News stories after passage of the health care bill are focusing on proponents' outrage over the negative reactions to the bill. It is as if the left wants to hide the new law's contents and implications by anathematizing the act's opponents.
The most ridiculous example is histrionic partisan distress over a lawsuit that is being brought by 14 Republican state attorneys general, including Rob McKenna of Washington and Bill McCollum of Florida. The state officers contend that the new act's requirement that every adult purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. The federal government, they argue, has no authority to make such a requirement. Attempting one infringes upon both individual rights and powers the Constitution reserves to the states. The state attorneys general either will succeed or fail with their case and it is the federal court system that will decide the matter. (By the way, the McKenna, McCollum et al warned in advance that they would file this legal challenge if the offending provision was adopted by Congress. They didn't spring their suit on anyone.)
Meanwhile, contrary to fulminations from various Democratic sources, the attorneys general are entirely within their rights as state legal officers to take such a matter to federal court. All the arguments against them so far are political posturing and hand waving. Some simply misrepresent the legal case of the attorneys general, apparently hoping to confuse the public about what is at issue. Even sillier is the attempt in the Washington State Legislature to pretend that state funds are being misused by the state attorney general. That too is just projection.
Liberals who have been dissatisfied by the actions of conservative Congressional majorities and presidents in the past have never hesitated to take their complaints to court. What makes them think it is somehow wrong for conservatives to do likewise now when the shoe is on the other foot?
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