…and I think I’m about to start the paperwork on making it an LLC. One needs liability protection.
The Name: Riposte Publishing
The Logo:
It’s a start, anyway.
Eventually, it’s going to need its own web site, which I’ll probably create on WordPress.
From that evergreen source of real news, Ace’s sidebar. This guy is not kidding.
“The President’s health care law must be fully repealed as all of its promises have proven false. We were told it was not a tax hike, but this ruling confirms it is an unprecedented and enormous tax on the poor and middle class Americans. President Obama needs to explain why he is enacting this middle class tax hike over the objections of the American people during the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.
“We were told it would lower health costs, but health care premiums are exploding. We were told that Americans could keep their personal health plans, but millions will now lose it. We were told it would improve our economy, but it is now the largest obstacle to employers hiring new workers.
“This government takeover of health care remains as destructive, unsustainable, and unconstitutional as it was the day it was passed, unread, by a since-fired congressional majority. Now as then, our first step toward real health care reform and economic renewal remains Obamacare’s full repeal, down to the last letter and punctuation mark.
“I urge every governor to stop implementing the health care exchanges that would help implement the harmful effects of this misguided law. Americans have loudly rejected this federal takeover of health care, and governors should join with the people and reject its implementation.”
Game on.
Don’t like the law? Just re-write it!
The dissent acknowledges that if an ambiguous law can be read in a way that renders it constitutional, it should be. It distinguishes, though, between construing a law charitably and rewriting it. The latter is what Chief Justice John Roberts has done. If Roberts believes that this tactic avoids damage to the Constitution because it does not stretch the Commerce Clause to justify a mandate, he is mistaken. The Constitution does not give the Court the power to rewrite statutes, and Roberts and his colleagues have therefore done violence to it. If the law has been rendered less constitutionally obnoxious, the Court has rendered itself more so. Chief Justice Roberts cannot justly take pride in this legacy.
It’s tempting to believe that some kind of political pressure brought about this inane ruling. But we need to face the reality that the court has two swing votes now.
On the other hand, he did strike down the Commerce Clause ruling.
Protein Wisdom was right, and we were wrong. Roberts has surrendered to Leviathan, and given us a ruling that makes no sense on a law that makes no sense.
The AFA (ObamaCare) cannot be justified under the commerce clause, but can be justified as a tax. The Administration explicitly said it was not a tax, but the Supreme Court now says that it is.
Also, the Medicaid expansion got limited, but not thrown out. Which means that the federal government can offer states Medicaid cash, but can’t penalize states for not participating in it. Whatever that might mean.
For all intents and purposes, we are back to the Warren Court, under which Caeser could do whatever he damn well pleased, and the Court took it upon itself to re-write the law and lay it down upon any puddle in Caeser’s path.
Justice Kennedy’s dissent (yeah, you read that right. Reagan’s crappy post-bork justice got this right, and Bush’s super-conservative Prince of Judicial Restraint got it wrong. Nice job, George), downloaded from Business Insider:
The case is easy and straightforward, however, in another respect. What is absolutely clear, affirmed by thetext of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendmentratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon thesovereign States. Whatever may be the conceptual limitsupon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to taxand spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.
Exactly. And in case you were wondering, this is what the word regulate (as in “regulate interstate commerce”) means:
In Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 196 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall wrote that the power to regulate commerce is the power “to prescribe the rule by whichcommerce is to be governed.” That understanding is con- sistent with the original meaning of “regulate” at the time of the Constitution’s ratification, when “to regulate” meant“[t]o adjust by rule, method or established mode,” 2 N.Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828); “[t]o adjust by rule or method,” 2 S. Johnson,A Dictionary of the English Language (7th ed. 1785); “[t]oadjust, to direct according to rule,” 2 J. Ash, New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775); “toput in order, set to rights, govern or keep in order,” T.Dyche & W. Pardon, A New General English Dictionary (16th ed. 1777).1 It can mean to direct the manner of something but not to direct that something come into being. There is no instance in which this Court or Congress (or anyone else, to our knowledge) has used “regulate”in that peculiar fashion. If the word bore that meaning, Congress’ authority “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 14, would have made superfluous the later provision for authority “[t]o raise and supportArmies,” id., §8, cl. 12, and “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy,” id., §8, cl. 13.
We do not doubt that the buying and selling of health insurance contracts is commerce generally subject to federal regulation. But when Congress provides that (nearly) all citizens must buy an insurance contract, it goes beyond “adjust[ing] by rule or method,” Johnson, supra, or “direct[ing] according to rule,” Ash, supra; it directs the creation of commerce.
A society in which you cannot refrain from buying something is not a free society.
It’s heeeeeere….
I have ambitions beyond this blog, and one of these is to write (another is to start my own Cramps tribute band). I’ve been trying to write since I was 14, and I’ve always been frustrated at the sheer impossibility of making a living at it. The competition daunts the amateur: even if somebody at some house likes your book, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever see it in a book store; and even if it is, you may never turn a profit on it. You’re surrounded by people who know more than you do and who have control of your work: a lamb amid lions.
The hell with all of that.
So I’m putting together the piece of publishing myself (and possibly anyone else I happen to like). With the advent of the Kindle and Nook, e-publishing has gained a good bit of respectability. Sure, marketing is always going to be a hassle, but that’s true in any case. I’ve got scads of stories to tell, and I’m going to start telling them. If people like them, cool. If not, I’m going to keep going. Sooner or later, someting’s bound to stick.
Check this space for further details.
This is blowing up all over, but Patterico has the key detail:
I just got off the phone with Aaron and he and his wife are a little shaken up but OK. The officers had machine guns but did not point them at Aaron. They were quickly able to determine it was a hoax.
At some point, the SWAT teams are going to start taking in mind the possibility that they’re being played. So the likelihood of anybody being anything other than shaken up by a SWAT-ting diminishes with every SWAT.
Sure, there’s the sense of being terrorized. But has anyone SWAT-ed atcually, you know, stopped as a result? Patterico hasn’t stopped. Why would Aaron Walker.
This sounds like an insidiously clever way of scaring a political opponent. Unfortunately it’s based on a lie. Lies have this habit of getting uncovered.
No Fat Chicks were actually targeted.
Long weekend, long day, blah, whatever.
We’re all waiting for the Supremes to hand down their ObamaCare verdict anyway.
Jeff Goldstein describes the new racial show trials.
In a campaign reminiscent of the Soviet show-trials of the late 1930′s, where the “enemies of the People” publicly confessed their “crimes” against the Soviet, The University of Minnesota – Duluth (UMD) is actually sponsoring a campaign, declaring “whites” the enemy of the people and showing these enemies confessing their crimes of “white privilege”
When the Inquistion came to town, the safest bet was to confess you heresy in the thirty day grace period. Get it out of the way. Then you could denounce others without fear of reprisal.
White Privilege: Actual Picture
It’s called S.A.L.V.E., or Shameless Acts of Literary Vandalism and Entertainment.
It’s available on Kindle, or in hard copy form on CreateSpace.
Buy most buyingly.
