The “hugest” could be considered the election of a Republican Tea Partier as governor of Kentucky.

Matt Bevin, a Republican political novice, wealthy Louisville businessman and Tea Party favorite, was elected Kentucky’s next governor on Tuesday and swept fellow Republicans into statewide office with him. The stunning victory heralds a new era in a state where Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four of the last 44 years.

In beating his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, by almost nine percentage points, Mr. Bevin, 48, shocked people in his own party, who believed that the climate in Kentucky was ripe for a Republican but feared that Mr. Bevin, a charismatic conservative with a go-it-alone style, was too far out of the mainstream and too inexperienced to win.

A few things about this. First, I have noted before that when Democrats get to run places like the big cities of Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore for decades, with few to no Republicans in that time, and when we see these cities crumbling when they have this free hand, it’s hard to understand why the voters in those cities keep electing folks from the same party over and over. It’s like they think that the same guys who got them into this hole can now dig them out of it using the same shovels. I’m hoping that this signals a change in the voters of Kentucky; that they’ve finally said, “Enough is enough.”

Bevin, as noted above in the NY Times article, was a Tea-Party-type. The Republican establishment was concerned that he was too conservative, or “too far out of the mainstream” to win. It appears that perhaps the “mainstream” isn’t necessarily where those pundits think it is. It may be running more to the political Right.

How far to the Right? This is one of the major issues Bevin ran on:

Mr. Obama’s health care law was an especially contentious issue in the race, and some see the Bevin victory as a rebuke to Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, who expanded Medicaid under the measure. An estimated 420,000 Kentuckians, nearly 10 percent of the state’s population, now have coverage as a result. Mr. Bevin, a fierce opponent of the health care law, at first said he would reverse it, but has since softened his position and said he would stop enrolling new people but would not take coverage from those who had it.

And this position even won over some reliable Democratic voters.

Michelle Zimmerman, a 43-year-old nurse, said she voted Democratic in the last two governor’s races but had voted for Mr. Bevin this time; she found his views more in keeping with her values. “I’m pretty conservative,” she said. One factor in her decision: She and her husband say they can no longer afford their health insurance because the premiums have gone up since the Affordable Care Act went into effect.

Broken promises tend to do that. ObamaCare is not really an issue Democrats can afford to run on.

And this is another reason I’m always very leery of polls, in spite of the statistical analysis that they can back up their numbers with. In this case, Bevin was behind in every poll right up until the end. And then he won by 8 percentage points. Keep that in mind as you see the endless stream of polling data for the 2016 Presidential election.

One more thing about the Kentucky election is that Bevin’s lieutenant governor running-mate, Jenean Hampton, is now the first African American elected to statewide office ever in the state’s history. And she’s a Republican. Just sayin’.

In other results, the Sheriff of San Francisco, Ross Mirkarimi, was defeated. This news report shows that his defeat probably came as the result of a number of incidents of incompetence, not the least of which was this:

Mirkarimi was the subject of national criticism after Mexican illegal immigrant Francisco Sanchez allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old Kate Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront July 1. Sanchez had been released from Mirkarimi’s jail in March even though federal immigration officials had requested he be detained for possible deportation.

For the 6th time. It may not have been the “sanctuary city” issue that removed him, but at least he won’t be there to continue the lawlessness. Ignoring federal law is not on any city sheriff’s list of duties.

In Ohio, voters shot down a proposal to legalize medical and recreational marijuana 65% to 35%. This had two strikes against it, in my mind. By including recreational use, it got more No votes. I’m betting that Ohioans understand the need for medial marijuana, but don’t want to swell the ranks of the pot-heads. In Georgia, our legislature passed a medical marijuana bill last session that had wide support. Also, there was this.

Failure of the proposed state constitutional amendment followed an expensive campaign, a legal fight over its ballot wording, an investigation into petition signatures — and, predominantly, a counter campaign against a network of 10 exclusive growing sites it would have created.

A state-created oligopoly is generally not a good thing. I think  that if you get rid of those two things, it, too, passes by a wide margin.

In Houston, a measure was defeated (quite soundly; two-to-one) that would … well, I’ll let Erick Erickson describe it.

