Tears of a Clown

The man whose inane legal arguments failed to strip insurance from millions of people still has things to say. They are as silly as ever:

Say what you will about the Affordable Care Act. Democrats passed it in haste. In desperation. Without knowing what was in it. With no bipartisan support. By one vote.

It’s impressive how many dumb talking points Cannon can string together in such a short space:

• The passage of the ACA has to be the slowest “haste” in history.  (As a tweep observes, the reaction to Brown II still holds the record for most deliberate speed, though.)
• “Desperation” is a poor choice of words, although certainly broadening access to health care is a very important priority for the Democratic Party and the stakes were clear.  “Desperation” does, however, describe the legal Hail Marys Cannon and his allies have been throwing in order to stop people less affluent than themselves from getting access to health care perfectly.
• If you’re going to use the egregiously dumb “without knowing what was in it” talking point, at least use the out-of-context Pelosi quote.  All or nothing!
• Yes, Republicans oppose any health care reform that would involve broadening access to health care.  That they’re proud of this is highly instructive
• Actually, it passed the Senate by 10 votes.  The idea that passing legislation with “only” a 3/5ths supermajority isn’t really good enough is as risible as ever.

From here, we get the inevitable assertions that the law was re-written by John Roberts:

Roberts found that the ACA unconstitutionally forced Americans to buy health insurance — but then decided Obamacare can stay because it actually just imposes a tax on the uninsured. Never mind that Democrats deliberately decided against such a tax because they didn’t have the votes.

Roberts should have joined Ginsburg’s opinion rather than endorsing the terrible argument that the ACA exceeds the commerce clause, of course. But calling the IRS-enforced penalty that applies to people who don’t carry insurance a “tax” does not in fact change a comma of the law.

Roberts found it would be unconstitutional for the ACA to threaten to revoke existing federal Medicaid grants from states that didn’t expand Medicaid — but then he decided Obamacare could stay if he rewrote it to withhold just the new funding that comes with the Medicaid expansion. Never mind that’s not what Congress intended.

You have got me there: Roberts did re-write this part of the law, very badly. He really should have ignored the ACA’s desperate opponents entirely and not embraced their transparently incoherent new spending power doctrine entirely. How Roberts transformed the ACA into “Obamacare” by re-writing the law in a transparently nonsensical was not favored by anyone who voted for the ACA is much less obvious.

Yet [Roberts] amended the ACA [sic with extreme prejudice] again by allowing the IRS to impose the disputed taxes and entitlements. Never mind that he identified no statutory language authorizing those measures.

Hahahahahaha, right. Give this to Cannon: he knows how few people read Supreme Court opionions and therefore know he’s bullshitting them.

And now, the punchline:

and to disenfranchise Republican and independent voters who swept ACA opponents into state office in 2009, 2010 and 2011 for the purpose of blocking the ACA.

We have here the desperate libertarian opposition to the ACA distilled to its very essence. The only elections that count are ones that Republicans win, and if courts do not enact Republican policy preferences into law Republicans are therefore disenfranchised. I had no idea that an entire theory of democracy could be erected on Antonin Scalia’s stay opinion in Bush v. Gore…

[via]

…the man who coined “Moops” has more.