These Six Court Cases Could Cripple Obamacare Analysis: Affordable Care Act Faces 100 Pending Lawsuits

Washington Free Beacon, by Andrew Evans, February 13, 2014

Around one hundred lawsuits challenging the president’s signature policy achievement are currently making their way through the courts.

Some of these lawsuits challenge very specific parts of the law, while others are challenging the law in its entirety. Here is a list of the six major legal challenges to the law.

1. Legal Taking of Private Property

Hotze v. Sebelius challenges the constitutionality of the employer mandate. The Fifth Amendment prohibits the government from taking private property for public use without “just compensation.” Steve Hotze, a doctor in Texas, is arguing that Obamacare violates this “takings clause” by mandating that his business give money to another business, specifically an insurance company, without any compensation.

READ THE ARTICLE! 

Judicial Activism and the Brown v. Plata Decision of May 23, 2011

by Diane Rufino, June 14, 2011


How do you know ‘judicial activism’ when you see it? Black’s Law Dictionary defines judicial activism as a “philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions.”

Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, activist judicial decisions initiated the start of a major transformation in American law. Prior to that time, there had certainly been many incidences of judicial overreaching, but these were generally rationalized as somehow representing the original intent of the drafters of the Constitution. But in the 20th century, and probably beginning most especially with Brown v. Board of Education (the school desegregation case), we had era of “activist” jurisprudence where the Court interpreted laws and the Constitution not according to established principles of construction, but according to the social agenda the justices wished to promote.

As we all know, there are two schools of thought with respect to the interpretation of our US Constitution. One school believes in the “original intent” of the document, as provided to us by our Founding Fathers, and therefore are referred to as “originalists.” In fact, our Founders provided clear instruction that the Constitution was to be construed strictly and in accordance to their intent. Others see the Constitution as a “living document” which is open to broad interpretation and are referred to as “liberals.” Under the “originalist” approach, the Constitution is viewed as a “static” document – one that doesn’t change meaning from era to era. What the document meant in 1787 is the same as what it means today. Judges are expected to stick to what the Founding Fathers intended. The Constitution’s principles are timeless, for as they are meant to address lessons that that hundreds/thousands of years of history have taught. “Originalists” see the Constitution in terms of black and white and its provisions are to be interpreted “literally.”

On the other hand, those who see the Constitution as a “living document” believe that judges can interpret it as they wish. They believe the Constitution is meant to ‘live’ and ‘breath.’ It is meant to evolve, as society evolves. In their opinion, it is essentially an outdated document that must be interpreted “liberally.” Liberal judges see the Constitution in shades of gray.

Conservatives are “originalists” because they want to ‘conserve’ our core values. Liberals or progressives take the “living document” approach because they can’t effect societal change unless they erase or erode old norms. They can’t make fundamental new law unless they destroy the old law.

Which is the correct approach? If you believe our Founding Fathers, then you would follow their advice and take the “originalist” approach and look at the Constitution as a static document with a clear definition and purpose. And why wouldn’t you believe our Founding Fathers? After all, they provided us all with the greatest grant of individual liberty with respect to government anywhere in the world. If you don’t value freedom and liberty and feel government knows best, than you might follow the “living document” approach and take your chances with whatever viewpoint the particular judge has at any given moment.

But you might want to reflect on this: The whole purpose of any constitution, and especially the Constitution of the United States, is to remove as best as possible and as much as possible the interpretation and application of the law from political controversy. With a constitution, the purpose is to set up basic principles that are going to apply and then the legislature and the courts are supposed to abide by them faithfully. The US Constitution has a method for dealing with political questions. It’s called the “Amendment process.” Article V. If it turns out that there are provisions of the Constitution that don’t adequately address issues and problems that we encounter today, then we go into that process. It requires a supermajority – 2/3 of both houses of Congress and then ratification by 3/4 of state legislatures. But that’s designed to make the process of changing the Constitution really responsive to the desires of the population. Changes to the Constitution should not be made lightly. We really want to know what the whole country in essence believes should be done and not just what a simple majority of one legislature should be done.

There are several examples of support for the “orginalist” approach to constitutional interpretation. First there is Contract law. The Constitution is essentially an agreement, signed by the States, on behalf of We the People. What it meant in 1787 is what it means today. Can you imagine a reasonable person entering into an agreement of significant consequence w/o knowing how that document/agreement will be changed or interpreted in the future? No party would enter into such an agreement – especially with such enormous consequences as the States did in 1787. Second, there is the “Article V: Amendment Process.” The very fact that the Constitution has a provision for amending itself tells us that’s the way it’s supposed to be done. And third, there is the advice itself from our Founding Fathers. As Thomas Jefferson said: “On every question of construction let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning can be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one which was passed.”

Judicial activism is what results from a “liberal” interpretation of the Constitution and our laws. Essentially, judges “make law” by injecting their personal views into legal interpretation and analysis. This is dangerous because under the separation of powers doctrine, a doctrine so vitally important in maintaining the integrity of our government, only the legislative branch is supposed to “make” laws. The landmark case, Marbury v. Madison (1803) stands for the rule that the judiciary is supposed to faithfully interpret the law and to declare any law which is repugnant to the Constitution null and void.

We saw judicial activism in Brown v. Board of Education, in 1953, when the Supreme Court identified a new standard for education – classes must be integrated. The “Separate but Equal” doctrine that the Court had previously held as sufficient under the Equal Protection Clause was thrown out for education because Chief Justice Earl Warren felt it didn’t sufficiently apply. He felt that segregation by race inferred a sense of inferiority on black students which would affect their education. The decision was more about social reform than it was about following the letter of the law.

