Matt Barber

Obamacare is like turnip greens: bitter and hard to swallow, but Mommy made you choke them down anyway. The difference is that turnip greens are constitutional (though perhaps they shouldn’t be). They’re also likely to extend your life rather than cut it short.

As demonstrated by the 2010 Election Day massacre, the government takeover of health care, the euphemistically tagged “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” infuriated voters as Democrats cooked it up and force-fed it to America for Christmas Eve dinner.

Despite being assured by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, that we needed to “pass the bill so [we] can find out what’s in it,” a recent Rasmussen poll reveals that a majority of Americans - having since found out what’s in it - continue to favor its repeal.

Indeed, by granting more than 1,000 Obamacare waivers (read: payoffs) to a host of unions and corporations, the Obama administration has tacitly admitted this socialized medical monstrosity is neither “affordable,” nor does it “protect patients.”




The Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate ambitiously maintains - against considerable evidence to the contrary - that Democrats’ particular brand of health care reform is so important, so unique that the U.S. government is justified - for the first time in history - in forcing every American citizen to purchase his own untenable, unsustainable and demonstratively defective product under penalty of law. Obamacare categorically lays the groundwork for universal health care. They didn’t just sell us a lemon, they squeezed it in our eyes and said, “pay up or else.”


On Tuesday, Virginia will challenge the individual mandate, while the Liberty Counsel will go after both the individual and employer mandates. As with Virginia’s case, the Liberty Counsel argues that Congress lacks authority under the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Taxing and Spending Clause to implement this unparalleled power-grab.

The Liberty Counsel also raises other constitutional objections, including issues relative to the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.


Indeed, when one’s stated goal is to “fundamentally transform America,” the U.S. Constitution, as intended by our nation’s founding visionaries, becomes a significant encumbrance rather than an instrument of freedom.


Matt Barber
