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March 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Paul Clement, a lawyer representing 26 Republican states opposed to the
reforms, told the court: “If the individual mandate is unconstitutional,
then the rest of the act cannot stand.”
His argument met a warm reception from the more conservative judges, with
Justice Anton Scalia saying “if you take the heart out of this statute” then
all its other provision must also fall.
Edwin Kneedler, a lawyer for the Obama administration, urged the court to
reject his opponents’ “sweeping” claims that all elements of the law would
be scuppered by the loss of the individual mandate.
He said that other provisions – including an expansion of the Medicaid
programme for treating the very poor and subsidies on health insurance for
those on low incomes – represented traditional areas of government
intervention and could stand regardless of the fate of the mandate.
His argument was supported by the court’s more liberal judges. Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg said she favoured “a salvage job” which would allow Congress
to decide the fate of the act’s surviving elements, rather than leaving them
in the hands of unelected judges.
Jeffrey Toobin, one of the country’s most influential legal experts, said the
tone of the hearing indicated serious dangers for the president’s reforms.
“There’s considerable sentiment on this court that it’s all one big package
and it needs to be got rid of altogether, which is a stunningly bad turn of
events for the Obama administration,” he said.
The court is expected to give its ruling in June.
Today’s discussion may prove only theoretical if the mandate is deemed
constitutional, but in a critical session yesterday five of the nine
justices seemed to indicate they were prepared to knock down the
controversial regulation.
Both opponents and advocates of the law focused their attention on Justice
Anthony Kennedy, the Reagan-appointee who is seen as the court’s “swing
vote” and who yesterday seemed to focus his criticisms on the
administration’s case.
At one stage he interrupted Donald Verrilli, Mr Obama’s solicitor general, to
apparently express alarm at the scale of the consitutional implications of
the mandate.
“When you are changing the relation of the individual to the government in
this, what we can stipulate is, I think, a unique way, do you not have a
heavy burden of justification to show authorisation under the Constitution?”
he asked.
As they emerged from Tuesday’s hearing, Republican senators and attorney
generals from the 26 states opposing Mr Obama’s reforms seized on Justice
Kennedy’s questions as evidence they were closing in on their goal..
Greg Abbott, the Attorney General of Texas, told the Telegraph: “Justice
Kennedy was very clear in his questions that he was concerned about the
law’s intrusion into individual liberty and the precedent it would set for
the limits on congressional power.”
Liberal groups struck a more subdued note but Elizabeth Wydra, a lawyer for
500 state legislators who support the reforms, said that conservatives had
yet to lock down the votes of either Justice Kennedy or Chief Justice John
Roberts.
“I still see a way to gather a majority for upholding the constitutionality of
the mandate and I think that the conservative can count on three justices
but I don’t think they can count beyond that,” she said.
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