All Blog Posts Tagged 'Natelson' (11)

Here's why real conservatives should oppose the Ryan budget:

1. It maintains the federal leviathan working to control our lives. FACTS: The Ryan budget won't result in the single closure of any sizable federal agency and explicitly avoids layoffs of federal workers. As Roll Call newspaper put it, "Ryan's budget eliminates the deficit in 2023…

It wasn't difficult to see liberals standing on the Mall in Washington, bundled in warm clothing and loudly cheering President Obama's Inaugural Address, with the promise of larger and more activist central government deployed to implement a "progressive" agenda. But I saw another group smiling softly deep in the background. It was the Crony Capitalists, watching from warm, comfortable Fortune 100 boardrooms across America and on Wall Street, and their K Street lobbyists in …

Prof. Randy Barnett was one of the leading theorists among Tea Party activists and Republicans in the court battles against Obamacare. He was co-counsel for the complaint filed by the NFIB, which was eventually the basis for the Supreme Court ruling that Obamacare is an excessive use of federal power and an invalid exercise of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause.

Prof. Barnett has also been a staunch opponent of federal tort…

The Supreme Court's decision in the Obamacare case (Acrobat document) highlighted the limits of federal authority over states' and individual rights. Over and over again, Chief Justice Roberts wrote of the Constitution's enumerated powers for the federal government and of the need to protect states from an overreaching federal government. He defined states' rights in terms of the inherent "police power" which is reserved…

In my opinion, the single biggest problem with the Republican Party today is that its leaders claim to represent the cause of limited government, or "constitutional conservatism," but either don't know what that really means or hypocritically ignore its meaning to advance an "un-conservative" political agenda. The Obamacare decision by the Supreme Court revealed an incredible disconnect between the claims of top Beltway Republicans and their stands on the specific use of federal power to…

In the Obamacare decision on Thursday, the five conservative Supreme Court Justices rejected the unlimited scope of the Commerce Clause and the Necessary & Proper Clause envisioned by proponents of federal tort reform bills (especially caps on damages in medical malpractice lawsuits). Justice Roberts was especially deferential to federalism, employing the terms "state sovereignty" and "enumerated powers" often in his decision. Proponents of federal tort reform are among the big losers in…

On Monday, 43 Catholic dioceses, organizations and universities sued the Obama administration, in 12 separate suits, to block the imposition of the Obamacare mandate to offer, in health insurance plans, drugs and devices which are forbidden by Catholic teachings, such as contraception and abortifacients. The plaintiffs include the University of Notre Dame (my law school alma mater), the Archdioceses of Washington and New York City, and a number of local affiliates of the national Catholic…

This week we've been deluged with the reports on the oral argument before the Supreme Court on the Obamacare case. And last week, the House GOP leadership pushed a bill combining federal limits on medical malpractice lawsuits with an attractive bill to repeal a key component of Obamacare.

The two belong together. After all, Obamacare and federal tort reform are equally and fundamentally based on the expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause…

The problem with most of the proposed reforms in H.R. 5 is that the law governing medical malpractice claims is a state issue, not a federal issue. Despite H.R. 5's reliance on the Commerce Clause, Congress has no business (and no authority under the Constitution) telling states what the rules should be governing medical malpractice claims.…

For months, it appeared that House Republicans had largely agreed with conservatives such as Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli; Randy Barnett; Senators Tom Coburn and Mike Lee; Tea Party movement leaders such as Judson Phillips and numerous House Republicans that federal tort reform bills violate the states' rights under the 10th Amendment to run their own legal systems without federal interference. There has been no floor action on H.R. 5, a…

Within the last week, two conservatives who have previously opposed federal tort reform on constitutional grounds did so again. Our own Judson Phillips wrote Tort Reform? It's Unconstitutional on World Net Daily on December 13. He began by reiterating the Founding Fathers' support for the right to a civil jury trial:

First, there is no authority in the Constitution for the federal government…