aarjohn (2 months ago)     

Senator Reed does not understand that the Court determined that conscription (the draft) was based on common law, and therefore acceptable. The court issues findings like this regularly. Mandadating a person to buy health insurance is not based in common law, it is a very progressive concept.

adayoff (4 months ago)     

When social security was enacted in the 1930s, similar challenges to its constitutionality were considered by the US Supreme Court. At that time, the Court voted 7-2 in support of the government's right. I did not look up the constitutional challenges to Medicare, but I assume that the courts followed the Social Security cases. In the 1937 cases, the court said that the history of the country up to that time was to accept Hamilton's view, as opposed to Madison's that the Constitution did allow for these taxing federal taxing mandates. It is an original ambiguity of the Constitution, but is what the Courts now call "well settled law".

Ron B (4 months ago)     

Yes, the Constitution does give the congress the right to raise an army; no one (almost) argues with clearly stated law. How does the senator jump from explicit law to, say, everybody must buy Kleenex in case you sneeze, or, as with cap and trade, you must purchase mercury laden light bulbs because it helps those cuddly Polar Bears and will stop Greenland melting? Are these politicians nuts? Rom B