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In a lawsuit targeting the rule that all Americans buy health insurance, the states have banded together to claim that Congress exceeded its power and tread on states' domain. Other lawsuits, such as those recently argued in appeals courts in Richmond and Cincinnati, were filed by individual entities, for example, a Christian university, the single state of Virginia and a cluster of people who do not want to purchase coverage. Further, the case to be aired Wednesday in Atlanta marks the only one in which a lower-court judge, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson of Florida, voided the entire health care law after declaring the individual insurance mandate unconstitutional. (His ruling is on hold while appeals are pending.)
The law, signed by President Obama in March 2010, increases the availability of insurance, expands Medicaid, creates insurance exchanges and prohibits insurers from denying coverage to people because of their medical history. At the core of the national litigation is the requirement that most Americans obtain insurance by 2014 or pay a tax penalty. Heightening the drama of the next hearing, the states will be represented by Paul Clement, a high-profile former U.S. solicitor general who is also representing NFL owners in the lockout litigation and the House of Representatives in a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act. (The Obama administration said earlier this year that it believes the law defining marriage as only between a man and woman is unconstitutional.)
"The importance of the case is inescapable," Clement said of the health care dispute. "You have over half the states united in a single lawsuit arguing that a federal law violates basic principles of federalism," the division of power between states and the federal government. The National Federation of Independent Business, represented by Washington lawyer Michael Carvin, is also part of the challenge to be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Wednesday. The government's case will be argued, as has been in other appeals courts, by acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court.
He contends Congress properly used its power to regulate interstate commerce when it adopted the insurance requirement. "Regulation of the means of payment for health care services a multibillion-dollar problem resulting from the failure of millions of uninsured patients to pay the full cost of the health care services they consume is within Congress's commerce power," Katyal tells the 11th Circuit in his brief. So far, five federal trial judges have ruled on the individual mandate. Three, all of whom happen to be appointees of Democratic presidents, have upheld it. Two, both Republican appointees, have struck it down.
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Oh my, the Washington Times doesn't like Obama?This administration is the most corrupt in the last 100 years. Can you imagine what Bibi said to Obungo when he walked into the Oval Office........."Are you fucking nuts"?
WOLF: Obamacare waiver corruption must stop - Washington Times
The challenge claims Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional. Back on May 10, Katyal also argued for the administration in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., against challenges to the constitutionality of the health-care law. There the suit had been brought by the state of Virginia and Liberty University. Katyal has also signed multiple briefs and legal documents that the administration has filed in various federal courts in defense of the constitutionality of the health-care law.
What makes this noteworthy is that in defending the administrations position on the constitutionality of President Obamas health-care law, Katyal is not only doing his job, he is also doing something he was first assigned to do in early 2010 by then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Kagan, of course, now serves on the U.S. Supreme Court. So, when the arguments that Katyal is forming and presenting in defense of Obamacare in the lower courts arrive in the Supreme Court, their validity will be judged by Katyal's old boss who assigned him to make the arguments. Is this a conflict of interest? Should this cause Kagan to recuse herself from judging the health-care case? Is this legal?
There is a federal law that dictates the circumstances under which Supreme Court justices must recuse themselves from a case. It is 28 U.S.C. 455. In the questionnaire she filled out for the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation process, Kagan not only expressly recognized she would be governed by this law as a Supreme Court justice but told the committee she would abide by its letter and spirit.
The law states that any justice, judge or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might be reasonably questioned. It also states that any justice, judge or magistrate shall also disqualify himself [w]here he has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceedings or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy. If Kagan, as a Supreme Court justice, sits in judgment in the health-care cases now being argued by the former deputy she assigned to handle these cases, and that he started handling while she was still his boss, might her impartiality be reasonably questioned?
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Oh sure, you're No. 1 so you get the best food and girl baboons. But there's also all that pressure to defend your status. Maybe, a new study suggests, being No. 2 is better offering similar opportunities with less stress. At least among baboons. Laurence R. Gesquiere of Princeton University, and colleagues, studied wild baboons in Africa over a period of nine years and found the top-ranked alpha males had the highest levels of both sex hormones and stress hormones.
The beta males, the next ones down in the baboon hierarchy, had similar opportunities to get food and get together with females, the researchers found. But while the beta males had levels of sex hormones similar to the alphas, their stress hormones were markedly less than the alphas, they report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. So, given that baboons are primates related to humans, what does this tell us about people?
Not much, says Robert M. Sapolsky, a stress expert and biology professor at Stanford University, who called the comparison sheer speculation at this point. "A baboon troop is not a corporation with an executive alpha male or otherwise making decisions," said Sapolsky, who was not part of the research team.
Gesquiere said that when high status comes with both high costs and benefits, including physiological stress in human or nonhuman groups, the result may either be a less time in the high status position or cumulative "wear and tear" that affects long-term health. Detailed studies of status-specific costs and benefits are important tasks for the future, she said. An earlier theory called "executive stress syndrome has been shown to have been flawed, and baboon societies do not provide a basis to resurrect it," she added.
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