The Blue Board

The Feds will implement the exchanges where the states don't I assure you. I am not at all a fan of Obamacare, but I see not implementing it will probably ultimately be bad for the states that don't. Such as they won't have the control over parts of it etc. also the Feds are pretty vindictive.

Unfortunately it's the law now, so the states are wasting their time by not implementing it, it's not going to do anything to stop it.

The states have a right to refuse...the Feds have the right to implement it by themselves.

The problem? The feds don't have enough money to implement it everywhere. They were passing the buck with unfunded mandates to the states. So every state that refuses runs up the Feds tab...and will increase the costs they were hiding by deferring it to the states.

I'm guessing Congress will eventually overturn anyway. If not, other states will follow FL and we'll head more and more to a movement for states rights. We were never supposed to have such a strong Federal gov't.

Smart move.

Plenty of smart and educated states will follow.

It's gone if Romney is elected.

Since it is a tax it requires a normal majority vote. Not a 60.

That'll be easy

I don't think Barack is goiing anywhere barring economic disaster.

It's not legally a tax. If it were a tax, there would've been no standing for anyone to bring suit regarding the case, since not a single person has been "taxed" yet. The Supreme Court just found that Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 1, otherwise known as the "Taxing and Spending Clause" gave Congress the power to pass the ACA and the individual mandate. While it was passed due to Congress' "Taxing Power," the individual mandate is not the same as any other tax that is levied, and is not subject to the same rules and restrictions on normal taxes.

then they should have all federal funding pulled. that goes for any other state thats does it also.

exactly right

Whether they think it or not, Rand Paul's statement is accurate.

Whether or not that's sad is another matter altogether

But his statement isn't accurate. The Constitution itself grants the Supreme Court the ultimate power in deciding questions of constitutionality. That's the whole point of separation of powers - one body has to have the ultimate power to decide what is and isn't contrary to the supreme law of the land. By definition, the Supreme Court decides whether or not things are constitutional under the United States Constitution.

Now, if we were to get into the strict semantics of things, a "couple" usually means two. If only two people on SCOTUS say something is constitutional, then yes, those two alone don't make something constitutional. However, I doubt that's what Rand Paul was going for.

But seriously...I think the distinction to be drawn is that between political reality and philosophical observation.

I just think it's kind of funny how eager some are to ignore that distinction, and engage in the sophomoric enterprise of trying to transform his observation into a pronouncement of political ignorance.