HorsesAss.Org

I can’t believe Goldy hasn’t posted this yet:

The University of Washington billed it as a debate among distinguished law faculty over whether the new federal health-care law is constitutional.

But while the four panelists at a packed event Tuesday may have differed on some of the finer points, they all agreed on the big question: They said the new law passes constitutional muster and that various lawsuits arguing the opposite — including the one joined last week by state Attorney General Rob McKenna — have little merit or chance of success.

Even John McKay, the former Republican U.S. attorney for Western Washington (who was forced out in 2006 under contentious circumstances) said that while he sympathized with some of the political issues in play, he thought the lawsuits lacked merit. In fact, he questioned the timing and thrust of the cases: “One way to say it is, that this has to be seen as a political exercise,” he said.

Moderator Hugh Spitzer noted the lack of a vigorous dissenting voice.

“I will say that we tried very hard to get a professor who could come and who thinks this is flat-out unconstitutional,” he said. “But there are relatively few of them, and they are in great demand.”

Spitzer, an expert in state constitutional law and a UW affiliate professor, said afterward that organizers even considered setting up some kind of video conference to provide the counter perspective. But in the end, he said, the lack of professors taking that position spoke to the merits of the arguments. He said organizers did not invite McKenna because they wanted to stick with academicians.

Maybe they could get someone on the Seattle Times editorial board instead.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Well, I had been working on a post, but since Lee beat me to it, I’ll just tack on a couple comments here.

First of all, I watched the entire forum live via the TVW feed, and while it was rather striking how unanimous the participants were on the lack of merit of the lawsuit, good law professors that they are, they did make every effort to explore all the angles and underline which legal points on which the attorneys general have the best chance of succeeding. It’s just that nobody thought their best chance was much of a chance at all.

Which brings me to the Times article, and its focus on the lack of dissent at the forum. I’m not sure why reporter Nick Perry should have been so surprised, as the lawsuit has been almost universally condemned by legal scholars as meritless. Unless, of course, Perry’s starting point was his own paper’s editorial page, which vigorously insists that McKenna has a “good case.”

The problem is, unlike the legal scholars participating in this forum, the Times’ editors are about as familiar with constitutional law as they are with the inside of their own colons. Indeed, considerable less so.

So note to journalists everywhere: there aren’t always two sides to every story. Sometimes there are multiple sides. And sometimes, one side simply has its head up its ass.

UPDATE, UPDATE (Goldy):
After reading the initial bit of trolling in the comment thread, attempting to discredit the forum because moderator Hugh Spitzer (gasp) contributes to Democrats, I’ve decided to embed the TVW video below. So now folks in the thread have no excuse for being ignorant. (Or at least, no more of an excuse than they normally do.)

Seattle Jew cancels his subscription to the Seattle Times:

After the PI closed, we refused to change to the Times because, to be blunt, the Times seemed to have much too little news.

Recently, my wife responded to a “special offer.”

We want to cancel the Times. Your editorial opinions seem more appropriate for a Tea Bagger newsletter than for the sole remaining Seattle newspaper. The writing is often poor, but the endorsement of Rob McKenna’s actions is over the top. Mr. Blethen needs a course in Government 101 .. as well as lessons in grammar. We do, after all, have a government of checks and balances based on law. If an AG has the independent ability to decide that he or she can determine the state’s interest, doesn’t that create the office as nearly a fourth branch of government?

I thought that the concept of our courts is that parties to an action must be able to show an interest in the action. IF Mr. McKenna can not show that he represents the interests of the State, then who does he represent?

Perhaps he represents Mr. Blethen?

Over 19,200 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.

Of course, how could Jon Stewart not be funny when he’s got the whole lesbian-bondage-themed-nightclub-GOP-scandal to work with, but his aside on the NY Times headline on the story is a perfect commentary on one of the least discussed factors behind the newspaper industry’s precipitous decline: its self-imposed stodginess.

The Seattle Times has twice editorialized in favor of a sham process to placate opponents of the proposed Chihuly “museum,” and that’s exactly what we’re getting at the public hearing tonight at the Seattle Center.

The hearing didn’t start until 6:30 p.m. but Center employees, the arts board member crowd, and other surrogates of the Wrights and Chihully were lined up at 3:30 to sign up for all the speaking slots. An hour into the hearing only one person had spoken against the proposal, and yet according to City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw, emails and phone calls are running 10 to 1 against.

Go figure.

As for me, I’m the 201 person signed in, so I doubt I’ll get the chance to voice my opinion. But I suppose that’s what folks here mean by “process.”

Join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by even earlier and enjoy some dinner.

Sure…it won’t be quite as fun as spending other people’s money at a bondage-themed strip club, but there’ll be a good selection of beers….

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 351 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

Um… could somebody on the Republican side of the aisle — you know, those breathlessly opposing, on both policy and legal grounds, the health insurance mandate within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — please explain to me the difference between this mandate, and that within their own Social Security privatization proposals that would require Americans to invest a portion of their paychecks with private financial firms?

And don’t tell me that under Social Security privatization, you still have the option to stick with old government run system, because you have the same exact option with the so-called health insurance “mandate”: don’t purchase private insurance, and the federal government will just take the cost of the premium out of your paycheck in the form of a tax. You know, just like Social Security.

Honestly, how is it constitutional to require economic participation on the one hand, but not on the other? Or are Republicans just a bunch of grandstanding, unprincipled hypocrites?

So far, Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna has attempted to have it both ways. On the one hand he insists that he supports the notion of health care reform. On the other hand, he insists on joining a lawsuit seeking to rule unconstitutional a provision without which the entire reform effort would collapse.