In Houston, TX, perverts and the mentally ill worked together with the gay rights lobby to let men use women’s bathrooms. They called anyone who disagreed with them “bigots.” They harassed preachers. The Mayor of Houston, an aggressive gay rights activist, demanded preachers’ hand over their sermons.

Tonight, the people of Houston fought back and rejected the attempt to allow perverts, the mentally ill, liars, and others who want to get in to opposite sex bathrooms.

Christians and common sense won. Perverts, the mentally ill, and the gay rights mob lost.

It was billed by its supporters to be more about equal rights, but opponents, by zeroing in on one of the results of this measure, showed that what is considered a “right” by liberals has expanded to the absurd. Houston recognized that.

In Virginia, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and the state’s governor got something of a slap in the face.

Republicans held onto the Virginia Senate in fiercely contested elections Tuesday, leaving Gov. Terry McAuliffe without legislative leverage or political momentum as he works to deliver Virginia for his friend and ally Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016.

The outcome was a blunt rebuke to McAuliffe (D), who had barnstormed the state with 24 events over the past four days and who portrayed the elections as a make-or-break moment for his progressive agenda.

And some moderate Republicans were replaced by more conservative ones, as well.

Overall, a good night for Republicans and conservatives. Erick Erickson summed it up this way.

Across the country last night, voters rejected not just Barack Obama’s party, but also his party’s ideology. The voters rejected candidates who advocated for gun-control, they rejected candidates who sought the expansion of Obamacare, they rejected the Democrats’ environmental policies, and they rejected the secularist, gay-rights agenda. The Republican Party, at one time, was allegedly a party that could not win in New England. Now, Republicans control 68 of 98 partisan state legislative chambers in the United States, 33 of 50 Governor’s Mansions, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate.

But he also finds that the Republican party still doesn’t seem to get the lesson.

The only thing more amazing than the sweeping scope of Republican wins and the rejection of the left’s agenda is that Republicans in Congress continue to cave to Barack Obama and refuse to use their constitutional powers to restrain him.

Conservatives should be feeling good about this. I think it may show, however, that the national establishment Republican party isn’t really all that conservative. It needs to be if it is to properly reflect it’s constituents, and indeed most of the country.

What a minute, what? Yup, you heard right. OK, well then, is that progress? In one way, it certainly is, though the federal EEOC is really late to this party. Hobby Lobby, Kim Davis, and various small businesses could have really used help over the past few years, but it’s nice that the federal government is finally waking up. Can we expect this same action in the future?

Well, I guess it all depends. I would like to point out that all these victims were Christians, except the truck drivers that got federal help and the windfall. In a move that makes the feds look like their picking and choosing which religions get protection and which don’t, they were Muslims. Now, this is just one situation, but given all the other opportunities for the feds to help Christians which they passed on, it really does look like they’re playing favorites, which the Constitution forbids.

In a statement, the EEOC said, “We are proud to support the rights of workers to equal treatment in the workplace without having to sacrifice their religious beliefs or practices. It’s fundamental to the American principles of religious freedom and tolerance.” Apparently, as long as you’re not Christian.

Remember this during the next brouhaha about religious freedom. Watch how this administration acts. For those of you who value religious freedom, and that should be all of you, their actions should let you know what they think of the First Amendment.

I’m actually happy for those Muslim truck drivers. They should have gotten a religious exemption. And this is good news for religious freedom in general, because now anyone can point to their case as a precedent. My fear, however, is that this will go down the memory hole the next time a Christian is on the chopping block.

You’re the loan officer. What do you do? The guy’s telling you he needs the money to eat and to pay his other bills. But he didn’t change his free-spending ways like he promised and now he’s in a bind again. Is it prudent to give more cash to a guy who can’t change his spending habits, and can’t repay what you’ve already given him?

No, it’s not. That’s not being heartless; that’s just being a good steward of the bank’s money. And if you keep giving this guy money, and he doesn’t repay it, what about the depositors who’s money it is that you’re handing out? When they need their money, where will it be?

