The interpretation of the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution has been a wild ride with serious implications. The clause grants Congress the power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several States”. For decades it has been used to justify the federal government’s regulation of certain aspects of the economy. Recently, ObamaCare legislated the individual mandate, which will fine people for not obtaining health insurance beginning in 2014. The administration points to the Commerce Clause as their Constitutional right to impose the individual mandate and referred to the fine as a “tax” in court to defend the action as government’s “power to lay and collect taxes”.

Dean is right about the public option; it is unpopular and it should be. Obama is now trying to defend it in the courts as a tax even though he denied it was a tax for over a year! A poll by the Progressive Campaign Change Committee found that while people favored the public option 59% to 31%, people opposed the individual mandate without a public option 56% to 33%. According to Rassmussen, a slight majority actually supports health reform now. However, this is after Obama launched a $700,000 ad campaign (taxpayer financed) to “correct the record” after the bill had already been passed. Back in September, 56% of people opposed it.

Peter Schiff just lost the Republican nod for US Senator in Connecticut. If someone ever embodied the antithesis to the nation’s current approach, it is Schiff.

Scott Horton from Antiwar.com explains why there’s no reason to go to war with Iran. Aside by the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies are on record saying Iran is not attempting to build a nuclear weapon and the difference between enriched industrial uranium and enriched weapons grade uranium is something like 3.6% to 90% and more (which is no small difference), a war with Iran could mean the end of the United States.

American companies are not in robust financial shape. Federal Reserve data show that their debts have been rising, not falling. By some measures, they are now more leveraged than at any time since the Great Depression.

It is a law of economics that people respond to incentives, that’s just how it is, no way around it. Unfortunately, politicians like to ignore this little fact. When our government creates a reason to do something that we would find either unethical or unwise, typically unethical and unwise behavior will increase. And again, unfortunately, they have a bad habit of doing this.

We live in a country where we can lawfully slander a celebrity, but may not sell a kidney to save someone’s life.

By precedents set in the court system, we may defame and defile a celebrity because they have achieved “public figure” status, but may not sell a kidney for some hybrid incentive of monetary gain and altruism; one that, oh by the way, will save a person’s life.

A federal audit of $9.1 billion targeted for reconstruction in Iraq cannot account for more than 95 percent of it, a federal report said Tuesday.

H.R. 2454 is a train wreck of corporate welfare that ignores better alternatives and probably dedicates too much of our scarce resources to fighting climate change, but those are aside the point. The point here is that almost a year after the House passed cap-and-trade on April 20th, the massive BP oil leak started. Fortunately, they just capped the leak, hopefully for good, after it had been gushing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days. But the capped leak was and still is being used to push through cap-and-trade.

A few days ago a friend of mine asked me what I would say in an open letter to a group of Independents if they asked me what I thought of the financial reform bill that is currently being considered in Washington. The following is my open letter response to those Independents: