This editorial from the Detroit Free Press (of which I am not a frequent reader, it just appeared in Google, although I'm sure it's a fine paper) has a nice overview of the Affordable Care Act arguments going on in the Supreme Court right now.
My favorite bit however, was when they said a ruling against the ACA based on the individual mandate portion would go against past rulings and "invite constitutional challenges to everything from the Environmental
Protection Agency to the federal laws guaranteeing occupational safety,
food and drug purity, and minority voting rights."
Most of those things do deserve a second, third, fourth, etc. glance, I think. As for
minority voting rights, I'm not exactly sure how that's connected, but
that should be upheld as voting rights should not be predicated based on
ethnicity, or whatever, except age. (Although there are some political
theorists who would say voting is far too important of a thing to be
left to the people. That's another issue).
Should the EPA have such broad power? Can the government "guarantee" occupational safety? Why is it the federal government's job to regulate food purity? What does "purity" even mean? A farmer down the road can't sell raw cow's milk, yet there is a Taco Bell in every city. Various parties would hesitate to call either raw milk or Taco Bell "pure."
Basically if the Court did have to review all that stuff, maybe it would be a good thing.
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