He took of the fruit thereof, and did eat

Now the serpent really was more subtil

The computer given to the Chicago resident was purchased at the Apple store at Mayfair Mall for $3,369.70, the complaint says.

Former pastor charged

Tempted — Paul Carrack

Not just some credibility

All credibility:

BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott said the Archbishop of Canterbury's words represent unusually damning criticism from the leader of another Church.

A hostile takeover bid?

It's so shocking to see
The old Church of E
Looking down on you and me

Contradiction fails to trigger priest's recollection

Presided over 200-count pederast's "church criminal trial"

[A] letter seemingly written by [former Milwaukee canon law judge Thomas] Brundage to [former Milwaukee archbishop Rembert] Weakland on Aug. 15, 1998, shows Brundage actually drafted Weakland's [Aug. 19, 1998] letter to [then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger lieutenant Tarcisio] Bertone.

So let me get this straight. Brundage achieved celebrity this week denying awareness of the contents of Rembert Weakland's letter to Ratzinger's main man at the former office of the Inquisition, but today it turns out that Brundage himself drafted the very letter.

Is that about right?

Only two days ago, Brundage had said he didn't see Weakland's letter — the one he drafted — until he read about it in the New York Times.

He voiced dismay at the apparent contradiction. "I have no memory of ever being asked to abate the case," Brundage said.

J-S: Weakland never told me what I told him to tell future pope

And: Vatican cited "apparent good conduct" at Boulder Junction, WI

More like, I-got-you-away-from-a-parent bad conduct.

Bonus headline of the week:
Satan: father of lies, publisher of the New York Times

— David Horowitz's NewsRealBlog

Great, there's nothing like dragging that up today.

Happy Passover.

Whatever pretense John King had to seriousness

Is long since dissipated.

Rabbi laughed in seeming disbelief

More to the point, who is praying for the Vatican's PR department

"With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus," Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. "We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs."

Some of pope's house preacher's best friends are Jewish

Statement of Scott Walker's logistics coordinator

lulz

You are a complete idiot and honestly have no idea wat you're talking about. Stop whining bc you're pissed walkers dipping into your county salary and go find a hobby.

Via capperland.

Political archetype

A clinical psychologist said that beginning in his late 20s, Roeder had "moved increasingly in the direction of radical religion, Christianity," and became "obsessed" with taxes, license plate laws and "the true intentions of the framers."

Killer sentenced

Jay Bullock for Congress broak teh internets

Candidate's money bomb crashed both Geocities servers

DEVELOPING:
Heroic candidate defended namesake film star's honor

Eastern Wisconsin model for transgender inmates

Where a law banning hormone treatment was found unconstitutional.

Unholy ruckus in 3 ... 2 ...

RNC donors billed discreetly at $2.99 per minute

Sexy guy, slip off that respectable Republican cloth coat.

Nobody ever accused the Chairman of micromanaging.

In new ad, Scott Walker cruises the 'hood

Walker delivers a homemade sammich to Charlie Sykes
Nice shacks.

NYT good for something, cleric acknowledges

The Rev. Thomas T. Brundage said the documents show that the Vatican had encouraged the Milwaukee Archdiocese to halt the ["church criminal"] trial, but they did not use strong language and actually order a halt. He said that he never saw the letter from Archbishop Weakland abating the trial until it appeared on the Times Web site last week.

Priest accused paper that didn't quote him of misquoting him

The minutes of the May 30, 1998 Vatican meeting said that a ["church criminal"] trial would be difficult because of the problem of getting proof without increasing the scandal.

How's that primary concern workin' out for ya, gentlemen?

Vatican City man performs disturbing ritual

Spread out before him, in white robes, was row after row of priests, who responded in chorus to his chants in Latin. A choir of men and boys intoned solemn hymns.

Paul the Sixth didn't read his mail either

Comment: Churches already bankrupt, in a moral sense

Churches never had any divinely enhanced moral authority to begin with. Yet they went ahead and abused it nonetheless. That should be the most important lesson to emerge from this entire fiasco.

Why does my daddy hate trains

Gubernatorial hopeful Scott Walker would not comment directly on the issue of his son's appreciation for mass transit toys. He did, however, report that Scotty, Jr. can throw a football the length of two in-ground swimming pools and that being a dad is his greatest source of joy outside of cutting funding to county programs and riding a Harley-Davidson on thinly-disguised campaign trips.

Ashamed.

RomneyCare omnibus

Ultimate conservative ... I like mandates
In case you missed these classic performances.