The guy I’m talking about is the country of Greece. And just like Margaret Thatcher’s description, their socialism was working great, right up until they ran out of other people’s money. You can only soak the rich for so long, and so they went to the European and international banks for bailouts. And more bailouts. But each time, though they promised to mend their free-spending, socialist ways, they didn’t and wound up in the same situation.

There are 2 major problems that this situation has highlighted. First, the European Union has certainly caused state sovereignty to seep out of the individual countries, such that it’s understandable why citizens of Greece would be insisting that the EU be held at least partially responsible. If Greece must bow to the EU on some matters, the EU must be willing to help. With great power-grabs come great responsibility.

But the other major problem is one that our own country needs to come to terms with. The Greek government got in over its head with promises it made to various groups. Welfare, pension, and other government payments got to the point where merely servicing those was drowning the country in debt. They made the promises, so they had to keep them. And when the government over-promised, the people voted in politicians who would give them more stuff, until the government had to tax and tax, and borrow and borrow, to keep up. And all that taxing and borrowing reduces economic growth and devalues the currency. So more taxing and more borrowing, and the death spiral continues.

So then, who should pay for the bad choices of the Greek people? Should we allow the Greeks to default on their obligations, and then have the German and the French people have to bail out their banks? How in the world is that fair? “But what about the Greek people?”, those on the Left were asking when those Greek people voted to stiff their creditors. “Why should they be punished for the actions of their government?” Well, because they voted for the guy who squandered the money and walked into the bank to ask for more. And if the Greeks are let off the hook, there are other European countries looking to try the same ploy. I’m looking at you, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The problem is that the Greeks poked a big hole in their own boat, and no amount of bailing by themselves will keep them afloat. More bailers, if you will, would help, and the EU is going to continue to help in the bailing, but the Greeks need to agree to quit making the hole bigger, and take steps to plug it. That’s going to take some hard choices on their part, but that’s the problem with socialism. Once you get used to the idea of free money and benefits, you get to thinking that they are your “right”. Going back to fiscal responsibility is a much harder road to travel.

The Greeks are learning that lesson. Well, I hope they are. I’m not so sure after they voted to default on their loans. I also hope that we’ll learn it, too. But I begin to wonder about my fellow countrymen when I see how popular presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is, who is an avowed socialist. “Ignore the News, Vote for Sanders!”

Two years to the day later, those same liberals overrode those immensely important marriage laws in 14 states and proclaimed same-sex marriage from the federal bench. And it once again proves something I’ve said on this podcast so many times; for the Left, it is all about politics. Constitutional matters, federalism, and some supposed regard for the rule of law, all of it, take a back seat in order to get their political agenda passed. The individual state’s ability to define what marriage is, is of central relevance, right up until it isn’t.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his dissent, noted this, "This court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.” Right, that’s what states were allowed to determine on their own, and in fact it was going that way with, as I said, only 14 states left holding on to traditional marriage.

I will say, as an aside, that this thought by Roberts – that the court is not a legislature – was rather ironic, given his previous rewriting of ObamaCare. It’s like two, two, two Supreme Court chief justices in one!

Let me ask you this; which would have been better? Should the Court have allowed same-sex marriage to work its way through the culture, gaining support as it had been doing, or do what it did and just impose it by judicial fiat? Before you answer, consider how well that worked for abortion. It is still a hard fought battle in the culture, and in the state legislatures as well. Rather than let it organically happen democratically, abortion was imposed, and the backlash has been with us ever since. I oppose abortion, and I also oppose a government that will override me and my state’s rights to govern ourselves. I oppose same-sex marriage, but again, the Court’s liberals (and if I may, it seems that liberals in general) have no problem holding state law immensely important one day, and the next day overruling them, so long as their political agenda is served. As I mentioned in the previous episode, the process is just as important as the outcome, and the process, both here and with the ObamaCare ruling, are deeply flawed and set a bad precedent for future courts to reinterpret words, and override the will of the people.