A look at a few landmark (activist) cases might help show how activism has redefined our Constitution and reshaped our social landscape.
Brown v. Board of Education (1953):  http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/

Shariah Law on America’s Shores: Townhall Magazine Examines ‘Terror’s Secret Weapon’

March 24, 2011

The impending threat of radical Islam is not one that stops at America’s borders. A detailed new analysis featured in the April issue of Townhall Magazine, posted here as an online exclusive for Blaze readers, examines how Muslim radicals are aggressively using liberal courts, American businesses and outspoken activists inside our own country to implement Islamic Shariah law — an uncompromising religious code that runs counter to freedoms preserved in the American Constitution.


READ THE ARTICLE:  http://www.theblaze.com/stories/shariah-law-on-americas-shores-townhall-magazine-examines-terrors-secret-weapon/

ACT FOR AMERICA

Lawsuit against Oklahoma shariah ban will expose America to CAIR’s real agenda and the oppressive nature of shariah law


Last week, after the Oklahoma affiliate of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) sued to block the Oklahoma amendment that passed with 70% support, we sent out a national email asserting that this lawsuit reveals CAIR’s real agenda—the advance of shariah law.


Investigative journalist and author Paul Sperry, co-author of the expose’ on CAIR entitled Muslim Mafia, recently posted an Investors Business Daily commentary (below, highlights added) that sheds more light on this.

Just as the Ground Zero Mosque controversy became a vehicle for a national discussion about Imam Rauf’s advocacy of shariah law, so will CAIR’s lawsuit. What’s more, the American people will get to see that current and former leaders of CAIR want Islamic law (shariah) to rule America.

We are not going to try to predict what judges will decide on this lawsuit as it works its way through the courts. But we do agree with Sperry’s comment below, regarding a national debate about shariah law: “This is not a debate CAIR wants to have.”

But we do.
Thank you, CAIR.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/553407/201011101914/Shining-A-Light-On-Shariah-Creep.aspx

Shining A Light On Shariah Creep

November 10, 2010


Islamofascism: The Council on American-Islamic Relations may wish it never sued to overturn an Oklahoma ban on Shariah law. Now the entire nation will get to see it and other Islamists' true anti-American colors.

CAIR is thumping its chest over persuading a Clinton-appointed federal judge to temporarily block Oklahoma from enacting a state constitutional amendment that prohibits state courts from considering Islamic law when deciding cases. Fully 70% of Oklahoma voters passed the landmark measure.

But CAIR has ignited a legal firestorm that will likely rage all the way to the Supreme Court. Thanks to CAIR's latest bit of lawfare, Americans will get to hear a long overdue debate not just about the constitutionality of such bans on Shariah law but about the constitutionality of Shariah law itself.

This is not a debate CAIR wants to have, since it ultimately will have to defend the indefensible. It claims in a press release that Shariah law is "a dynamic legal framework" derived from Islamic scripture "and analytical reasoning." In fact, there's nothing reasoned about it. It's a medieval legal code that administers cruel and unusual punishments such as stonings, amputations and honor killings. Think the Taliban.

Shariah can be seen in action this week with Pakistan's death sentence on a Christian woman for blasphemy. Between 1986 and 2009, at least 974 people have been charged for defiling the Quran or insulting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad.

CAIR, which thinks free speech is a one-way street, is working with the Organization of the Islamic Conference on an international blasphemy law that would criminalize "Islamophobia," according to the book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America."

Shariah also permits wife-beating, something CAIR also knows about. Its sister organization, the Islamic Society of North America, condones it in its fatwas (or religious rulings) for Muslim Americans. More, CAIR distributes a book, "The Meaning of the Holy Quran," which authorizes men to hit their wives.

CAIR says it's just a "civil rights advocacy group." But the Justice Department says it's a front group for Hamas and its parent, the radical Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement that has a secret plan to impose Shariah law on the U.S.

"From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg in a recent court filing.

U.S. prosecutors in 2007 named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal scheme led by the Holy Land Foundation to funnel millions to Hamas suicide bombers and their families.

"CAIR has been identified by the government at trial as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization, a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Jacks, who recently won an award from Attorney General Eric Holder for convicting the Holy Land terrorists.

Federal courts found "ample evidence" linking CAIR to the conspiracy and are expected to unseal the dossier in coming weeks.

The Holy Land revelations prompted the FBI to sever ties with CAIR until it can demonstrate it's not a terror front. "Until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas, the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner," advised Assistant FBI Director Richard Powers in a 2009 letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

CAIR's leaders don't want a ban on Shariah law, because they have a secret agenda to institutionalize Shariah law in America.

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future," CAIR Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper let it slip out to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter in 1993, before CAIR was formed.

CAIR's founding chairman, Omar Ahmad, wants Shariah law to replace the Constitution. "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant," he told a Muslim audience in Fremont, Calif., in 1998. "The Quran should be the highest authority in America."

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad is an Islamic supremacist who thinks Muslims should run Washington: "Who better can lead America than Muslims?"

Islamizing America also happens to be the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood the radical, Cairo-based outlaw group the government says CAIR is fronting for. The founding archives of its U.S. branch, seized in an FBI raid and introduced as evidence in the Holy Land trial, reveal a "strategic goal" of "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house ... so that Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions." The Brotherhood calls its plan a "grand jihad." CAIR argues in its suit that "the Shariah ban's purpose is to stigmatize, denigrate and segregate plaintiff's faith in the public's mind as something foreign and to be feared."

No, the goal is to make sure no Oklahoma judge considers Shariah law in rulings on domestic violence, family law, probate, free speech, contracts and other matters, as judges have in other states, to a wider degree in Canada and now on a routine basis in Britain. The ban is to prevent courts from legitimizing a religious legal system antithetical to the U.S. Constitution in the areas of freedom of speech, equality and humane punishment, among other bedrock Western principles.

Thanks to CAIR's lawsuit, all this can now be aired out for the public.