Palin Said Knock You Out

Good luck with your fledgling teevee show.

Papal quote of the day

"[Former Milwaukee archbishop Timothy] Dolan has been comparing the Pope to Jesus, but as far as I know, Jesus never presided over an institution that allowed pedophiles to operate freely." — Daniel Maguire

Marquette professor calls for Ratzinger's resignation

Jesus has been largely absent from the latest controversies.

Some might argue he was exonerated during the Enlightenment, when one of the nation's founders, Thomas Jefferson, stripped him of his supernatural powers and therefore his responsibilities.

The Catholic League's Wild Bill Donohue says because victims were "post-pubescent," the problem is with homosexuals, not child predators. Last night on Larry King, Wild Bill defined post-pubescent as 12 or 13 years old. Evidently Wild Bill Donohue is as deliberately ignorant of civil and criminal law as some in the Church hierarchy.

"Canon law" having worked so effectively.

On teh web: This grisly little man.

Incidentally, John V. Doe v. Holy See (.pdf; 59 pgs.) — which concerns more priestly child sexual assault in Oregon and Chicago plus the question of whether Vatican City, despite its alleged sovereign state immunity, is liable for the tortious acts of its corporate "employees" in America — is working its way into the U.S. Supreme Court.

And then there's this one, seeking to depose* the pontiff.

* Initially, at least, only in the civil procedural sense.

Elect Scott Walker and count on more nonsense

Warns the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

On the other hand, if you're going to call a lawsuit "frivolous," you should have to explain why. Just because the J-S editorial board thinks the suit is a loser doesn't mean it's utterly lacking in merit.

Where a novel constitutional question is presented, as is the case with the health care reform bill's "individual mandate," there exists practically a duty to challenge it. Simply insisting such challenges are pure politics and "frivolous" doesn't make the question go away.

But at least they got the "count on more nonsense" part right.

Zapruder 2010

Breitblart's life among the savages.

Don't give them any ideas

Early deaths of the recipients will allow the Fund to recoup the money left in those accounts.

— michaelend

If x, then Bible

Where x equals anything.

Whatever scientists discover about the universe from the Large Hadron Collider, it will show that the universe is upheld by God in a consistent way. This will therefore confirm that the Bible is true.

AiG via PZM.

Ab hoste maligno defende me ...

... from the New York Times?

Might be worth attending Mass tonight.

Fetish club scandal leads direct to RNC pope

"The man seems a coward."

Hilarious expense account hijinks from the family values crowd.

Trucks carrying Scott Walker BS damaged bridge

Loads blew the dial clean off the gauge
Tea-Republican assented to construction priorities in 2007

It's noteworthy that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel would run seven paragraphs worth of third-party attestations to the alleged political brilliance of Scott Walker without once mentioning Walker's failure to dissent from the construction schedule, that the Zoo Interchange is in Walker's Milwaukee County bailiwick but outside Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett's, or the fact that Walker could have been every bit as — or more — aware of the bridges' advancing decrepitude as Barrett.

Yet Scott Walker lifted not a finger, nor uttered one word. So which set of evaluations is more germane to the Statewide responsibilities Walker seeks: the political, or the managerial. It should be the latter.

The distinct scent of Walker effluvia is familiar:

Neither Scott Walker nor anyone from his staff contacted rail equipment manufacturer Talgo to ask them to consider the Super Steel facility before the company made its decision, Talgo executive Ferran Canals told committee members.

Disappearing news.

McIlheran indicts another Milwaukee archbishop

Call it a cover-up or the naivete of the era, but either way, a lot of that blame seems to belong to then-Archbishop William Cousins, who decided to send Murphy off to live in what amounts to exile at his mother's house ...

Neither are particularly desirable options.

And given that former MKE archbishop Rembert Weakland's 'We knew molesting children was wrong but we didn't know it was illegal' line elicited guffaws even from the faithful, I guess that leaves cover-up.

This is supposed to be a defense to allegations of conspiracy.

The award-winning right-wing guy: Anybody but Mr. Ratzinger.

Flashback: McIlheran connects education adviser with NAMBLA.

Yes, isn't it just awful what these people are trying to do to the pope.

Aren't there any honest conservative columnists?

Judicial elections: What you need to know

How much money they are raising and spending.

The important stuff.

Also which judge is accused of lying to get himself elected.

"Crooks recently condemned comments by Gableman's attorney ..."