Let’s be clear, without the insurance mandate, the main provisions of the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — the elimination of exclusions for preexisting conditions, and the common practice of “rescission” once policyholders get sick — would be entirely unworkable.

Why? Well, if there is no mandate that you purchase insurance, yet insurance companies couldn’t reject you due to preexisting conditions, then it would be in your economic self-interest to only purchase insurance once you got sick. And with only sick people paying premiums, the premiums would be unaffordable.

So without the requirement that you or your employer purchase private insurance, there can be only two alternatives. Either rescission and pre-existing conditions remain a prominent feature of our health insurance system, or we move to a single payer system in which government is the sole insurer, and there is no private insurance to be mandated.

Considering his recent public embrace of the Teabaggers, it’s hard to imagine McKenna endorsing the latter, so I can only assume his supposedly principled opposition to the recently passed bill implies support for the former. By filing this lawsuit, Rob McKenna is inherently defending the rights of insurance companies to deny you coverage, either by excluding pre-existing conditions, or by searching for technicalities with which to justify cancelation of your policy once you get sick.

And… well… as a Democrat, I sure hope he runs on that in 2012.

Courtesy R.R. Anderson

Remember yesterday morning when in my layman’s refutation of Attorney General Rob McKenna’s lawsuit, I suggested that the federal home mortgage interest deduction would be an apt analogy to the implementation of the insurance mandate in our new health care reform law? Well later that day, that’s exactly the analogy that University of Washington law professor and constitutional expert Stewart Jay used to refute McKenna’s argument that the insurance mandate is somehow unprecedented:

“They are giving you tax benefits for entering the private market in some fashion. So for example, I get to deduct the cost of my mortgage – with a private bank – on my income taxes every year. In effect, I’m strongly encouraged to buy a home. So that’s the whole point of the deduction,” Jay said. “The fact that (people) are being encouraged to buy private instead of public insurance is an extraordinary argument for a Republican to make. If what he’s saying is true, the problem is corrected by eliminating private insurers from the system.”

Huh. So the question is, if the analogy is so obvious that even a layman like me could see, why can’t McKenna? Is he that bad a lawyer, or is he simply being disingenuous in claiming a loftier goal behind such obvious political grandstanding?

Former Seattle Times subscriber K.J. relates her conversation with customer service:

I called and cancelled my subscription. I told the CS rep that I was insulted the Blethen’s would call my opposition a “politically motivated hiss,” and instead of hissing I was cancelling my delivery and to be sure to tell Mr. Blethen I hadn’t forgotten about the time he shot his neighbor’s dog.

CS rep didn’t seem to know that story.

Over 19,000 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.

The medical marijuana trial in Shelton of a terminally ill woman and her husband continues tomorrow morning:

What: Mason County v. Karen Mower and John Reed
When: Wednesday, March 31 @ 9:00 a.m.
Where: Mason County Courthouse, 419 N 4th St. in Shelton
Map

If you happen to have the day off, please consider making the trip down to Shelton to show your support.

Note to Teabaggers: you lost the war.

And by “war,” I don’t mean the battle over health care reform, although you lost that too. No, I’m referring to the Civil War, or as many in your ranks surely refer to it, “the War of Northern Aggression.”

See, if you really look closely at the Teabaggers’ pseudo-legalese re-imagining of the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment, it’s clear that they apparently believe that they live in the Confederate States of America, whose constitution, while largely based on that of the real America, failed to grant its federal government sufficient power to do the kinda things national governments need to do in order to prosper and survive… you know, like directly raise the revenue and armies necessary to win a fucking war.

Or as one historian famously put it, the Confederacy “died of states’ rights.”

So yeah, the Teabaggers already lost the states’ rights war. First on the battlefield in the 1860’s, and then in the courts and the Congress a century later. And these United States of America are eminently stronger for their loss.

So I guess it’s wrong of me, as I sometimes do, to ask the Teabaggers why they hate America, when they clearly love America. They just love the one on the wrong side of history.

Please lecture us about fiscal responsibility some more. I guess you can argue, however, that lesbian bondage-themed clubs are a form of free market enterprise.

U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell at yesterday’s health care reform celebration, introducing Washington’s 20-year-old Basic Health Plan to Attorney General Rob McKenna, explaining why it allows WA to opt out of the mandate if we choose, and urging him to “innovate, not litigate.”

Yet another disgruntled ex-reader cancels their subscription to the Seattle Times:

Editor
Seattle Times

By this email I am canceling my subscription to the Seattle Times. Your endorsement of Rob McKenna’s self-serving challenge to the constitutionality of the health insurance reform bill argues that the suit is a challenge to Big Insurance that progressives should approve. The idea that the Seattle Times supports the challenge out of a concern for the power of corporations in American life lacks any credible evidence in the editorial positions historically taken by the Times.

The Times has every right to support McKenna’s efforts to tack the gubernatorial shoals of Tea Parties and Clubs for Growth, but doing it with a lecture about what liberals should believe grates one last time too many on me. Lawsuits are supposed to be filed in a good faith belief in the positions advanced. Unless he is dumb and, therefore not qualified to be Governor, McKenna cannot believe that this lawsuit has merit. When McKenna files and the Times endorses a suit against corporate personhood to overturn Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, I’ll re-subscribe.

I’ve learned to live without the PI. Living without the Times will be like noticing it’s not raining.

Jan Bianchi
Attorney at Law

Nearly 19,000 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.