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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (554854)	3/13/2010 2:13:00 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576660

A REAL constitutional scholar talks about the idea of the House passing Obamacare w/o a vote: ..... Levin: I wanted to bring additional firepower on this subject, my buddy Arthur Fergenson, who is a Constitutional expert and who has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, including Buckley vs. Valeo... What do you make of this unbelievable -- that they're even talking about, this chairman of the Rules Committee -- acting as if members of the House voted on something when they didn't actually vote on it? Fergenson: It's preposterous. It's ludicrous. But it's also dangerous. It's dangerous because, first, ...because [the U.S. Constitution's] Article I Section VII says every bill -- and it capitalized "bill" -- ...it is common sense that the bill is the same item, it can't be multiple bills, it can't be mashups of bills. And, in fact, in 1986, Gene Gressman, no conservative, and one of the experts -- the expert -- on Supreme Court practice... was writing an article that was dealing with a less problematic attempt to get around this section of the Constitution... [Ed: the line-item veto] and he wrote, "By long usage and plain meaning, 'Bill' means any singular and entire piece of legislation in the form it was approved by the two houses." ...the bills have to be revoted until they are identical. Both chambers have to vote on the bill. If this cockamamie proposal were to be followed by the House and there were to be a bill presented to the President for his signature, that was a bill that had not been voted on -- identically by the two Houses of Congress -- that bill would be a nullity. It is not law. That is chaos. I cannot recall any circumstance in which that has happened. ...What we have here is a measure, that if Obama signed it, would immediately affect taxation, it would change rules of practice in the insurance industry, it would regulate 17% of the nation's economy, and it would be done without any legal basis whatsoever! Update 11-March-2010 21:12 ET: Fergenson: It's like, the closest I can think of is martial law! The President would have no authority -- there would be no law! It's not like it would be constitutional or not. There would be. No. Law. Levin: What do you make of people who sit around and even think of things like this? To me, they are absolutely unfit to even be in high office! Fergenson: You're right, Mark. And I would go back to what caused Gressman to write this... he was asked for his comments by the Senate... because the Senate was trying to do the equivalent of a line-item veto. And, in 1986, you were in the Justice Department under Attorney General Meese... there was a proposal... to take a bill and divide it into little pieces and.. then the President would sign each one or veto each one. That was unconstitutional. A Senate Rules Committee reported it unfavorably. Update 11-March-2010 21:36 ET: Levin: You know what's interesting about this... Attorney General Ed Meese considered it unconstitutional even though President Reagan had wanted a line-item veto. And President Reagan agreed that it was unconstitutional without an amendment to the Constitution... ...Speaking for myself, I would tell the people who listen to this program that you are under absolutely no obligation to comply with it [this health care bill] because it is not, in fact, law. Do you agree with me? Fergenson: I agree with you. I believe it would be tested by the Supreme Court. I believe that, under these circumstances, chaos would reign. There is no obligation to obey an unconstitutional law. The courts are empowered to determine whether it's unconstitutional... it's not a law. Under this scenario, the various arms of the federal government will be acting under a law that does not exist. directorblue.blogspot.com