Yes, the individual mandate is legal...

[elfs]

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years shall, within six months, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder. - The Second Militia Act of 1792.

If an individual mandate was legal for George Washington, it's legal for Barack Obama.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Well, car insurance mandates are at the state level, as far as I know, so it's not really the same in terms of constitutionality.

Myself, I'm a little encouraged that the right-wingers seem to be veering away from arguing that the reform measures are bad policy, and focusing more on trying to reverse them on a technicality. A technicality which, whether you agree with it or not, has been settled law for a long, long time.

Number 127

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that it's a federal requirement that the states impose car insurance on the residents but the details of how the insurance works are implemented by the state.

If medical insurance were done the same way... Hey. I live in California. We're left-leaning and would probably still have good coverage whereas the yokels in red-states would just fuck themselves over.

There's a mean part of me that's kind of for this. We goddamned California liberals create the lions share of the GDP and our taxes are constantly being fed to subsidies and welfare for red staters who then whine about it.

But. I grew up in rural Oklahoma and if it weren't for a decent public education system, I'd probably STILL be living with a bunch of ignorant slack-jawed rednecks and I know there are plenty of other people there who are like me and I'd rather not abandon them just because their society is populated by a bunch of selfish dumb asses.

I just don't get the conservative position on this one. "We're going to punish children and old people for the failures of Reaganomics and the stock market collapse!" How about we focus on creating some new industry in the US and actually prosecute the greedy fuckers that plunged us all into the recession? Seems like a better set of priorities than pissing on someone's poor sick grandmother.