There have been many predictions about what comes next. Some, on the pages of TIME magazine, are already pushing polygamy. That effort has been going on for years, but it got a boost with this ruling. There are those already calling for the abolishing of tax exempt status for religious institutions – churches and religious schools – that won’t teach the liberal orthodoxy about same-sex marriage or won’t perform them. These are likely coming down the road. But, as Erick Erickson noted, the first thing to come will be … silence. The day of the ruling, a newspaper in Pennsylvania said they wouldn’t print letters to the editor on the topic anymore. I have a friend who, when asked what the Bible says about homosexuality, gave a straight answer (so to speak) and was immediately pounced on for being bigoted and hateful. You don’t have to thump anyone with a Bible anymore; it just has to be in the room for someone to claim you’re evil.

So silence will fall, but just because you don’t hear a particular opinion anymore doesn’t mean it’s not there. However, if a baker or a photographer can be put out of business for not participating in a same-sex wedding, how much more of a target are those churches that won’t perform them for what 5 justices have now deemed is a “fundamental right”?

With the ObamaCare and the same-sex marriage rulings, the court has done two things. It has taken power away from you at both the federal and state level.

If you ever complained that Washington, DC was unresponsive to the needs of the people, the ObamaCare ruling should bother you, at the very least. That is, unless you’re celebrating the topic of the ruling, then the process is likely nothing you’re concerned about. I’ve seen it in my Facebook feed. However, from this day forward, federal agencies like the IRS, and all the way up to the President, don’t have to restrain themselves to the actual wording of the laws Congress passes. ObamaCare said you got subsidies through exchanges established by the states, but an unelected federal agency changed that. Your representatives, and by extension you, have lost more influence. The government can do what it wants.

And if you ever complained that your state government was unresponsive to the needs of the people, the same-sex marriage ruling should bother you, too. But again, the winners are too busy celebrating to see how this, too, has erased their influence and yours at the state level. It just takes 5 Supreme Court justices to invalidate anything a state does. Vote however you want, call your state representative as much as you want, but in the end, a majority of 9 unelected justices get the final say for over 320 million people. One man, one vote, indeed.

If you celebrate these rulings, and if you’ve ever been a proponent of power to the people, or you’ve ever put forth the idea that every vote should count, you either have not been paying attention, or have no idea at all what those phrases even mean. At least, I’d really hope that this can all be explained by ignorance and apathy, because the alternative is worse; willful misuse of the founding principles of this country, and that will bring us down faster than any law you can pass.

The Left loves the platitude “Government is just another name for the things we choose to do together.” Of course, by the phrase “choose to do together”, they mean “use a panel of 9 lawyers to force everyone to do what they want”. Platitudes are useful in the meantime, but in the end, for the Left, it’s all about politics.

What the law said was that the IRS would administer those subsidies through the exchanges “established by the states”. However, what the IRS did was to funnel them through state and federal exchanges, which is not what the law, y’know, actually said. They essentially reinterpreted the law to mean that exchanges not established by the states qualified as exchanges established by the states.

Some states said, no, that’s an unconstitutional reading of the law. There are other places in the law where it specifically refers to the states and the federal government combines, but it does not here. That is true. Here’s something else painfully true; this particular wording was exactly what was meant when the law was written.

How do we know this? Jonathan Gruber, the well-paid architect of the law itself, told us so. It was a classic carrot-and-stick approach. The carrot was billions in tax dollars. The stick was that if you didn’t set up a state exchange, you wouldn’t get any of it. There a link in the show notes to a video explaining all this and him saying, “I hope that that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges.”

This was not a case of trying to read a crystal ball and discover the intent. This was not trying to reach into the minds and writings of the founding fathers and trying to glean what they meant on some obscure constitutional point. You can’t search YouTube to find out what Washington and Jefferson were thinking, But Gruber is all over the Internet, on and off the record.

This was a game of chicken. Would the states blink first, and all setup exchanges, or would the feds blink and change the law. As it turned out, the fed’s blinked, but instead of changing the law, they just did what they wanted, and the IRS (which, last I checked, was not part of the legislative branch of the government) ruled that it would provide subsidies through the federal exchange as well.

