----- Original Message -----

From: Devvy Kidd <= o:p>

Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2009 5:22 AM=

Subject: Judge Napolitano/Health-Care Reform and the Constitutio= n

"Last week, I a= sked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the feder= al government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: "There= 's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anyth= ing to do with most of the stuff we do." Then he shot back: "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?"

Rest at link

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020= 3917304574412793406386548.html

By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

Last week, I asked South Carolina Congres= sman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate = the delivery of health care. He replied: "There's nothing in the Constitut= ion that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the s= tuff we do." Then he shot back: "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?"

Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and = 10th Amendments, which limit Congress's powers only to those granted in the Constitution.

One of those powers—the power "= ;to regulate" interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Cong= ress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.

Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious = New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. = In Wickard v. Filburn<= /span> (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumptio= n of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to= the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—ind= eed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison's understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the princi= ple reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central governm= ent that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was= kept "regular."

The Supreme Court finally came to its sen= ses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled = that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.

Applying these principles to President Ba= rack Obama's health-care proposal, it's clear that his plan is unconstitutional = at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of= the Constitution understood, but to improve one's health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for = the past century.

The same Congress that wants to tell fami= ly farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined "to keep regular" the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted a= ll 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people= in another state.

That's right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person's appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.

What we have here is raw abuse of power by the federal government for political purposes. The president and his collea= gues want to reward their supporters with "free" health care that the = rest of us will end up paying for. Their only restraint on their exercise of Commerce Clause power is whatever they can get away with. They aren't uphol= ding the Constitution—they are evading it.

Mr. Napolitano, who served on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judic= ial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His latest book is "Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America" (Nels= on, 2009).

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