One of President Obama’s major goals as president is to pass a universal health care bill.  This is a very bad and deadly idea for many reasons.  Why would one be against government health care?  Many people feel that this is a great idea and that it will solve their health insurance problems.  After all, who would be against free health care?  The first rule of life is that if something looks too good to be true – it is.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

What government agency, with the exception of the military, do you know that is efficient and has great customer service?  Have you ever called the Social Security Administration, the DMV, or the Post Office?  Government, by definition is a poor manager of any business.

Second, would you rather be in charge of your health care or would you trust the government?  Having universal health care is very dangerous to your health.  All you have to do is to look at countries that have such care, countries such as Canada or any European country.  While I was in Italy last May I had a discussion about socialized medicine with an Italian who loved it.  He told me that he had had a heart by-pass operation and paid nothing.  This sounds great until you look into government-sponsored health care.  First of all, given the inefficiency inherent in government run businesses, the cost would be astronomical.  The Obama health plan is estimated to cost one 1.6 trillion dollars for a ten year period, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office – that is one thousand, six hundred billion dollars.  Additionally, this plan would leave 36 million people without insurance. This cost would easily triple the national debt, consequently causing untold damage to our economy and causing extensive inflation.

Third, I’m sure you’re aware that Social Security is sick and dying.  It is estimated that Social Security will be broke by 2017.  If we cannot afford a small socialized program such as social security, how can we afford to have the entire population on a socialized program?  Where would the money come from?  Medicare, for instance, pays hospitals 71% of what private insurance pays them.  What would happen to doctors?  Would they be attracted to practice with such meager payments?  What would happen to quality of care?

In England where they have socialized health care, an average person making $60,000 per year would pay 45% in income taxes alone– $27,000 for one year; the equivalent person in the United States with this yearly income pays less than 10% in income taxes, or $6,000.  You call this free health care? Could you buy a good, private health care for that extra $21,000 you just paid for one year?  I think so.

President Obama says that one reason for having socialized health care is that is would provide competition to private health care providers.  Currently, there are about 1,300 private companies providing health care insurance.  Competition?  President Obama says that if you like your private plan you can keep it.  Well, this sounds good but, again, this is deceptive.  Government, because it has huge resources, can drown private companies by, at first, providing health care that is cheaper.  This would drive all private companies out of the business.  Once private companies are out of the business, you’re stuck with the government and if you don’t like the services they provide, well you can go to Canada, or Mexico, or pay for a private doctor.  Does this sound good?  I don’t think so.

There are many, many more reasons.  You could fill a book of 500 pages to explain all the reasons why universal health care is deadly to your health.

Change is the buzzword for the Barack Obama campaign for President of the United States in 2008.  The word “change” can mean many things, both good and bad.  One of the changes that Obama wants to make is in the Supreme Court.  It is estimated that there will be, at least, two or three vacancies in the Supreme Court in the first term of the next president.  Obama has made it perfectly clear that his choice of a Supreme Court judge will not be one like the last two judges appointed by President Bush, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.  Obama will appoint someone in the leftist, activist judge mode of justices Ruth Bader-Ginsburg or David Suter.  This also means that no one who is, or possibly could be pro-life, or a conservative, would ever be considered. 

There are two very distinctive philosophies in the current Supreme Court.  Those on the left are activist judges and those who are not are considered strict constructionists.  Judges Scalia, Alito and Thomas, for instance, are very much strict constructionist, while the liberal judges such as Suter, Ginsburg and Stevens are activist judges.  Activist judges believe in a “living Constitution.”  A living Constitution means that they can interpret the law to mean what they believe, regardless of whether it is in the Constitution or not.  The famous 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade is a famous example of judicial activism run amuck.  The right to an abortion is nowhere to be found in the Constitution or any of the Constitutional Amendments.   In Roe they found a “right to privacy” in the 14^th Amendment.  However, such a right is nowhere to be found in the 14^th Amendment.   So how did they justify it?  They justified it by coming up with what they called “penumbras and emanations,” meaning they somehow added a connection even though there was none.  Other famous Supreme Court decisions that used penumbras and emanations were Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. 

 If you’re still mystified by penumbras and emanations, so is everybody else.  Translation:  you can make up any connection you want from any law - in other words plain judicial tyranny.  This should scare anyone, liberal or conservative because it represents a judiciary that is out of control and not representative of anybody.  A current example of judicial tyranny just happened in California.  The California Supreme Court ruled that same sex marriage is constitutional; despite the fact that California voters voted 60% to say that marriage is between a man and a woman (Proposition 22).  Yet, five activist judges told us that they know better than the entire State population.   Where did they find it in the California Constitution?  They did not – penumbras and emanations; they made it up. 

The August 2008 issue of Townhall.com Magazine has a brilliant article by Curt Levey titled “Holding the Line.”  This article clearly describes the fallacies and outright dangers to our society that judicial activism can produce.  Levey states, “judicial activism is not the failure to follow precedent.  Courts must generally adhere to their past decisions and those of higher courts.  But, as law professor Gary Lawson notes, “if the Constitution say X and a prior judicial decision says Y, a court has not merely the power, but the obligation, to prefer the Constitution.   Judicial activism threatens, not only the rule of law, but also the American political process and, potentially, each and every American.  Because judicial activism lacks any standards, it cedes unchecked power to judges.”  

Judicial activism is a favorite of the political left and the Democratic Party.  Since most of what they want cannot happen through the ballot box, such as the definition of marriage in Proposition 22 in California, an activist court, overturns the will of the people and rules for homosexual marriage.  Activist judges are the bread and butter of the left.   A few years ago the 9^th Circuit Court ruled that in the Pledge of Allegiance,” under God” was unconstitutional, overturning the United States Congress with passed this law in 1954.  The 2-1 ruling overturns the will of the entire country’s representatives.  Laws are made by the legislatures of the states or the Congress of the United States, these some bodies can change them, but activist judges do not want legislatures to rule, they want to rule.  This is an obvious contradiction.  The job of any judge is to rule on the law, as written, not to make it.  They conveniently ignore this simple axiom. 

Many of my fellow Republicans are lukewarm about John McCain.  McCain would have been my last pick for President, but compared to what we would get in Obama, it is a slam-dunk for me to vote for McCain.  Judges is one of the reasons.  Judges are on the bench for as long as 40 years.  A liberal, leftist activist judge would do irreparable harm to the United States and the rule of law.  We would no longer be people ruled by the will of the people but by the will of one or two unelected, unaccountable judges.  This is extremely dangerous and will hurt our country.  We do not want judges who make laws, that is the job of our legislature.  Electing Obama would be the same as picking activist judges who will make law, rather than ruling on the law as written.