By the way, we hate broccoli

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The following ought to scare the living daylights out of anyone with a remote interest in our diminishing freedom and liberty.

A Couple of months ago, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkmann was standing before the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, defending the federal law requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, when Judge Laurence Silberman asked her about broccoli.

He wanted to know whether a law requiring Americans to buy broccoli would exceed the federal government’s authority to regulate interstate commerce. “No,” Brinkmann said. “It depends,” she added.

Silberman evidently was troubled by that shifty answer. Last week, he expressed “discomfort with the government’s failure to advance any clear doctrinal principles limiting congressional mandates that any American purchase any product or service in interstate commerce.” Oddly, he voiced that concern in the context of a majority opinion upholding the health-insurance mandate.

Dissenting Judge Brett Kavanaugh congratulated the majority for its candor in “admitting that there is no real limiting principle to its Commerce Clause holding.”

So, that's it? That's what we fought a Revolution for? Casting off the tyranny of a foreign power in exchange for the the soft, benevolent tyranny of a domestic one?


Recall our old friend Pete Stark (D(eranged)-CA) defending the constitutional mandate in ObamaCare on the grounds that Congress can pretty much do whatever the hell they please.

(If you've been following this blog for any length of time, then you are probably familiar with this clip because it remains perhaps the best 3-1/2 minutes in YouTube history of a direct summation of the dangers of overreach at the federal level. The young lady in this clip absolutely nails it. She sounds like a San Diego tea partier to the core)

"What limitations are there on the federal government's ability to tell us how to run our private lives?"

Stark proves himself to be a clueless imbecile and should've been run out of town on a rail for the content of his answer as well as the condescending tone in which it was delivered, especially right at the end.

If you think for one moment that ObamaCare is about improving upon the quality of the health care delivery system or bending the cost curve downward or any of the other justifications and/or reasons, please recall this exchange between an informed citizen and a power-mad "public servant" who bluntly explains there is no real restraints on the control the federal government can have over your life.

We fought a war some 235 years ago because of people like Pete Stark and the 20th century was nothing more than a study of the human misery that accompanied the philosophies of nations which were aligned with those of Pete Stark.