RUSH: In the meantime, a federal judge has declared Obama’s health care law to be unconstitutional. Folks, it’s a shame, it is really a shame that news about Egypt and even news about the weather is keeping everybody from hearing about all the good things the Republicans are trying to do in the 
House and Senate. Not just furthering votes on the repeal of health care, but there’s this. ‘In a sharp challenge to the Obama administration, House Republicans intend to unveil legislation Wednesday to ban the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and expect to advance the bill quickly. The official said the bill would nullify all the steps the EPA has taken to date on the issue, including a threshold finding that greenhouse gases constitute a danger –‘ the Supreme Court granted them this. The EPA can effectively rule by fiat under the basis that greenhouse gases are killers, and the Republicans are readying legislation to roll all that back and to restrict them. Of course, Obama vetoes it, but that’s the strategy. You send all this stuff up.
The American people do not want the Obama agenda. The American people made up of independents, Democrats, and Republicans alike said loud and clear last November and deep, not just to Washington, but to state capitals, to cities, they don’t want the Democrat Party agenda, they don’t want the agenda of Obama, by a massive majority. And so, yeah, we don’t have the votes to override presidential vetoes. But we do have the ability to make him veto what the American people want. It’s like Dingy Harry. Dingy Harry won’t bring up the repeal vote in the Senate. McConnell is trying to make it happen anyway by attaching the repeal vote as an amendment to some piece of legislation on the federal aviation administration.
So the Republicans, God bless them, bless their hearts, are trying to move in ways to limit and roll back this regime. And they have been given a great boost by Judge Roger Vinson. I don’t care what you hear in public, behind the scenes the Democrats are worried stiff about this ruling and the notion that the whole thing is unconstitutional. Now, one of things that I said earlier this week is that this could lead to a giant constitutional crisis. And last night — I didn’t see it myself, somebody sent it to me — last night on Mediaite they wrote about that as though I’m some kind of a kook, which is fine, but they think the whole idea that the Constitution might be in crisis here is silly. Why would that be? Why would it be silly to say that? We have a federal judge who has ruled a major piece of legislation unconstitutional, and the regime is basically saying, ‘Ah, well, it’s gonna go to Supreme Court anyway, so to hell with it.’ But he has voided it. It is not the law of the land and if they continue implementing it as though it is, they are in contempt. They’re basically looking at the Constitution and winking at it or spitting on it or turning their backs on it, constitutional crisis.
Now, go ahead and make fun of pointing that out if you wish, but I hold here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers a story I printed out from CNBC.com. ‘Is The Obama Administration Throwing Us Into a Constitutional Crisis Over Health Care?’ Let’s see if the Mediaite people go after this guy. It’s by John Carney, the senior editor at CNBC.com. ‘Are we experiencing a quiet constitutional crisis?’ And I’ll add another question. Not only are we experiencing a quiet constitutional crisis, is it being done with thoughtful malice? Do you think the Democrats and Obama didn’t know that this was unconstitutional? They knew they were gonna have to argue this and they prepared arguments. They knew the commerce clause did not permit this. They did it anyway.
‘It’s well known that Judge Roger Vinson ruled yesterday that the individual mandate exceeded the powers of the federal government under the Commerce Clause. But he also ruled that because the law lacked a severability clause and the law’s proponents had argued that the individual mandate was a necessary part of the scheme, the entire law was invalid. Wesley J. Smith explains the implications: ‘That means that under the ruling, the law is void and cannot be implemented from this point forward. The Administration’s legal remedy is to seek a stay of the ruling pending appeal. It cannot just defy a federal court ruling. If it tries, the plaintiffs should go to court for the injunction and/or seek an order of contempt against the administration,” which I suggested yesterday one of the attorney generals of the 26 states suing the regime do.
‘Pretending that the ruling doesn’t change anything when it unequivocally does, would be both a petulant and extra-legal approach to governance. So has the Obama administration halted the implementation of the law? The answer is: No. The website of the White House is unambiguous about this: ‘Implementation will continue.” This is a spit in the eye. ‘Vinson’s decision did not include an injunction to stop the implementation of health care reform on the grounds that an injunction would be superfluous. He argued that the government would stop implementing the law automatically once it was announced as unconstitutional.’ But that hasn’t happened. The judge, understanding the law, understanding the Constitution and mistakenly assigning an appreciation of the law and respect for the law to this administration assumed that with good manners alone they would cease implementation, once it was ruled that their law was unconstitutional. He didn’t even bother to include an injunction because he argued in his ruling that the regime would stop implementing the law automatically. They haven’t.
