And where a former conservative columnist jumps the shark

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We always appreciated her written word snark, though her T.V. appearances tended to grate on us. Consider it a relief then that the fence-sitting we've been doing for the past 10-12 years or so is finally over as Mitt Romney-supporting Ann Coulter just wants us to get over RomneyCare because government intrusiveness into your healthcare decisions are un-Constitutional when it comes from the feds but totally OK when it is derived at the state level.

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

There's no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today's world to equip themselves with health insurance.

The hyperventilating over government-mandated health insurance confuses a legal argument with a policy objection.

If Obamacare were a one-page bill that did nothing but mandate that every American buy health insurance, it would still be unconstitutional, but it wouldn't be the godawful train wreck that it is. It wouldn't even be the godawful train wreck that high-speed rail is.

Eh. Apparently, we missed the memo that the strain of conservatism we adhere to is in opposition only to government hyper-activity at the federal level. This is a strange new take on federalism from a "conservatism" standpoint of which we were formerly unfamiliar.

Mandate from the feds? No way! Mandate from the states? No problem.


Taking Coulter's argument that the concept of federalism allows the states even more latitude in what powers they can exert over your life does not mitigate what is an egregious over-reach of the government... no matter from what level it originates.


And opposition to RomneyCare/ObamaCare need not stop at mandate's doorway - that's only the government overreach part of the argument against. The fact that we have no money in which to pay for ObamaCare is the lesson the good folks of Massachusetts are learning with respect to the rising costs of RomneyCare.


Look, for those of you that have followed BwD for any amount of time, we have taken apart ObamaCare from stem to stern whether in regards to it's legality, to it's cost, to the arbitrary nature of its regulation-formation to the crony-favoring waiver process or to the whole wretched process in which it made it's way through Congress and onto the President's desk for signature. To erect this bizarre federalist strawman wreaks of desperation where one cannot simply admit, "I support Mitt Romney because he is the least noxious of a weak lot" and just be done with it. It'll probably have to do with us.. or not depending on how we are feeling on that fine primary day.


Being romantically linked to both Bill Maher and Bob Guccione, Jr. was our first clue. Glad we can now just be done with the whole thing.

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