United Liberty

In a clever ad released the day ObamaCare arrived at the Supreme Court, American Crossroads, an organization that is promoting individual liberty, puts Barack Obama up against himself, one side arguing for the individual mandate, the other side against.

H/T: Buzz Feed

If you were hoping that the Supreme Court would punt on a ruling on the controversial health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), you’re no doubt disappointed in yesterday’s oral arguments. It appears, based on comments from various Justices, that there is no appetite for punting on the issue.

In case you missed it, you can listen to the oral arguments below and read the transcript from the Supreme Court’s website:

While Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are poking at Mitt Romney over his advisors “Etch-A-Sketch” remarks, Ron Paul is running a new ad that notes how this gimmick is taking away from the real issues facing the country:

With ObamaCare coming to the Supreme Court this week, Nick Gillespie and Reason TV offer three reasons that the law needs to be ended, permanently. The reasons aren’t new, but they are important since the law only grows government and spends far more than originally estimated.

This isn’t exactly a surprise, but the Club for Growth has purchased air-time in Indiana as they hope to derail Sen. Dick Lugar’s bid for re-election. The ad the Club is running ties Lugar to the $15 trillion national debt and slams him for backing the Wall Street bailout, gas and payroll tax hikes, and opposing spending cuts.

Lugar has faced some problems recently. As we’ve noted, the Marion County Board of Elections determined that Lugar was not eligible to vote in the county, presumably nowhere else in the state, finding that his primary residence is in Virginia. Richard Mourdock has also been creeping up on Lugar in the polls. And he secured an endorsement from former Sen. Arlen Specter, who left the GOP in 2010 for the Democratic Party when it became clear that he would not beat Pat Toomney.

Here’s the ad from the Club for Growth:

I view the Washington Post as sort of the New York Times’ little brother. It’s definitely a liberal paper, leaning towards seeing left-wing politicians elected at every opportunity, almost constantly carping for greater government influence in our lives. It does, however, have a small contingent of vocal conservatives that brings some (weak) balance to the field, and it doesn’t seem to go as far as the Times does. Sure, there’s Ezra Klein, Greg Sargent, and then E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, but on the whole its more sane.

But something I found on Twitter gives me pause.

It’s called “Five myths about the health-care law,” but I can’t tell if its trying to dispel myths or create them. It is literally so nutty that I had to scroll to the bottom of the second page to discover that its author was Walter Dellinger, a Clinton Administration lawyer and acting Solicitor General (you know, the guy who defends the government whenever it gets sued) and “filed a brief on behalf of the Senate and House Democratic leadership defending the health care law in the Supreme Court.” In other words, this isn’t journalism—not even really opinion “journalism,” but rather public relations using a poorly created facade.

As today is when the Supreme Court will be reviewing the case against Obamacare, it is all the more important to go through and knock out these misunderstandings so that the public will not be misled. Let’s begin:

1. The “individual mandate” forces everyone to buy health insurance.

I wouldn’t think this would even be debateable, since, you know, this is the whole raison d’etre of Obamacare and the individual mandate, but Dellinger writes:

Let’s say you’ve voted to let the government choose what you’re going to eat for lunch. Would you be happy with that choice? Would other people around you be happy? Would everyone be in harmony or rather trying to brain each other because some fool ordered everyone peant butter and butter sandwiches? (Don’t laugh; my father eats those. I’m serious.)

Just think about it in a group of your friends. Nobody eats the same thing. I couldn’t imagine getting even the United Liberty group to agree on the same meal; George wouldn’t be a fan of alcohol, Doug would be upset if there wasn’t any alcohol, I would would crinkle my nose at anything more than token representations of vegetables, Brian would ask for our meal to just be Shamrock Shakes (and nothing else), Jason would be noting how many carbs everything has, Luthi would have mushrooms out the wazoo*, and…well frankly I have no idea what Tom would eat. Considering he’s from Georgia, probably the governor. Or since he’s a newspaper owner now, his competitor.

Professor Antony Davies from Duquesne University, in this latest video from the Economic Freedom Project, explains why that one scenario precludes the government from ever managing our economy, and the three criteria it would need to meet in order to make a command economy work. (Naturally, it fails three out of three. It wouldn’t even make it to the First Fourm, let alone the actual March Madness tournament.) So if it couldn’t even order lunch for a half-dozen people, why on earth would we think it could run an economy for over 300 million?

(Just for the record, I don’t know what Luthi would actually eat, either. Does he eat? I’m not sure.)