Stuff and nonsense. It's a sad day for the Fourth Estate when the Associated Press is running Badger Herald rewrites.

How Eric Cantor spent his weekend

Scouring teh YouTubez for insane naked religious people.

Via Wonkette: God's most blasé Messenger
Bonus nude/RNC/$$$: Topless dancers imitating lesbian sex
X-tra bonus Christian militia: The return of Christ in the clouds

Hutaree.com lists among its various End Times prophecy "information sources" WorldNutDaily and Jack Van Impe Ministries.

Scott Walker determined to slow traffic

Republicans demand increased spending on highway entitlements

As commuters moved briskly through the Zoo Interchange, many motorists were obliged to decelerate and read billboards placed by county exec and GOP candidate for governor, Scott K. Walker.

WISDOT said the trip from the Ambassador Hotel to the Brookfield Hooters took about 11.3 minutes at an average speed of 60 mph.

But political analysts observed that the more Walker could aggravate voters, the more likely the fruition of his ambitions. And what better way than to irritate the ne plus ultra of aggravation: road rage.

Sources said civil and mechanical engineers warned America 50 years ago that the nation's bridges would start falling down in 50 years.

Walker was believed to be planning a series of Burma Shave-inspired billboards, containing a lecture by Marquette University professor John McAdams explaining that collective bargaining was entirely to blame for the dramatic increase in construction costs since 1960.

Van Hollen defends his strategery

"This has nothing to do with health care." — Wis. AG

UPFRONT with Mike Gousha:

Gousha: [incredulously] How much of this is political?
Van Hollen: None of it.

I got your back, J.B.

Dolan of Milwaukee chided for special pleading

Holy Father smiles, waves, dismisses "petty gossip"
Man with private army not intimidated by deaf children

Timothy Dolan is another former archbishop of Milwaukee. He has a blog where he argues* — à la Wild Bill Donohue — that everybody's molesting children and the New York Times just has it in for him:

The problem with your column, Your Excellency,** is that it makes the move that church officials always and reliably make: sure, pedophilia was bad, but the church has learned its lesson, cleaned up its act, paid the victims, and anyway, child rape happens elsewhere, too. In other words, it is unfair to focus on the crimes of the ecclesiastical hierarchy: we’re only human.

But the church does not claim to be only a human institution, except when it wants mercy; it claims to represent Jesus and his way of salvation in the world. If the actions of the hierarchy and the pope himself with respect to these crimes are measured by the words of Jesus, then the crimes, the coverups, and the special pleading that is going on as I write this, merit the following quotation:

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."

I think that divine judgment has been rendered already.

Robin Darling Young
University of Notre Dame

Dolan says hey everybody, don't be so hard on the Roman Catholic Church's top shelf bureaucracy. After all, judges, doctors, parole officers — child rapists run rampant under their watches as well.

Except the judiciary, the AMA, and the department of corrections never asserted they were Christ's Own Moral Authority on Earth. None of them ever claimed to be the One True Faith™ and that all other faith (and especially no faith) was defective, less than fully human.

None aspired, by continual presentation of the corpse, to instill a lifelong sense of guilt and shame for having somehow participated in the torture and murder of a first-century rabbi. None coerced their constituencies to weekly donations for the maintenance of a pope's embroidered silk collars, golden cloaks, and marble obelisks.

None abused their trust and (alleged) authority more profoundly.

* Complete with a citation to NRO.com: nice touch.
** "My Excellency" would be a great title for a blog.

I am the walrus recess appointment

Republicans demand Obama ignore Constitution

Senators cited the disclosure on Thursday that Mr. Bolton had been interviewed by the State Department's inspector general in an investigation of intelligence failures related to Iraq, even though he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March that he had not been involved in any such inquiry.

Mr. Bolton now serves as a Fox News correspondent.

It's a zoo (interchange) out there

Construction detours add five or ten minutes

You bunch of whiners, get your butts out of bed earlier and deal with it. And while you're at it, get up even earlier so you don't have to shave or put on your make-up while driving.

Or both.

Knowledgeable sources suggested county exec and GOP candidate for governor Scott K. Walker engineered the rerouting to guarantee commuters five additional minutes of Charlie Sykes drive time.

Pederasts roamed, but Ratzinger was on the case

In 1981, the now-Vicar of Christ on Earth punished a priest for holding a Mass at a peace demonstration, leading the man to ultimately leave the priesthood.

The man was said to have eventually discovered Jesus.