And Chief Justice John Roberts and his cohort said, “Eh, seems legit.” OK, the ruling was a bit longer than that – 21 pages longer – but in the end that’s what they did. They claimed that if the subsidies were stopped it would ruin the implementation of ObamaCare, ignoring completely that that was the point all along.

Justice Scalia, writing in his typically entertaining dissent (which is basically the high point of this whole ruling), said that if an exchange not established by a state is actually an exchange established by a state, then words have no meaning. Truer words, that do have meaning, have never been spoken.

I don’t think those who are celebrating and praising this ruling have any idea at all what it could mean in the future for the power government has over us. And by “those who are celebrating”, I mean, generally, Democrats. The process, however fatally flawed and upside down it is, doesn’t matter as long as they get what they want. It’s always about politics.

From this point on, federal government agencies can now interpret the law any way they please. Really. Restrictions that were in place in the ObamaCare law were cheerfully ignored in furtherance of a political agenda, and the Supreme Court gave them 6 thumbs up. George Will, writing at the Washington Post, put it this way.

The most durable damage from Thursday’s decision is not the perpetuation of the ACA, which can be undone by what created it — legislative action. The paramount injury is the court’s embrace of a duty to ratify and even facilitate lawless discretion exercised by administrative agencies and the executive branch generally.

Theprocess has been butchered by this ruling. Sure, ObamaCare proponents got what they wanted, but at a price to their own power as a people that I’m sure they are blissfully unaware of. The political process of a government restrained by law, influenced by the people, which has been slowly eroding anyway, just did a nose dive.

You say lobbyists have too much power? I’d agree, because they just had to go to one place – Congress – to spend their dollars budgeted for graft. Now, they can bypass the middleman and go straight to the IRS or any other federal agency and bribe an unelected bureaucrat. And that bureaucrat doesn’t have a campaign coffer he or she needs to keep funded, so it’ll be cheaper for the lobbyist. It’s a win-win! But remember, you don’t figure into either of those two wins.

Some folks, when I bring this up, claim I’m just mad because my side lost. Well, I don’t deny that I don’t like the outcome of the ruling, but even beyond that, and looming larger, is the power grab I see in DC. Unfortunately, all I get in dissent is, “Blah blah blah. Too bad. You lost. I don’t care.” Yes, literally, those words.

States have been doing this ever since a Supreme Court decision said that the federal RFRA didn’t apply to the states. Most of the states that have one use language identical to the one Clinton signed. But while religious freedom used to be supported by Democrats, the rise of a particular protected class (and reliable Democratic voting bloc) changed all that; homosexuals. Once again, as we have seen so many times, politics trumps everything else for the Left, even, apparently, the Bill of Rights.

The fear being stoked is that this will allow Christian businesses to turn away gays just for being gay. Here are a couple of articles that are lists of frequently asked questions about the Indiana RFRA, and they explain, no, that sort of discrimination is not protected. If a Christian denies service to someone simply because they are gay, on the grounds that it’s a sin according to Christian doctrine, you would have a tough time proving those religious grounds in court. According to Christianity, we are all sinners. None of us are perfect. So that business owner would have to deny service to everyone, including him- or herself.

Participation, one way or another, in a same-sex marriage ceremony has been the typical cause of contention. And all of the examples that I’ve seen that have been taken to court are regarding business owners that would bake cakes, take pictures, or arrange flowers for a gay customer for any purpose other than a same-sex wedding ceremony. This is most definitely not discrimination against gays because they’re gay. It is, however, a religious objection to a ceremony that the business owner does not wish to participate in.

Let’s be clear. The purpose of these laws based on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act is simple. When you go to court, you can claim freedom of speech in your defense. You might not win, but it is something that you can claim and upon which you can make a case, and it must be taken into consideration. All RFRA does is ensure that you can claim freedom of religion, either individually or as a “closely-held corporation”, as the Supreme Court has put it. (If you believe corporations aren’t part of that freedom of religion, I wonder how you feel about corporations like the NY Times and CNN having freedom of speech.)

