1. HEALTH
13 State Attorneys General have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of health care reform.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Communications Director Christine Hall on what the effect of the lawsuits will be.
“The outcome is far from certain. My colleague Hans Bader, for example, harbors doubts as to whether the Commerce Clause argument will win over a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. The lawsuit further argues, in part, that the bill violates the 10th Amendment, which reserves powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor prohibited to the States, to the States or to the people. The argument is that the federal government lacks authority in the Constitution to force states to carry out mandates without reimbursing them for costs.”
2. ECONOMICS
A new study in Science shows that market economies enable the growth of peaceful civil society.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Marc Scribner on the results of the study.
“The researchers found that adopting markets and setting a wider playing field, so to speak, based on shared ground rules was vastly more successful than the tribal system, and it spread fast. Once people discovered mutually beneficial trade with strangers was possible, they tossed aside their previous norms because kin- or tribe-based social interactions were incredibly limiting.”
3. MEDIA
Debate continues over the tactics and rhetoric of the Tea Party protestors who opposed the Democrats’ healthcare legislation.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar Fran Smith on why the attacks on the Tea Partiers are hypocritical.
“Remember Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009, with some in the liberal media overcome by emotion as they watched the huge crowds hailing the incoming president? Was I (no fan of the Bush Administration) the only one discomfited by the crescendo of boos and cat-calls that greeted President Bush and Vice President Cheney (in a wheelchair) as they took their places for the swearing-in of President Obama? Using the logic of the Tea Party critics, one could say that those hundreds of thousands showing such disrespect tainted all the Obama supporters as a boorish, mean-spirited mob.”
Full Story: Lawsuits, Markets, and Tea Partiers | CEI