I sure do miss those strict constructionists

"Once again the administration showed that it had little respect for the time honored constitutional roles and procedures of Congress," said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's foe in the 2008 presidential election.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

How much clearer could it possibly be.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that Obama's move is "another episode of choosing a partisan path despite bipartisan opposition."

???

Laugh-out-loud-quality hypocrisy.

Hitchens has a project for J.B. Van Hollen

Never mind the health insurance ...
What is the AG of the State of Wisconsin now going to do?

Down memory lane: GOP spurns civility pledge

Item: RNC rejects joint civility statement

Hey, remember this:

"I do agree with the spirit of intentions of ensuring our campaign does not resemble the divisive partisan fights that are not appropriate for the office we seek," Michael Gableman's campaign said he wrote in a letter to Louis Butler.

Here are the terms of the pledge signed by Gableman:

● Refrain from personal negative attacks on my opponent.
● Focus on the issues, records and qualifications of myself and my opponent.
● Ensure the integrity of claims ["statements"?] made by our campaigns by providing supporting evidence.
● Publicly repudiate dishonest negative ads made by independent groups against our opponent.

Check!

— Stacy Forster, Feb. 21, 2008.

Jesus Christ did not call any Sisters

Not the best timing there, Mr. Wisconsin Bishop.

Cantor was targeted by random gunfire

Police seek married bachelor in suspicious shooting

Nice work by Fox, also.

Now targeted gunfire, that's Sarah Palin's department:

Joy Behar said the map, which features white and red gun sights drawn over districts whose Democratic representatives voted for health care, "looks like an al-Qaeda Christmas card."

Brilliant line. Al-Qaeda means "the base," so that's exactly what it is.

Statement of Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle

Dear Attorney General Van Hollen:

I have received your request for permission to file an action to contest national health insurance reform. I am denying that request. This law is an act of Congress, signed by the President of the United States. The lawsuit you suggest is a frivolous and political attempt to thwart the actions of Congress and the law of the country.

Dude, harsh.

This may not be one of them, but presidents have signed plenty of unconstitutional acts of Congress before.

While the Republican J.B. Van Hollen by all appearances is pandering, any right-wing political warmth enveloping him as a result of his request to the governor is just convenient, delicious gravy. Because underneath is a perfectly defensible legal decision to go after the constitutionality of the so-called individual mandate.

In his official role, AG Van Hollen has a duty to assess federal legislation and its potential effect on Wisconsin sovereignty. I don't expect the present challenge to be successful, but far, far brighter bulbs than I have found its premises to be strongly compelling.

[By the way, stop calling them "Tenthers." The attempt to equate reasonable attention to the language of the Constitution with some crazy lawyer in California's ravings is frankly offensive. Also, conjuring the strains of Ashokan Farewell isn't much help either.]

At a listening session in hostile territory recently (Washington or Waukesha County, I forget which), U.S. Senator Russ Feingold, who supported the federal bill, was challenged on this very point.

Feingold replied that he couldn't say with any assuredness whether the individual mandate was constitutional or not, and suggested that it was the role of the courts to make that determination.

And not just as a general principle, but in this case.

Moreover, the courts cannot undertake to reach that determination until somebody asks them to, another point Feingold stressed in his response to the listening session queries.

Senator Feingold likely won't join Florida Attorney General Bob McCollum's lawsuit,* but I bet he doesn't find the question entirely without serious merit and purely political.

* As opposed to the one he joined seeking the extension of individual Second Amendment guarantees to the citizens of Wisconsin.

Quote of the day II: Gableman edition

Remarkable:

"Attorney Bopp's comments are irrelevant to the disciplinary proceeding ... " — Marquette professor of law Rick Esenberg

This is a unique perspective, considering the Attorney Bopp comments at issue were delivered before three appeals court judges last September during the disciplinary proceeding.

That is, they're part of the record of the disciplinary proceeding, which is slated to go before the Wisconsin Supreme Court on April 16 and they go directly to the question of Gableman's willfulness to violate the Wisconsin code of judicial conduct, precisely the manner of behavior the Wisconsin Judicial Commission alleges.*

In fact Bopp's mini-jeremiad issued forth in response to questions from the panel of judges requesting Bopp, the legal agent of Gableman, to explain the rationale behind Gableman's teevee advertisement, the very object of the disciplinary proceeding.

Perhaps Prof. Esenberg is distinguishing between Bopp's presentation on the record and his presentation to reporters after the hearing.