RFRA allows a person’s free exercise of religion to be “substantially burdened” by a law only if the law furthers a “compelling governmental interest”, and in the “least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” It does not invalidate all of Indiana’s other ordinances about discrimination based on sexual orientation. You don’t get to yell, “RFRA!”, and get magically exempted from them. This is not open season on anyone; gay, Jew, woman, what have you. And the best proof of that is that none of the states or the federal government, for almost a quarter of a century, have gone down anything like a slippery slope. All opponents of Indiana’s RFRA have are hypotheticals that have failed to materialize since 1993. The only discrimination so far has been against Christian business owners who would rather not participate in a specific ceremony, or in the instance of the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, not contribute to what they considered the taking of a life. This is not about gays, it’s about marriage. It’s not about women, it’s about abortion. It’s about religion, and the free exercise thereof, in spite of the efforts of celebrities like Apple’s Tim Cook, or actor Ashton Kutchner, to deflect blame and paint this as bigotry against individuals. It is denying a First Amendment protection that has been with us since the founding.

And I know there are Christians who would bake a cake or take pictures of a same-sex wedding ceremony. If they are OK with that, more power to them. There are different ways to make a moral statement. All I’m saying is that the government doesn’t get to decide how I act out my morality. They may decide that my morals don’t line up with community standards, but folks in Indiana can at least make the case that they otherwise could not, and the same case they could make today at the federal level.

President Bill Clinton, speaking at the 1993 RFRA signing, and about the Founding Fathers, said this, “And one of the reasons they worked so hard to get the first amendment into the Bill of Rights at the head of the class is that they well understood what could happen to this country, how both religion and Government could be perverted if there were not some space created and some protection provided. They knew that religion helps to give our people the character without which a democracy cannot survive.” Today, his party is now trying to sacrifice those protections on the altar of politics. I love the irony of that analogy, but I fear that they don’t fully understand the god they’re now serving.

Being argued today at the high court is King v Burwell, a lawsuit against ObamaCare (also known in some circles as the Affordable Care Act). This is a set of questions and answers that I imagine many people have about this.

Q: What is this case all about?

A: The crux of the issue is a 4-word phrase inside the massive law; “established by the States”. The subsidies supplied by the IRS, according to the text of the law, were to only go to those who applied for insurance via exchanges “established by the States”. If they used the federal exchange (HealthCare.gov), that is not “established by the States” so the subsidies wouldn’t apply.

That’s according to the plain language of the law, and according to Jonathan Gruber, a major influence in the creation of the law.

What happened was that the IRS gave out subsidies to those without state exchanges anyway. The lawsuit is saying that the government broke the law in doing so.

Q: What case is the government making?

A: That the rest of the law, taken as a whole, makes it clear that withholding subsidies from those who didn’t get their insurance via exchanges “established by the States” was not the intent.

Q: Does it actually say in the law somewhere, specifically, that those people should get subsidies?

A: Not that I’ve read. In fact, those articles I’ve seen that have written in defense of the subsidies (like this article by Robert Schlesinger in USA Today) don’t cite any other text that would buttress that opinion. Rather, they argue about the results if the subsidies were overturned.

To me, that sounds like they’re arguing that a law should say what the implementers want it to say, regardless of what the law itself says. That’s a precedent I don’t think we want to create. For example, if a Republican President vetoes legislation, and a Democratic Congress overrides that veto, is the President free to implement the provisions of the law he or she likes and ignore others? I’d say No, and I think those arguing for the ObamaCare interpretation would agree with me if the parties today were reversed.

The IRS did issue a ruling saying that they would, in fact, give subsidies to those in states without exchanges, but as far as I’m aware, the IRS is not part of the legislative branch.

Q: Chief Justice John Roberts is a jerk if he agrees to stop the subsidies.

A: That’s not a question.

Q: OK, wouldn’t John Roberts be a jerk if he agrees to stop the subsidies?

A: No. Recall that when ObamaCare was first argued at the Supreme Court, he did something few, if any, court observers predicted. He split the difference between the two sides and considered ObamaCare penalties to be a tax rather than some novel reading of the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. That was different than this case. In that case, he was ruling on whether Congress had the power to pass the law in the first place. In this case, the court is ruling on whether the law is what it says it is in the text.

