The Supreme Court has rejected a petition for expedited appeal from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who wanted the Supremes to hear his ObamaCare lawsuit before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals digs in, early next month.
Cuccinelli described the Supreme Court’s decision as “disappointing” but not “surprising,” noting that the Court “rarely expedites cases under its Rule 11.” He explained that he wanted an expedited review because “Virginia and other states are already spending huge sums to implement their portions of the health care act, businesses are already making decisions about whether to cut or keep employee health plans, and citizens are in limbo until the Supreme Court rules.”
A Fox News report notes this is the second time the Supreme Court has “denied an expedited review request from the law’s opponents.” Rule 11 “allows justices to hear cases of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice.” The Court clearly does not wish to wade into the bitter politics of the ObamaCare struggle any sooner than it has to... but Cuccinelli’s petition makes a convincing case that ruling on ObamaCare’s constitutionality is a matter of “compelling public importance.”
ObamaCare was drafted and signed with nauseating haste, shoved through Congress with political bribes and strong-arm tactics. Greedy politicians couldn’t wait to blow a trillion dollars of our money to force their big scheme on an unwilling populace. They certainly couldn’t wait to find out if the “individual mandate” at the heart of the scheme was permissible under the Constitution, when common sense rather strongly suggests that forcing free men to purchase a government-approved product would have raised a few eyebrows among the Founding Fathers.
Spend in haste, impose sanity at leisure. Of course a clear decision that would head off an enormous waste of both public and private money, along with the destruction of thousands of jobs, is not a matter of “compelling public importance.” We can just let that bubble through lower courts for another year or two.
The saga of ObamaCare’s imposition, exposure as a fraud, and painstaking repeal tells us far more about the insolvency of Big Government - and how we came to this perilous moment - than anything the President will ever say on the topic in a prepared speech. Billions of taxpayer dollars are a small price to pay for keeping things relatively peaceful in the Supreme Court for another year or two.
