Alaska to join states' health bill lawsuit

[cal04]

http://www.adn.com/2010/04/20/1241989/alaska-to-join-states-health-bill.html


Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said Tuesday the state will join 20 others led mostly by Republican governors in suing to overturn the health care overhaul bill signed into law last month by President Barack Obama.

Calling it an "unprecedented exercise of congressional power," Parnell said Alaska would follow the other states in challenging the constitutionality of the mandate that people buy health care insurance or pay a fine.

"For the first time we now have a federal government dictating our economic activity," Parnell said. "Alaska will use the courts to fight this federal encroachment on our citizens."

(snip)
Many constitutional law experts say that the health insurance mandate falls within the constitutional purview of Congress. They say there are plenty of other cases that show Congress has just as much authority to regulate economic inactivity as it does activity, said Stanford University Law School professor David Freeman Engstrom. It will be difficult for the Supreme Court to step away from those precedents, Engstrom said.

(snip)
"At a time when Alaska's unemployment rate is at record highs and families are struggling to make ends meet, the administration of Gov. Sean Parnell has decided to spend countless hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lawsuit of dubious merit which is unlikely to be successful.," Begich said.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. He got a scathing e-mail from me,

(like that's going to do any good). We call Sean Parnell, SP 2.0. As if the first version SP didn't do enough damage to our credibility...