Constitution declared Unconstitutional

In this space, in recent days, I have been arguing that the states are sovereign. The two most recent Supreme Court decisions have held, in effect, that they are not, and that our government is an unlimited autocracy, with no real check on its power.

From Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion, http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf

“Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the [individual mandate] exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.”

This means, in effect, that under the taxing power, the Congress may pass any law it sees fit for any purpose it sees fit, or for no purpose at all, touching any area of the law.

Even given the wide deference the High Court rightly gives to Congress, this decision is an abomination. It would live in history alongside the Dred Scott decision as the exemplar of a gross miscarriage of justice, if future histories would be allowed by the State to be written. As it is, I assume the First Amendment shall be repealed under the taxing power for the rest of you as it already has been, in effect, for the Catholics.

For those of you increasingly frequently found citizens of the Republic who have never read the Constitution, allow me to explain that Congress has the power to lay and collect taxes, either a capitation also called head tax (which must be in proportion to a census), or an excise tax, or (thanks to the Sixteenth Amendment) a tax on incomes. The Obamacare mandate is not a capitation, not an excise, and not a tax on income. Logically, then, Congress has no power to impose it.

There is also the matter of the standing of the suit before the court. There is a law called the Anti-Injunction Act which bars lawsuits against taxes until after they’re levied. Logically, the lawsuit which declares the ACA to be a tax cannot be brought under that act, and thus the holding which declares it a tax is null and void: the court had no authority to hear the case until the tax is levied. Logically, the High Court if finding the ACA a tax should have remanded it to the lower court for a finding of standing, i.e., should have waited under the Anti-Injunction Act until the tax was levied.

If you wonder how we came to the point where the fecklessness of one unelected official decided that Constitutional government was done for, and that man decided what you yourself shall buy and how much you yourself shall pay, all I can say is that it is a side effect of awarding Congress and the administration greater and ever more intrusive powers.

So you are no longer citizens, you are subjects. Put away your arms, and kiss your children farewell. Their future, and in effect their lives and fortunes and sacred honor, belongs to Caesar. Submit to the authorities placed over you, as they know better than you how you should run your life.

ADDENDUM:

As an final irony, even while it dismantles the core concept of federalism, the High Court affirms the principle, which I have wasted precious time in recent days attempting to explain. They say it better than could I:

The Federal Government has expanded dramatically overthe past two centuries, but it still must show that a constitutional grant of power authorizes each of its actions. See, e.g., United States v. Comstock, 560 U. S. ___ (2010).
The same does not apply to the States, because the Constitution is not the source of their power. The Constitution may restrict state governments—as it does, for example, by forbidding them to deny any person the equal protection of the laws. But where such prohibitions do not apply, state governments do not need constitutional authorization to act. The States thus can and do performmany of the vital functions of modern government—punishing street crime, running public schools, and zoning property for development, to name but a few—even though the Constitution’s text does not authorize any government to do so. Our cases refer to this general power of governing, possessed by the States but not by the Federal Government, as the “police power.” See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 618–619 (2000).