently made comments about the decision, he has long maintained he would overturn the law through an executive order in his first day in office.

“This piece of legislation is bad policy, it’s bad for our health care, and I can tell you if I’m president I’m going to stop it in its tracks on day one,” he said Monday.

Democrats have frequently targeted Romney over the health care issue by pointing to a similar plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts in 2006. In his defense, Romney says the plan was tailor-made for Massachusetts residents and he would oppose a federal mandate.

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Supreme Court To Revisit Affirmative Action In University Of Texas Case

Posted: 02/21/12 10:37 AM ET  |  Updated: 02/21/12 04:27 PM ET

Huff Post  By- Mike Sacks

WASHINGTON — Affirmative action is heading back to the Supreme Court, and this time its prospects for survival are poorer than ever.

The Court announced on Tuesday that it has agreed to hear a challenge to the University of Texas’ affirmative action program, which is used in sorting through applications after the automatic admission of all in-state applicants who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class.

The state’s top 10 percent law was passed as a race-neutral way of facilitating diversity on campus after a federal appeals court in 1996 banned affirmative action in Texas’ public universities. Then in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court — in a majority opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for herself and the Court’s four liberals — approved of certain types of race-conscious admissions practices in higher education for the purpose of achieving a diverse student body. In response, the University of Texas reinstated affirmative action, this time to assess applicants who would not be automatically admitted under the top 10 percent law.

Abigail Noel Fisher was one such student. In Fisher v. University of Texas, she claims that she was unconstitutionally denied admission because she is white. Texas argues that the use of race in its admissions process is indistinguishable from the University of Michigan Law School practices that the Supreme Court approved in 2003.

Unfortunately for Texas, that argument may no longer hold sway at the high court. Justice Samuel Alito, a reliable conservative vote, has since replaced O’Connor, a notable swing vote. In 2007, Alito joined with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas to strike down affirmative action programs in public high schools in an opinion that concluded, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy voted with the majority but refused to join that one sentence in 2007, and will likely spoil the conservative bloc’s effort to end affirmative action once and for all this time. That does not mean, however, that Kennedy will uphold Texas’ race-based policy. Rather, he may use his crucial fifth vote to keep affirmative action constitutional in theory, but almost impossible to pursue in practice — a position he staked out in his dissent from O’Connor’s 2003 opinion.

Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself, likely because of her participation in the early stages of the case when she served as U.S. solicitor general.

Fisher v. University of Texas could be argued (but not decided) in the fall, just in time to insert its racially charged issues into the tail end of the presidential election.

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Citizens United: A Tsunami of Secret Corporate Campaign Cash is Drowning Our Democracy

 

(Photo: JasonUnbound / Flickr)

Truthout

Saturday 21 January 2012

by: Isaiah J. Poole , Campaign for America’s Future | News Analysis

Today is the two-year anniversary of the infamous Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

Since then, our democracy has been drowning in a tsunami of corporate special interest money. Our government is under the thumb of the Koch brothers and other corporate moguls instead of the hands of the people.

And citizens are uniting in their disgust. A poll released Thursday by Democracy Corps and the Public Campaign Action Fund, an organization that is rallying to counter the Citizens United ruling, said, “Americans across all parties oppose the ruling; among all voters, 62 percent oppose the decision and nearly half (46 percent) strongly oppose it.

More than half of all voters say they would support a constitutional amendment to reverse the opinion.”

Further, “Eight in ten voters say there is too much big money spent on political campaigns and elections today and that campaign contributions and spending should be limited.” And the candidates who stand on the side of reining in corporate efforts to buy our political system will get more favor from voters than those who stand with the status quo.

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Pawlenty Defends Unlimited Campaign Donations As Citizens United Celebrates Two-Year Anniversary

Think Progress-  By Scott Keyes and Travis Waldron  on Jan 21, 2012 at 12:10 pm

Two years ago today, the Supreme Court struck down longstanding restrictions on corporate money in American elections, paving the way for super PACs and major third party spending.

Since January 21, 2009, the Citizens United case has had a major effect on money in politics. Already in this year’s Republican presidential primary, we’ve seen a number of freespending super PACs play a major role in the race, including the pro-Mitt Romney Restore Our Future PAC, financed in large part by hedge fund billionaire John Paulson, and the pro-Newt Gingrich Winning Our Future, for whom casino mogul Sheldon Adelson recently cut a $5 million check. In fact, the total amount of money spent by outside groups thus far has outpaced spending by the campaigns themselves.

Despite the proliferation of super PACs and massive uptick in outside spending, former Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty still sees our campaign finance laws as too restrictive.

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Supreme Court: Gun Rights Apply Locally & Expands Nationwide

Supreme Court voids Chicago handgun ban, expands gun rights nationwide

By Raw Story
Monday, June 28th, 2010 — 10:18 am

Group: ‘People will die because of this decision’

Gun owners upset about states “trampling on their rights” have reason to cheer Monday.

“In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois’ 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons,” CNN reports.

The Associated Press adds, “The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution’s “right to keep and bear arms” applies nationwide as a restraint on the ability of the federal, state and local governments to substantially limit its reach.”

“The justices on Monday cast doubt on a Chicago area handgun ban, but also signaled in their 5-4 decision that less severe restrictions could survive legal challenges,” the AP article continues.

The ruling, written by Justice Samuel Alito, decided that the 2nd Amendment “applies equally to the federal government and the states.”

The AP adds, “The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and the four liberals, opposed.”

Liberal anti-gun groups are already fuming. Washington, DC’s Violence Policy Center Legislative Director Kristen Rand issued the following statement to RAW STORY:

“People will die because of this decision. It is a victory only for the gun lobby and America’s fading firearms industry. The inevitable tide of frivolous pro-gun litigation destined to follow will force cities, counties, and states to expend scarce resources to defend longstanding, effective public safety laws. The gun lobby and gunmakers are seeking nothing less than the complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws in a cynical effort to try and stem the long-term drop in gun ownership and save the dwindling gun industry. The 30,000 lives claimed annually by gun violence and the families destroyed in the wake of mass shootings and murder-suicides mean little to the gun lobby and the firearm manufacturers it protects.

“It is our hope that Chicago’s citizens will follow the lead of the residents of the District of Columbia–who were stripped of their handgun ban in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. In the two years since that decision, only 900 firearms have been registered in the District that otherwise could not have been registered before the Heller ruling. The citizens of DC reject the wrong-headed notion that more guns make us safer. We know the facts prove the opposite and that areas of the country with the highest concentration of gun ownership also have the highest rates of gun death. We urge Chicago residents to consider these indisputable facts before considering bringing a handgun into their homes–an act that could well prove fatal to themselves or a loved one.”

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