Bill McCollum to self-immolate in response to healthcare reform
This man needs hobbies. Seriously.
Florida’s useless attorney Bill McCollum can’t be bothered to look into the possible criminal wrongdoing by members of his party who went to town with donor credit cards … he’s mum on the revival of leadership slush funds in Tallahassee … and his campaign is so dull it makes you want to stick hot pokers in your eyes, but he does have a plan: joining a bunch of other wingnut attorneys general (including Virginia’s A.G., who is a card carrying member of the crew who punk’d voters there back to the stone age) in filing a lawsuit to stop millions of Americans, including tens of thousands of Florida seniors, from benefiting from healthcare reform. McCollum is expected to hold a press conference later today. Just try to stay awake through that.
McCollum said Sunday night that the bill is unconstitutional because it forces people to have health insurance. He said the bill also violates states’ sovereignty.
Attorneys general from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Pennsylvania, Washington, North Dakota and South Dakota also said they would sue to repeal the bill.
… and for his next trick, McCollum will join Orly Taitz to file a suit demanding the president produce the doctor who birthed him, with said doctor preferably wearing a lei to prove he’s really Hawaiian. Either that, or it’s a full court press to repeal the King holiday. So much to do, so little time …
UPDATE: McCollum’s die is cast, and surprise! He claims there’s no politics at all involved in his lawsuit:
The rub: The plan requires most Americans to carry health insurance or face a fine. “This is a tax or a penalty on just living. And that’s unconstitutional,” McCollum said in a news conference this morning. “There is no provision in the Constitution of the United States giving Congress the power to do that. So it’s the absence of authority that is unconstitutional.”
“No politics involved with this whatsoever,” he said. “This bill is wrong.”
McCollum, a former congressman, said a second problem is that is “manipulates” the states to get them to do things the federal government cannot do itself and would require the use of state money to cover an expansion of Medicaid.
Some legal scholars doubt the lawsuit would stand scrutiny. Georgetown Law professor Randy E. Barnett wrote in the Washington Post, “While such provisions may have a political impact, none is likely to have any effect on the legislation’s constitutionality. Under the 10th Amendment, if Congress enacts a law pursuant to one of the “powers . . . delegated to the United States by the Constitution,” then that law is supreme, and nothing a state can do changes this. Any state power to “nullify” unconstitutional federal laws has long been rejected.”
McCollum is running for governor but denied politics were driving his actions. “This is a constitutional duty I have … to protect the citizens of this state, to protect an unconstitutional invasion of the state, if you will, by the federal government.”
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[...] came A.G. Bill McCollum’s announcement that he’ll lead a multi-state lawsuit to try and deprive his state’s residents of the healthcare reforms just passed by Congress. [...]
Is there no “issue” that McCollum won’t latch on to, at the expense of Florida taxpayers, in order to seem vaguely relevant? If this is the best Florida has, we’re in sad shape. As a good lawyer would say, he is “incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial.”