Saturday, September 4, 2010

Really, Really Unconstitutional?

"The house of representatives... can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny." - Federalist 57
Oregon senator Wyden's (Democrat) recent move to exempt his home state from the cornerstone of Obamacare, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance of the federal government's liking, raises a curious question: How does exempting an entire state population of US citizens from the federal legislation that affects all other US citizens not residing in said state constitutional?

We know the mandate is a first.  Has this exemption move been done before?

Madison did his best to assuage the angst of those opposed to the new constitution by arguing House members would be subject to the same laws they had a hand in imposing on the rest of the country.  The same has always been for senators and the president. 

Who would have seen the possibility of a senator working to push through a law that forces Americans to purchase a good that that the government approves of---itself novel and wildly unconstitutional---then work to exempt the people of his home state from that federal dictate?

This could be something beyond unconstitutional.  All kinds of precedent is being set here: A federal mandate to buy something is passed on a strictly partisan basis, with its own lawmakers attempting to exempt their constituents from its legal reach, after passage.  Whatever term we or the courts can come up with for all this will have to new, too. "Unconstitutional" is just too insufficient to describe what is occurring here. 

Extra-Unconstitutional?  Double-Unconstitutional?  Everybody-Point-And-Laugh-Unconstitutional?

In deference to the president's unprecedented use of the word, unprecedented, how about Unprecedentedly-Unconstitutional.

That seems to fit.