{"id":518417,"date":"2010-04-06T13:43:50","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T17:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignforliberty.com\/blog.php?view=34341"},"modified":"2010-04-06T13:43:50","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T17:43:50","slug":"does-congress-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518417","title":{"rendered":"Does Congress Understand?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Matt Holdridge<\/p>\n

“I don’t worry about the Constitution on this.” <\/p>\n

Yes, that was a comment by Phil Hare, a Democrat Congressman from Illinois in reference to the recent health care legislation. <\/p>\n

As Fox News reports<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n

Confronted by an angry Tea Partier with a camera Thursday, an Illinois congressman said in front of several constituents at a town hall that he doesn’t care whether the new health care law violates the Constitution, as some critics have claimed.<\/p>\n

In a video posted on YouTube, Adam Sharp of the St. Louis Tea Party asked Rep. Phil Hare which part of the Constitution authorizes the government to mandate that all Americans buy a private product such as health insurance. The Illinois Democrat replied, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n <\/embed><\/object>\n <\/p>\n

The Congressman later revised and extended his remarks in his own video saying he meant that he wasn’t worried the health care bill would be ruled unconstitutional (you can watch his full response and judge for yourself here<\/a>). <\/p>\n

In another similar, less publicized, incident, Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) stated at a health care town hall meeting over the summer that, “the central purpose of the Constitution is to provide for the common good.” <\/p>\n

\n <\/embed><\/object>\n <\/p>\n

Regardless of what these men really meant, it further illustrates the extreme amount of ignorance regarding the Constitution on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

As Judge Napolitano wrote in his book The Constitution in Exile<\/em>,<\/p>\n

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Today the federal government recognizes no limitations on its power. It has utterly rejected the idea, integral to the Constitution, that it is one of limited powers, carefully and precisely delegated. Today the federal government does whatever it wants to do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Philosophy aside, at the most basic level, the Constitution simply provides a sense of direction and organization for the three branches of the federal government. It outlines the individual and combined powers of these branches while reserving the bulk of governing authority to each state.<\/p>\n

But how do we get from there to Phil Hare and Tim Bishop’s interpretation of the founding document? <\/p>\n

The Judge explains, <\/p>\n

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The Founders gave us a small, discrete federal government, one of strictly limited powers; powers to address issues that are federal in nature. The Congress has confused federal<\/em> with national<\/em>, and has chosen to regulate any issue that it thinks affects more than one state, irrespective of the absence of federal power and the true presence of state power.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is up to us to not tolerate this willful ignorance. We should use every chance we get to educate not only our neighbors about the role of the federal government but our elected officials as well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Matt Holdridge “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this.”  Yes, that was a comment by Phil Hare, a Democrat Congressman from Illinois in reference to the recent health care legislation.  As Fox News reports, Confronted by an angry Tea Partier with a camera Thursday, an Illinois congressman said in front of several constituents at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}