Again, this is a CNBC.com piece, and this echoes what I first raised on Monday about this. ‘So here’s a question: should government officials mindful of the constitution start defying the Obama administration to honor the decision by the court? If, say, you were charged with monitoring the computers that send out rebate checks to seniors with high prescription drug costs, should you turn off the computer? Much of this is probably theoretical. Most of the law did not yet apply, so implementation was minimal. But if you were working on implementing the law, shouldn’t you be obligated to stop work? ‘Pencils down’ as we used to say back when an M&A deal fell apart.’
And the headline: ‘Is The Obama Administration Throwing Us Into a Constitutional Crisis Over Health Care?’ And then the trailing question is, that I have asked since before Obama was inaugurated, is all this on purpose? One thing about this health care, just to try to put this in perspective for you. I am compelled to point out again that Obamacare mandates the hiring of 16,000 new IRS agents, not 16,000 new doctors. This is a health care bill. This is a new health care law requiring 16,000 new IRS agents, not 16,000 new doctors. Why? Takes us right to the mandate. It has to be discovered whether or not you’re obeying the law, because if you’re not, they have to find you and issue you a fine.
One way or another, they are going to get dollars from every one of us, including the 32 million uninsured. We’re either gonna be forced to buy a policy or if we don’t we’re gonna get fined and perhaps, Pelosi even alluded to it: Yeah, makes sense to me, putting people in jail. That’s unconstitutional. But the regime is ignoring the court. I don’t know what you want to call it, but just imagine George Bush ignoring a court, a major federal court decision over anything, piece of his legislation. Imagine Nixon telling the judiciary and the Washington Post, ‘You guys go pound sand.’
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And it has begun, ladies and gentlemen. National Review Online, The Corner, Brian Bolduc: ‘In light of Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional, Wisconsin’s attorney general, J. B. Van Hollen, has declared the Badger State free of any obligations imposed by the law. ‘Judge Vinson declared the health care law void and stated in his decision that a declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction,’ Hollen says in a statement. ‘This means that, for Wisconsin, the federal health care law is dead — unless and until it is revived by an appellate court.” So a state AG. This is not precisely what I was suggesting, but a state AG, Wisconsin, stood up and said, ‘Okay, doesn’t happen here. No law here that we can see. We’ve put it in the trash can. We’re not gonna burn it yet, we’ll wait to see what other courts do with it.’
What needs to happen is someone needs to go back to Judge Vinson and say, ‘Judge, they’re not doing what you thought. They are continuing to implement this. We need further injunctive relief from you.’ The judge can’t act on his own on this. I think the judge needs someone to ask him for this. Clearly the judge thinks that the regime will just obey the law, and most people would expect the regime to obey the law. I mean these people are made up of the highest ranking law enforcement officers in the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Chris in Darien, New York, great to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: You bet.
CALLER: I was listening to that clip in the beginning of your show of Obama saying to the people of Egypt, ‘Your voices are heard,’ the young people of Egypt protesting over there, and I’m trying to recall, but I can’t remember the press conference where he mentioned that Tea Partiers’ voices were heard. I mean we gathered in the hundreds of thousands to peacefully protest, and he made no mention of it.
RUSH: Not just Obama, but the entire Democrat Party. Well, that’s because you people in the Tea Party, you’re a bunch of redneck, pro-life, pickup truck driving, tobacco chewing, gummers.
CALLER: (laughing) Yeah, I guess so.
RUSH: You’re just a bunch of hayseed hicks who probably wish you could live at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico.
CALLER: I remember in his inaugural address that he said he would be our president, too, but he doesn’t acknowledge us, and he acknowledges destructive protests elsewhere.
