Garden State Patriot

Nancy Pelousy is on quite the roll the past few days. Yesterday she mustered up her best Orwellian newspeak to claim that letting the Bush tax cuts expire wasn’t a tax increase.

Ah, yes. It’s not a tax cut but ‘eliminating a tax decrease that was there.’ Mmmm….Okay!

Then, yesterday the Speakerette was asked by a CNS News reporter where in the constitution the Congress had the power to force people to by health insurance. Here’s how that went down according to CNS News (h/t Gateway Pundit):

CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”

Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter.

(Click here for the audio of this exchange)

Afterwards, Pelousy’s office justified the mandate by – what else – invoking the Interstate Commerce Clause; liberals’ favorite part of the constitution to pervert and abuse in their undying quest to expand the federal government.

Pelosi’s press secretary later responded to written follow-up questions from CNSNews.com by emailing CNSNews.com a press release on the “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform,” that argues that Congress derives the authority to mandate that people purchase health insurance from its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce.

Not too long ago, I posted regarding the constitutionality of healthcare. Embedded in that post was this quote form The Heritage Foundation on this very issue:

Lastly, proponents might argue that national health insurance is part of Congress power “to regulate commerce…among the several states.”  While progressives have often used this clause to expand the federal government, it does not apply especially to the creation of a national health insurance, because to create and engage in commerce is not the same thing as regulating commerce among the several states.

Nobody during the framing generation expected the commerce clause to expand the federal government’s authority to anything relating to or resembling commerce.  James Madison wrote that it is a power “which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained.”  The clause was designed to prevent some states from taxing goods that passed through their boundaries as those goods proceeded to market.

In Mark Levin’s book, Men In Black (pp. 131), Mark also highlights how the commerce clause was undermined by the Supreme Court and, in turn, used to expand government.

Under the Articles of Confederation, each state had been free to issue its own currency and set its own tariffs. The purpose of the commerce clause was to promote commerce and trade by breaking down these barriers. But over the years, the Supreme Court has adopted an expansive definition of ‘commerce’ to justify virtually unfettered federal intrusion into the conduct of state and local governments, and to defend the establishment of massive bureaucracies and their imposition of seemingly endless regulations on private enterprise. As a result, the government has become increasingly centralized, and the economy is lurching toward socialism.

In this sense, Pelousy’s views are just symptomatic of years of abuse and wrong-headed decisions. This is the logical end when the clear intent of the constitution has been tossed aside, its limits on federal power ignored and the rights of the individual have been disregarded. And that end result is essentially tyranny.

Cross-posted at Conservatives with Attitude!