Democrats praised Roberts as going beyond partisan politics, as if the measure of partisanship is whether or not you agree with Democrats. But Roberts had this warning after the first case, “We do not consider whether the act embodied sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders.” Basically he was saying that, short of a constitutionality question, the Court is not the place to argue what should be done. But, in judging constitutionality, the Court is the place to argue how it should be done. Yes, an unconstitutional law can be thrown out, but you can’t argue that a law is unconstitutional just because you don’t like it. That’s a policy question. If Roberts votes against ObamaCare this time, it is for a fundamentally different reason.

I still think that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, because regulating commerce and forcing commerce are two very different things. But we are where we are.

Q: Shouldn’t the Supreme Court go with intent rather than letter? What about you “original intent” Constitution guys?

That’s a very good question. Let me start with an example of the two types of interpretation. The Second Amendment says:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Looking at just the word “infringed”, we know that there has been debate, even from the beginning, about what that really means. Some have argued that it means Congress can not pass any bill regulating guns in any way. Some have argued that we don’t use militias, so that infringement is OK outside that context. And there are arguments on the spectrum in between. But the idea that there were some instances where the right to keep and bear arms should not be infringed is something that is indeed true. The intent is at question; what are those instances?

Looking at just the word “not”, however, requires a different tact. You can’t really debate the intent of the word “not”. You can’t take that single word out and argue that the rest of the meaning of the Second Amendment stays intact (whatever you believe it’s saying in the first place). For this, the letter of the law is paramount.

What those arguing against this lawsuit are saying is that an exchange “established by the States” is exactly the same as an exchange not “established by the States”. It is not (and by that, I do not mean to say that “it is”).

Q: Wouldn’t this destroy ObamaCare and leave people with huge bills that the subsidies were going to pay for?

Those against this lawsuit would certainly like you to believe that chaos will ensue. It will certainly kick back the question to Congress (which is where legislative issues ought to be decided). In the above-mentioned USA Today article, Schlesinger says, “Hey, great – the deans of dysfunction would no doubt swing right into inaction”, which is to say that the same group of people he extolls for passing this is all of a sudden dysfunctional when they have to make changes he doesn’t like. I think you’ll find this is a common theme for liberal pundits.

In reality, however, there are many ways to handle this, and Avik Roy writing at Forbes brings some common sense to the argument that this will somehow destroy ObamaCare completely. (Hint: It won’t.)

Further, Republicans John Kline, Paul Ryan and Fred Upton, chairmen, respectively, of the House committees on Education and Workforce, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce, have an article in the Wall St. Journal with their plan to replace ObamaCare with one that would lower prices on a much larger scale with increased competition and letting you choose your own coverage (instead of some government mandate), while still providing many of the benefits of ObamaCare (subsidies for those who need it, eliminating caps, etc.), all without upending an entire industry.

Thanks for reading this far. If you have other questions, please put them in the comments below. I’m no expert, but I’ll try to answer them.

Liberal columnist Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post, June of 2009:

If you ordered America’s different health systems worst-functioning to best, it would look like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration.

Yeah, he really said that, and it was obviously untrue back then. But that didn’t stop his love of socialized medicine. Here he is again in 2011:

The thing about the Veteran’s Administration’s health-care system? It’s socialized. Not single payer. Not heavily centralized. Socialized. As in, it employs the doctors and nurses. Owns the hospitals. And though I think there’s some good reason to believe its spending growth is somewhat understated — it benefits heavily from medical trainees, for instance — accounting for that difference still means a remarkable recent performance.

He also called the VA system, “the program is one of the most remarkable success stories in American public policy.” Of course now everyone’s saying that the system has been awful for decades, so you can’t blame Obama for it. While that’s certainly true, you can blame liberal pundits who have been trying to suggest for years that the performance of the VA means that ObamaCare ought to work. It seems like they’ll say anything to get their policies enacted. Never mind reality.

And they’re making the same claim as a certain presidential candidate did 6 years or so ago. So in a sense, you can blame the President for foisting on us a system based on one that was, and is, a money pit and an abject failure, and which is utterly dishonest about those failures. They can, or should, be able to see what works and what doesn’t, but I guess Obama is going with the idea that this time, it’s gonna’ work.

