Scalia ‘Benchslaps’ ObamaCare Mouthpiece: ‘Those Cases Dealt With Commerce; THIS Case Is Aimed At People Who AREN’T Participating In Commerce (people without insurance)’

You have to imagine it: the left thought and thought and thought about their ObamaCare date with the Supreme Court.  In their little feral minds they had all the witty one-liners that simply stumped the conservative judges.  Sadly for them, reality happened.  And all of their fabulous arguments turned out to be a giant, stinking load of crap which blew up in their faces the moment the justices started asking questions.

The funny thing is that most of the questions that have them so stumped and panicked were the same questions that conservatives were asking all along.  Only the left somehow never bothered to have an honest argument with us about the inherent fascism of ObamaCare.  So even though they could have listened to us and maybe actually prepared some kind of response, they were left wildly unprepared.

I’ve found that again and again in my exchanges with liberals on this blog.  It’s like I can make the same point five times and even count each time I make that same point and they just pretend I didn’t make it so they can keep living in their freaky little world of circular reasoning.

And I also found this same phenomenon to be the case when I was in seminary.  In several of my exegesis courses, students were required to choose commentaries from two separate lists – one basically conservative evangelical, and the other liberal – and write our papers specifically taking into account arguments made by both schools of thought.  What I found in every single case was that the conservative evangelicals painstakingly reproduced the arguments of their liberal counterparts and attempted to show why their own argument was the correct one over against the liberals’ arguments; whereas the liberals either entirely ignored (most of the time) or presented a dismissive straw-man of the conservative evangelical commentators.

I took a couple of courses from William Lane Craig – a brilliant scholar who became famous for his debates with top atheists.  Dr. Craig was a gracious man who would have his lunch at a table with students so he could share his time and knowledge with students who greatly valued both.  I asked Bill Craig about his debates, and he told me that he painstakingly studied up on the works of his opponents, whereas he often had the idea that they simply showed up completely ignorant of his own writings.  And he routinely mopped the floor with them.

I still remember a particular debate between Craig and Oxford chemist Peter Atkins.  In one exchange toward the end of the debate, Craig provided a statement of what a now very harried Atkins had said.  Atkins arrogantly literally said, “Those aren’t my words.  My words are much too sophisticated, much too erudite…”  And a frankly appalled Bill Craig said, “I was reading a direct quote.”  And Atkins’ jaw slammed shut.  You should also understand that Craig’s argument dealt with the numerous scientific and logical facts that demonstrated that the universe was created by an intelligent designer; Atkins’ argument centered on pure metaphysical speculation that there are myriad alternate realities and that the fact that our reality would appear to have been the product of design was merely by sheer random chance.  The entire debate was thus a remarkable turnaround in which the philosopher-theologian (Craig) relied on science and facts and the “scientist” (Atkins) relied on purely-faith-based speculation.

All of that to point out that Verelli simply didn’t have answers to questions that he should have known for a good two years were coming because it is the remarkable tendency of the left to refuse to engage in anything other than rhetoric and demagoguery.  And even the left widely recognized that Verelli was wildly unprepared to face the conservatives.

You can see the mind of the left spinning the wheel as they go from the above-mentioned panic to telling themselves that they WANT to lose the ObamaCare decision because being a bunch of Constitution-violating fascists will actually be GOOD for them in November.  Even Harry Reid is amazingly on the “Supreme-Court-striking-down-ObamaCare-would-be-good-for-Democrats” bandwagon.  Again, these are people whose souls swim in rhetoric rather than reality such that all they have is naked ideology.

Justice Scalia’s point is a commonsense repetition of Justice Kennedy’s basic question: “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  Or, can you force citizens to purchase something just so you can regulate them?

The people most under assault by this law are those who HAVEN’T purchased insurance.  The ObamaCare mandate is all about forcing people to purchase insurance just so liberals can then dictate what insurance they must purchase.

Audio: Scalia lectures Verrilli on enumerated powers
posted at 8:30 pm on March 27, 2012 by Allahpundit

The guy who uploaded this to YouTube calls it a “benchslap.” It’s loads of fun, and the point about limited powers will sound familiar. The key part comes early when Scalia jumps in to challenge Verrilli’s citation of Court precedent. Those cases dealt with commerce, he says; in this case, the legislation is aimed at people who aren’t participating in commerce, i.e. people without insurance. That’s a gut-punch to the left since, once you make that move conceptually, the Commerce Clause defense of the statute is hanging by a thread. You can follow his thinking over the rest of the clip from there. If it’s not commerce, then Congress has no power to regulate it, and if Congress has no power to regulate it, then the Tenth Amendment says this is a matter for the states. And to think, a few days ago, Democrats thought they might be able to use Scalia’s Raich opinion to swing him over to their side.

Roberts was a bit more equivocal in today’s arguments but read Philip Klein’s analysis of the rhetoric he used in his comments from the bench. There were an awful lot of phrases in there suggesting he was arguing from belief against the statute, not merely as a devil’s advocate to probe the lawyers’ arguments. Meanwhile, over at SCOTUSblog, Kevin Russell looks at Roberts’s and Alito’s questioning and wonders, “Is Kennedy the only possible fifth vote for the government?” His conclusion: Yep, pretty much. Exit question: C’mon, a Reagan appointee’s not really going to be the fifth vote for the ObamaCare mandate, is he? Good lord.

The Obama regime already appears to be preparing for defeat, given that they are already talking down the Supreme Court as a biased body, which leaves you asking: does that mean if ObamaCare WINS in court the American people should just disregard the verdict as “biased”?

During the Court’s hearing oral arguments I heard over and over again – even from Ruth Bader Ginsburg – that the “conservative” thing to do would be to keep the law.  Because only the same liberals who would utterly clueless about the questions they would be getting from conservative justices actualy understand “conservatism,” you see.  And so of course liberals have to tell us what we should think to be good conservatives the same way they constantly have to tell their own zombie-followers what to think.

The liberals’ “logic” is actually rather funny: if liberals vote like liberals it’s perfectly fine; but if conservatives vote according to conservative principles it’s “biased.”  Nobody would think the four liberals ruling as goose-step-marching liberals is biased, of course.

Meanwhile, Injustice Elena Kagan continues to sit in “judgment” of ObamaCare in spite of the fact that she chearleaded its passage and appointed the lawyer who would defend it (Hint: that’s not “biased” either).

Tags: benchslaps, insurance, mandate. liberals, Obamacare, Scalia