But not even Gableman, in his motion to recuse another Supreme Court justice from hearing oral arguments in the disciplinary proceeding, distinguishes between the two sets of commentary:

In [his separately authored concurrence], Justice Crooks condemned statements made by Attorney James Bopp, Jr. ... during oral argument before the Judicial Conduct Panel and to the press afterward.

Gableman seems to think they're mighty relevant indeed, as he's clearly out to protect his own bacon from the ill-advised public declarations of own attorney.

More specifically, he's looking to insulate himself from the perception Attorney Bopp's commentary created in a member of the tribunal before whom Gableman is to be judged, which is certainly one of the broader ironies to have emerged pursuant to this whole escapade.

Here, by the way, is a useful quote from Liteky v. United States, the sole case Gableman cites in his motion to recuse Justice Crooks:

The judge who presides at a trial may, upon completion of the evidence, be exceedingly ill disposed towards the defendant, who has been shown to be a thoroughly reprehensible person. But the judge is not thereby recusable for bias or prejudice, since his knowledge and the opinion it produced were properly and necessarily acquired in the course of the proceedings, and are indeed sometimes (as in a bench trial) necessary to completion of the judge's task.

That's Justice Scalia, writing for a majority of the Court, supposedly in support of Gableman's efforts to un-preside Patrick Crooks.

Gableman's disciplinary proceeding is currently in its third year.

* The WJC has said repeatedly that Gableman "lied."

Quote of the day

No one, not even Netanyahu, should be denied his right to an idiot relation ...

Special Relationships, by David Remnick

Recall, Benjamin Netanyahu whiled away his days as an interim private citizen appearing frequently on Fox "News" before a grovelingly simpatico Sean Hannity, yet another idiot relation.

Pontiff's annus more horribilis by the day

Too big to fail

An initial statement on the matter issued earlier this month by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the [child molesting] priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber. But the memo, whose existence was confirmed by two church officials, shows that the future pope not only led a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the [child molesting] priest’s reassignment.

The subtext is clear.

The Vatican described the matter as routine,* which is likely not the best choice of words. If nothing else these revelations are a PR disaster, and I doubt playing the victim is going to improve things.

Wonder if he has one of those buck subsisto hic signs on his desk.

* More like poutine: "a mess."

Business model successful for 2,000 years

Their highest priority was protecting the Church from scandal

Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland said this week in an interview, "The evidence was so complete, and so extensive that I thought [the priest] should be reduced to the lay state ... "

Evidence of 200 counts of molesting deaf children, and your sanction is you can no longer perform this magic ceremony.

Forgive me, but these people are profoundly delusional.

FedSoc research assistant keeps up the good work

"You heard it here first: Oral argument April 16."

Welcome to six weeks ago.

Where was Master Suhr when William Bablitch was Randy Koschnick's primary cudgel with which to beat Shirley Abrahamson, one wonders.

Based on, of all things, a story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

First Epistle of Paul to the Baraboonians

Stupak and the nuns: A Reformation perspective

Women who wanted to ask questions at the meeting were told to write them on a piece of paper and have a man read them aloud. Some said their questions were never read.

Lutheran school principal dismissed on "doctrinal grounds"

Doubtless similarly enlightened ones.

Reporters need to read legal opinions

Or else ask somebody who has. According to the Badger Herald:

Crooks said that Bopp's comments "startled and appalled many in the legal community," and he called on Gableman to distance himself from the lawyer's views.

No, Justice Crooks did not "call on Gableman to distance himself from the lawyer's views." Justice Crooks simply observed that a recent statement of Gableman's pledging to treat "all persons fairly" did not include a repudiation of Bopp's comments. That's just a plain fact.

Justice Crooks's overarching point was that Gableman's lawyer Bopp's remarks turned up in supplemental filings to Aaron Antonio Allen's initial request to have Gableman recused from hearing his criminal appeal and the court was giving short shrift to those additional factors by refusing to order additional briefing on the matter.

A reporter should know the difference between reporting and advocacy, a particularly crucial distinction in this instance, where no such advocacy exists. Gableman also claims that Justice Crooks's observation is a "rebuke" and a "gratuitous personal attack," but neither of these hyperbolic accusations is supported by the record.

Gableman set his own table. He sure ain't no victim.

Great Moments in Teabagger Debate

The good Chief Oshkosh rounds 'em up.

At least Republican Louie Gohmert knows you can't trust the mob (his own status as an elected official being compelling evidence of that).