But an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said that the program spent $6.7 billion (with a “b”) too much for office visits and other services. And that’s just in 2010; just one year’s worth of fraud, abuse and/or incompetence.

We keep hearing about how this politician or another wants to save the government and the taxpayer money by eliminating this kind of waste, but it never happens. Here’s one reason why. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, said it doesn’t plan to review the excess billing payments that account for this because it isn’t cost-effective to do so. Essentially what they’re saying is that it would cost more than $6.7 billion to save that $6.7 billion. Really? Is…is that job opening available? Because if it is, I think I could do it for half that cash. Or, at least I’d like to try.

See, this is a prime example of the problems of big government. It can waste billions – billions – and then claim that it’s not cost effective to deal with the waste. And then the recipients of that fraud have nothing to worry about. Their scam is safe within the walls of a massive bureaucracy. Oh sure, it’s helping the poor and elderly, but really, is there no way at all for that to happen without flushing away billions every year? Really?

This is also a prime example of what happens to centralized government programs. They become bigger and costlier, and, as Ronald Reagan observed, they wind up being the closest thing to eternal life we’ll see this side of heaven. They are a power unto themselves, and any attempt to rein them in has to deal with that inertia, not to mention that, as I said earlier, any attempt to curb such waste gets those attempting it the injustice of being considered hateful, racist, and whatever else the Left can come up with today.

There’s a trend here on the issue of big government programs, both in the money they cost, and the way they’re defended in spite of their results. And yet, we just keep adding to their numbers. If one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results, it’s time to have the government committed.

It has been a tenet of the Left that government can be a force for good, and no one’s really denying that. It’s just that there are places for it, and places where it shouldn’t be, and if you overextend government’s reach, prepare for these very consequences. The Constitution was written to keep those kinds of folks in check. Unfortunately, there’s not been enough pushback, and now too many Americans expect this sort of overreach, but they want others to pay for it.

In an opinion piece at the Huffington Post by H. A. Goodman, he argues that Republicans have been complaining about how bad the VA is, but hypocritically voted against a bill for various funding for the VA back in January.

Here’s a problem with that, and it’s not something you’ll hear on most newscasts. For the last 5 years, the VA has not spent its full health care budget; as much as $1.163 billion extra to as “little” as $450 million in medical-care funding from this past fiscal year. And still vets have been waiting too long for care, some paying with their lives. Clearly, clearly, throwing more money at the problem has done nothing whatsoever to fix it.

The Republicans, back in January, said that if the huge catch-all bill were split up into separate bills, there were plenty of items they would vote for. The issue was fiscal responsibility. Democrats, on the other hand, really do have the mindset that enough greenbacks will solve any problem, especially if the problem is one that makes liberalism look bad. And the single-payer VA medical system absolutely fits that particular bill. Creating a single source of a particular product or service (in this case, health care) inevitably leads to scarcity (in this case, waiting lines). If vets could choose any hospital they wanted, and if the government still picked up the tab, would we have this problem? No. But this would be an indictment of a system that Democrats want to see implemented all over, and so it cannot be seen to fail.

Remember this when Democrats like Mr. Goodman accuse Republicans of “hating the poor” or of being “racist” because they don’t want to throw more money at programs that are similarly flawed. Since the mid 60s, when the “War on Poverty” began, the poverty rate has been bouncing around between 10 and 15% of the population. Nothing has changed. Prior to that, the poverty rate had been steadily decreasing, from 30% in 1950 to 15% when we went to war on it. We were gaining ground, but since “going to war”, it’s been nothing but a stalemate, even though the programs have been costlier every year. But just look askance at the programs, just try to reign in some of that continue rise in cost, and you get accused of all manner of hate and villainy. For nearly half a century we’ve been pouring more and more money into it, just like the VA. And, just like the VA, it is not doing what it is supposed to be doing, or doing it incredibly inefficiently.

But if you want to change the flat tire and try to get things done better, you’re accused of hating the car. The flat’s got us this far, it can go further, right?