RUSH: I’m gonna hearken back to what the story, How to Understand Rush Limbaugh piece is all about. This guy writes about the fact that before Obama — he gets it right, he listened and he understood what I was saying — before Obama was even inaugurated, I didn’t buy into any of the PR about Obama, the new day in America, nonpartisan, postpartisan, postracial. I didn’t buy into it. This guy points out there are probably a lot of people who didn’t buy into it, but none of them have the guts to say so. It doesn’t surprise me that Obama hears voices in Egypt but doesn’t hear the voices of the Tea Party. I know what he is. He’s a Saul Alinsky leftist radical. And, my friends, it’s not extreme to point out that the biggest enemy that Obama thinks he has is the Republican Party and the American conservative movement. In a domestic sense, that’s the largest enemy he’s got. That’s the enemy he will not show any respect for or acknowledge whatsoever. You don’t exist. Our ideas are not even there.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I had a number of people call this week and point out, rightfully so, that it’s incredibly interesting Obama hears the concerns and the demands and the desires of whatever numbers of people there are in the streets in Cairo, but he does not hear the Tea Party. He couldn’t care less about the Tea Party. It’s a great observation. What you need to understand is that there is a huge difference between hard of hearing and tired of hearing. Obama is simply tired of hearing any opposition to his ideas and his agenda. He is tired of hearing from middle America. He’s tired of hearing from flyover country. In fact, he never has liked hearing from people he considers to be outside the ruling class.
In the old days there would not have been a media for people to share this kind of conclusion. In the old days there would have been riots in Egypt, the media would have covered them, whatever the president wanted conveyed about them would be conveyed, if he were a Democrat. And there would be nobody to oppose it. I mean they’d be opposing it, but they wouldn’t be heard, they would not have an avenue. And this, I think, is one of the things that Democrats are having trouble adjusting to, is that they’ve never really had to work hard to earn their position in the media. It’s just there. Now there is competition, and they don’t quite know how to deal with the competition so all they want to do is try to shut us up. So they get ridiculous with this business of we’re responsible for whatever acts of violence occur domestically in the country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Bob in Montgomery, New York. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Megadittos, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Fine, thanks much.
CALLER: That’s great. Earlier today you mentioned that the attorney general in Wisconsin, I believe, said that they were not going to be complying with the health care law since it was deemed void.
RUSH: Mmm-hmmm.
CALLER: Okay. If the penalties for not attaining coverage were going to be levied via the IRS, how would the attorney generals for different states protect their citizens from the IRS?
RUSH: Well, I don’t think if the law is void. Your premise, the premise of your question is that a judge voids the law but that Obama can still continue to implement it and therefore fine people.
CALLER: Well, isn’t that the apparent intention based on the administration’s take on everything?
RUSH: It is.
CALLER: Well, if they continue to go forward in the face of this ruling and use the IRS to levy fines against citizens, how would an attorney general protect the citizens against it?
RUSH: I don’t know that an attorney general would have to. I don’t think there’s a federal judge or a tax court judge that would side with the government if a citizen refused to pay a fine based on a law that’s been proclaimed unconstitutional. I mean, if we have a judge proclaim a law unconstitutional and yet the federal government can continue to implement it — and, in fact, implement penalties, financial penalties — we got something worse than a constitutional crisis here. We’re talking dictatorship, totalitarianism. The law here would be totally on the side of the Wisconsin attorney general. The law would be totally on the side of any citizen refusing to pay any kind of a penalty imposed by virtue of a law that has been declared unconstitutional and voided.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, as far as the caller’s question: There’s nothing to defend against. The law has been voided. There is no law. They can’t impose the fine. You don’t have to defend yourself. And this provision doesn’t get implemented until 2013 or 2014, anyway; long after the regimes face their last election.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The state of Florida is also using Judge Vinson’s ruling to say that they are not going to enforce Obamacare. Florida, the state insurance commissioner, is returning $1 million in federal health care grants paid to states to help with reform implementation. This is from the St. Petersburg Times: ‘Insurance Commissioner Returns $1 Million Health Care Grant — In the wake of U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that the federal health care legislation is unconstitutional, Florida insurance commissioner Kevin McCarty returned a $1 million federal grant awarded to the state to assist with reforms. The money would have paid for a system to provide information to consumers on the rates of large-group insurers.’ Whoa. They gave back a million bucks. They are one of the 26 states, by the way, that doesn’t want to delve into this because now it is unconstitutional.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Keith in Charleston, South Carolina. Hello, sir. Welcome.
CALLER: Thanks, Rush. Two things real quick. I’m really aggravated that the Republicans are right now not going after — even further after this health care by pointing out how much money by this not passing, by us going after it, canceling it out, how much money with all the earmarks that were on there that we will be saving.