The Commerce Clause and the individual mandate

The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, ... [t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes ... [and] [t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers ...

— United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8

I see our friend conservative law professor Rick Esenberg is fretting again (or is fretting still and forever, I suppose) over his bugaboo Barack H. Obama's inexorable march to socialism, so I thought I'd pull up some comments I left at his blog several months ago, on the subject of the constitutionality of the so-called "individual mandate."

It began when Prof. Esenberg's "nonpartisan" pal Charlie Sykes mocked Speaker Nancy Pelosi for stating an obvious truth: that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, including, obviously, that related to health care, is "essentially unlimited." Prof. Esenberg, as is his wont, leaped quickly to Charlie Sykes's defense.

It was essentially unlimited then, and it is today.

Anyway ...

Esenberg: So it is incorrect to say that nobody has suggested the Commerce power as justification for a mandate.

[The initial point, which still stands, is that Speaker Pelosi hadn't suggested it. And Charlie Sykes remains a partisan buffoon.]

Okay, you got me. Mark Hall did suggest it, although he too emphasizes primarily the tax power — my point, again.

But his Commerce Clause argument is secondary and lacks the required force and finally amounts to little more than an assertion plus an unconvincing appeal to the Necessary and Proper Clause (which should be renamed the Necessary Necessary and Proper Clause because it's always necessary when your claim of Commerce Clause reach is ... reaching).

It may be that the courts will devise a rationale for approving a federally mandated commercial purchase based on those courts' own prior holdings, but it would be in effect the fabrication of a power not expressly delegated to Congress by the Constitution.

(Indeed, the courts are more legitimately imbued with the power to consecrate an unconstitutional Act of Congress than is Congress to make that particular Act in the first place, but that's still no reason to accept as axiomatic that the courts' decisions are correct.)

As Prof. Hall puts it, the question of Congress's power to regulate the commercial aspects of health care is a trivial one easily disposed in favor of Congress but for one provision: the individual mandate. And Hall indicates "the only plausible objection is that mandating the purchase of insurance is not the same as regulating its purchase."

But he doesn't engage this objection, which he just allowed was crucial; rather, he proceeds instead to address his opponents' distinguishing regulating insurers from regulating people, but that is not the proper distinction. Prof. Hall thus glides past his own crucial distinction without so much as a how-do-you-do.

Objects that are "in" commerce

The most forceful statement of Prof. Hall's argument is that the individual mandate "directly affects interstate commerce," not that it is interstate commerce, which might be enough to satisfy some of the second- or fourth-generation interpretive case law, but I don't think it survives the level of scrutiny that must be applied when one is determining whether an Article I enumerated power even exists and in particular one so coercive on the part of the federal government (Super Duper Strict Scrutiny, h/t Arlen Specter).

In any event, the distinction is not between "what" and "who" but rather between what is "in" commerce and what is not. That is, the permissible objects of regulation are only those which are "in" commerce (or so the Court has taught since Chief Justice John Marshall, a contemporary of the Framers, presided).

Before the mandated purchase takes place, there is no commerce — and therefore nothing in commerce to regulate. It is only by Congress mandating individuals to make commercial transactions that there becomes something in commerce.

So the question presents as, 'Can Congress force a private party to initiate the transaction that will bring into existence the commerce Congress may regulate.' If the answer is yes, then it's not on account of anything the Commerce Clause says.

An analogy, not perfect, but illustrative: Biology makes no claim to the origin of life; it assumes life, and that is where its study begins, and not before.

Both necessary and proper

Although it may be necessary under certain circumstances for Congress to somehow initiate the commerce it wishes to then regulate (which it can do by taxing and spending), it has avenues other than forcing — on penalty — private commercial transactions. If there are other ways to accomplish the objective, then this one is by definition not necessary.

For example, Congress can initiate those transactions itself, which is how I suggested that single-payer, universal health care would more comfortably conform with constitutional requirements (not to mention satisfy the aspirational goals described in the Preamble).

But even if the individual mandate mechanism was deemed "necessary" according to some necessarily circular reasoning, it also needs to be "proper" and I'm finding it difficult to apply that adjective, in the constitutional context, to the creation of a brand new, clearly unenumerated power of Congress (or at the least, unenumerated within the Commerce Clause).

So did I pass the Federalist Society entrance exam? (I hope not.)

Clearly unconstitutional

Somebody please shoot me if I ever use that expression.

Wait until John McAdams finds out about this

John McAdams: Comedian Bill Maher is an irreverent meanie