Warning for those who don't like him, Kucinich is on this video:



Published on Mar 27, 2012

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH, 10th District) joins Thom Hartmann. The Supreme Court began hearing arguments today to determine the constitutionality of Obamacare. How does the most corrupt Supreme Court in history have the power to decide what healthcare Americans can get? All eyes are on the Supreme Court - as today kicked off three straight days of oral arguments to determine the constitutionality of Obamacare. The issue at hand is whether or not the "individual mandate" - also the core of "Romneycare" - is constitutional

A discussion took place at the DU thread on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act as mentioned in the video:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101718710

Most DUers on that video thread disagreed strongly and there was controversy over Thom's later calling out what he saw as errors by DUers.

Will DUers now call the USSC wrong because they support the rights of women, or accept the Court's intrepretation of the First Amendment?

I know the answers are more complex than one issue. And I'd agree with Lars77, regarding unexpected corruption, except the Founders knew their new nation was not going to be perfect, and said that it needed to be perfected.

That process never ended and hopefully never will, to make this nation better as it changes. As MLK, Jr. said, America is more of an ideal than a country. One might say, America is not a finished product. At this rate, it may very well be finished, and the product permanently damaged as we fall into a corporate theocracy.

George Washington said he hoped America would become the most liberal of all nations. I cannot forget that the USSC handed down the Dred Scott decision, negating the meaning of the Constitution as we have come to think of it from the progressive era:

Dred Scott



Dred Scott (circa 1799 – September 17, 1858) was a slave in the United States who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the "Dred Scott Decision." The case was based on the fact that although he and his wife Harriet Scott were slaves, they had lived with his master, Dr. John Emerson, in states and territories where slavery was illegal according to both state laws and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, including Illinois and Minnesota (which was then part of the Wisconsin Territory).

The United States Supreme Court decided 7–2 against Scott, finding that neither he nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under diversity of citizenship rules. Moreover, Scott's temporary residence outside Missouri did not bring about his emancipation under the Missouri Compromise, which the court ruled unconstitutional as it would improperly deprive Scott's owner of his legal property.

While Chief Justice Roger B. Taney had hoped to settle issues related to slavery and Congressional authority by this decision, it aroused public outrage and deepened sectional tensions between the northern and southern U.S. states. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and the post-Civil War Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments nullified the decision...

As to those unexpected results:

Following the ruling, Scott and his family were returned to Emerson's widow. In the meantime, her brother John Sanford had been committed to an insane asylum.

In 1850, Irene Sanford Emerson had remarried. Her new husband, Calvin C. Chaffee, was an abolitionist, who shortly after their marriage was elected to the U.S. Congress. Chaffee was apparently unaware that his wife owned the most prominent slave in the United States until one month before the Supreme Court decision. By then it was too late for him to intervene. Chaffee was harshly criticized for having been married to a slaveholder. He persuaded Irene to return Scott to the Blow family, his original owners. By this time, the Blow family had relocated to Missouri and become opponents of slavery. Henry Taylor Blow manumitted the four Scotts on May 26, 1857, less than three months after the Supreme Court ruling...

The Dred Scott Case ended the prohibition of slavery in federal territories and prohibited Congress from regulating slavery anywhere, overturning the Missouri compromise, enabling "popular sovereignty", and bloody Kansas.[9]

The ruling of the court helped catalyze sentiment for Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the three constitutional amendments ratified shortly after the Civil War: the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, abolishing slavery, granting former slaves citizenship, and conferring citizenship to anyone born in the United States (excluding those subject to a foreign power such as children of foreign ambassadors).[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott

Interesting that his case arose in the region where Paul Ryan has called for the elimination of those three Constitutional amendments. He claims when the GOP control enough state legislatures they'll call a Constitutional Convention and re-write it. As a Koch lackey, we know pretty much what the new Constitution will look like. Remarks by the GOP show it, too.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024770080#post17

I found it horrifying that Scott argued his case so well, using the Bill of Rights, and lost. But the USSC decided that as a black person, those rights did not apply to him. The USSC seems determined to apply that standard to women now.

Please note the picture in that thread by Ashling:

Have you seen the new uniforms... er, costumes?



http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024770080#op

And now VT and CA are calling for Paul Ryan's Article 5 Constitutional Convention. It's alleged it it will take care of the USSC's Citizens United decision, which is not what the Move to Amend organization calls for in their work to overturn Citizens United. They want one Amendment, not opening the whole of the federal government, tossing the tools into the hands of wingnuts. Be assured, they will be the majority that show up.

It's a Trojan horse being given to us by the Koch brothers and theocrats. This newest decision, like the buffer zone, is prepping Americans to accept what will be the Kochstitution. Few seem to understand we're falling into their hands.

BTW, I enjoyed Thom saying 'Newt fricking Gingrich' as he is usually very polite. But then, the Newt was never known for his manners:



to madfloridian:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023759636

Very interesting thread there from 2013.