RUSH: Wait a minute, now —
CALLER: I got one other question. Why are we not asking for probes into where all the TARP and the bailout money and how all that has been spent? I mean there’s two things there are —
RUSH: We’re going to! For crying out loud, Darrell Issa has submitted his first requests and they told him to go to hell. They’re doing it. I don’t understand this. Earmarks? Where do earmarks come from? What have I missed here? The earmarks in the health care bill are — we’re trying to repeal it. Darrell Issa has been rebuffed. His first document request, the regime told him basically to go pound sand. They’re working on it out there, Keith. That’s precisely the kind of stuff they are gonna investigate. Where did the TARP money go? Where did the Porkulus money go? That’s exactly the kind of stuff that they’re going to get into. And by the way, you should expect the regime not to just willingly participate in this. There is a constant battle, separation of powers. Whoever is president, when the guys from Congress call and say, ‘Give us this, give us that,’ the natural reaction is, ‘You go to hell, who do you think you are?’ It’s the natural reaction a president has to the legislative branch. But the legislative branch has oversight. Presidents resent the hell out of that. They make the legislative branch jump through hoops, go through judge after judge after judge to get this stuff, and the whole point is to stall. And that’s going to happen.
Now, while the Republicans are trying to do this, don’t dump on ’em. It’s all in the works, but the regime’s got a lot to hide here. And they’re not just gonna be forthcoming with it and allow Issa and the Republicans to — just like we’re not gonna be able to probably override some vetoes for a while, but you keep asking. You keep requesting the documents, you keep pestering them for it, you keep them on defense, send that veto bill up or send that repeal bill up every week if you have to. Make them keep signing that thing. I don’t know if that’s what the Republicans are gonna do. It would be what I would do. But we’ll find out together.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: LA Times, Noam N. Levey and Lisa Mascaro: ‘The Senate plans to vote Wednesday on legislation to repeal President Obama’s healthcare overhaul … The largely symbolic measure is expected to fall short of the necessary 60-vote supermajority, but it will put pressure on centrist Democrats facing reelection in 2012.’ Senate Democrats get a chance to go on record supporting an unconstitutional health care bill. Page two. But wait a minute, now. If the administration says nothing will stop implementing the law, why do they want to ask for a stay on Vinson’s ruling? ‘The Justice Department is considering whether it will move to stay Vinson’s ruling to avert any interruption in carrying out the law.’
Well, why? They’re gonna admit, then, that they gotta deal with his ruling. Mitch McConnell says, ‘It’s an opportunity to reevaluate your vote, to listen to your constituents who are desperately trying to get your attention. You can say, ‘Perhaps this was a mistake.” That’s his appeal to the Democrats: Vote with us on this; vote to repeal it. You got a chance; it’s an unconstitutional law. Do you really want to vote for something that’s now been proclaimed unconstitutional? (Now, you’re not hearing any of this because of the weather and, of course, Cairo.) Now, how can Vinson’s ruling interrupt Obamacare’s rollout? We were told by the State-Controlled Media that that wasn’t the case, he’s just gonna ignore it.
It’s like, remember whether they said there were no death panels? ‘No, there are not any death panels here!’ then they went and removed them? Same thing here. ‘Mandate Foes Test GOP Principles.’ Get this. Folks, this may be the piece de resistance of the day. This is from our old friends at The Politico. ‘In a different context, the Republican Party might cheer one of the fundamental tenets of the health care law, a requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. It’s just the sort of thing that would fit squarely within the GOP’s bedrock principle of individual responsibility — ensuring that no one puts a strain on the system by showing up for costly emergency room visits, then expecting everyone else to pick up the tab.’ (chuckles)
So the theme of this Politico story is a clear bastardization of what is meant by individual responsibility and an attempt to club Republicans over the head with it, opposition to the mandate ‘tests’ Republicans’ principles because the mandate is about personal responsibility! Their premise. They’re trying to position a mandate to buy insurance as Obama trying to make sure everybody’s individually responsible for themselves, and in that light, ‘Why, the Republicans, why, they ought to be leading the way for this, because individual responsibility, rugged individualism!’ Nice try… Who wrote this? David Nather at Politico.
Nice try here, pal, to take a federal mandate that is in violation of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and attempt to say that the Republicans are the ones hypocritical because they are the ones who believe in individual responsibility. Individual responsibility in this context would mean you either buy insurance or you pay the full price when you have the accident. Personal responsibility does not mean bending over, grabbing the ankles, and allowing Barack Obama or anybody else to tell you what you must buy! That is subservience. It is not individual responsibility. Boy, folks, they’re on the run here. This is one of the biggest stretches I can remember ’em making, to try to turn this mandate into an example of Republican hypocrisy because they’re eschewing the opportunity for individual responsibility.