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Senator Lamar Alexander, Chairman of the Help Committee, gave my book an excellent plug.

#Obamacare is unraveling at an alarming rate. pic.twitter.com/4jzra45xEq

— Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) September 14, 2016

I am reading The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right by Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse, and came across a hilarious anecdote. At the same time the Nixon administration obtained a district court injunction against the New York Times for publishing the Pentagon Papers case, the government was also pursuing a similar injunction against the Washington Post. However, unlike in New York, the district court denied the injunction. As a result, the Post expected it to be appealed (quickly) up to Circuit Justice Burger, who oversaw emergency appeals from the D.C. Circuit. Here’s what happened:

The Justice Department then went to the federal district court for the District of Columbia seeking to restrain publication by the Post. In the Post case, the court denied the government’s request. The government appealed. Fearful that the Justice Department might ask Chief Justice Burger for an immediate order restraining publication, the Post sent two reporters to Burger’s home in Arlington, Virginia, to watch for government lawyers. Near midnight, the Post reporters, who had been unable to reach Burger by telephone, knocked on his door to tell him what they were doing there. The chief justice answered the door in his bathrobe, carrying a long pistol which he held in his right hand, muzzle down, throughout the few minute conversation with the reporters, whom he told to wait down the street. The reporters wanted the Post to publish the story of Burger’s attire and weapon, but Bradlee was fearful of the cartoons that might result and antagonize the chief justice just as the paper was about to appear before him, so he killed the story.

Whenever I think of CJ Burger, all I can think about is his position that the individual-rights model of the 2nd Amendment is a “fraud.” I’m glad to see at least he was a gun owner, who believed in defending himself against rapacious reporters from the Washington Post.

 

The September 26 issue of National Review has a preview of Unraveled.  Here is the introduction:

Despite the best-laid plans of our central planners, Obamacare is unraveling. In 2009, the Obama administration proposed an ambitious bill that aimed to seamlessly expand health insurance for millions of Americans. The uninsurable would be guaranteed access to insurance. The insured would keep the plans they liked. The uninsured would be penalized. Profitable insurers would transfer their gains to unprofitable competitors. Online exchanges — the mechanism to hold these mandates together — would allow customers to choose from a wide range of subsidized insurance policies. Or at least that was the plan.

We are only three years into this bold, persistent experiment, and virtually all of the experts’ forecasts have already been proven wrong. The carefully crafted measures designed to stabilize the markets have faltered. The uninsurable are using coverage that is far more expensive than anticipated. The insured lost the plans they liked and are now confronting skyrocketing premiums and dwindling choices. The uninsured are not signing up, leaving risk pools skewed toward older and sicker customers. Insurers are suffering far greater losses than expected and are rapidly fleeing the exchanges. As I discuss in my new book, Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power, these failings are the entirely foreseeable consequences of the law’s fractious birth, illegal implementation, and arrogant central planning. A careful study of Obamacare’s history leads to a bleak forecast of the law’s uncertain future.

And from the conclusion:

The next president will face a stark political reality: Half the country hates Obamacare and wants no part of it; the other half thinks that Obamacare didn’t go far enough and now wants single-payer coverage. Efforts to reform the law will have to consider that roughly 14 million people now rely on Obamacare’s expanded Medicaid coverage and about 10 million people have purchased subsidized insurance on the ACA exchanges. These facts make the “repeal and replace” mantra almost impossible to fulfill. But we should not lose sight of the tens of millions of Americans who were harmed by the ACA: those whose plans were canceled or who saw premiums increase, deductibles skyrocket, networks shrink, or their choice of policies decline to one.

I am not sanguine about the opportunity for reform. The haughty decision to transform almost 20 percent of the American economy without any bipartisan buy-in, with the expectation that the law’s opponents would simply fall in line, has poisoned the well for future health-care reform. The ACA will no doubt muddle along for the next few years, until premiums grow so high that the consensus builds for a public option. But we should not be confident that this centralization will work any better than the last one. The same planners who assured us that the ACA could operate without a public option cannot be trusted to reform our health-care markets with a public option. Soon enough, Obamacare will unravel and collapse under its own weight. At that point, we will be on the road to single-payer.

 

My colleague Julie Silverbrook of ConSource featured the ConSource-Harlan Institute Virtual Supreme Court Competition in her Washington Times article on civic education. Here is a snippet:

National Constitutional Literacy Campaign partners host several of these annual competitions, including the ConSource-Harlan Institute Virtual Supreme Court Competition, the Center for Civic Education’s We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution Competition, the Constitution Bee, the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project’s Annual Moot Court Competition, the Nethercutt Foundation Citizenship Tournament, and One Generation Away’s Roots of Liberty national essay contest.

Despite expressing deep concerns about where the country is headed, most of the students expressed positive views about the future. They draw this optimism, in part, from their experiences with student competitions, which showed these young citizens how to effect positive change at the local, state and national level.

Tanya Reyna, a winner of the ConSource-Harlan Institute Virtual Supreme Court Competition, noted that while her local community in Texas suffers from “an influx of drugs and criminals” and has dampened her views about the future of her community and the nation, her experience with the Virtual Supreme Court Competition “eased [her] apprehension” about the future. She said that meeting students, lawyers, professors and judges willing to take time out of their busy schedules “to inform younger generations of citizens about our legal system,” demonstrated to her that “as long as there are citizens like them, America will continue to hold a bright future.”

This picture was taken at the National Constitution Center for the final round of our tournament. I am joined by Howard Bashman, Kim Roosevelt, Julie Silverbrook, and Chief Judge McKee (CA3).

Last year, I asked a student in my separation of powers seminar what the President should do if he wants to change the law, but Congress will not vote for it. His answer: “Sign an executive order.” I was at once stunned and depressed. With that answer, I realized an entire generation of students will come of age with more familiar with the pen-and-phone than the checks-and-balances. And that stuck in my craw.

The Washington Times invited a number of leaders in civic education to write about the Presidency and the Constitution. (Kudos to my colleague Julie Silverbrook at Consource for organizing this impressive undertaking). I decided to explore this topic further.

My entry is titled “Unteaching Professor Obama’s Constitutional Lessons.” Here is a snippet:

President Obama’s illegal executive actions concerning the Affordable Care Act, education and immigration have inflicted irreparable damage to the rule of law. But his disregard of the Constitution has an even more troubling implication for today’s youth.

A generation ago, ABC-TV’s animated “Schoolhouse Rock!” taught children that the law is changed when the legislature and president agree.

Today, Professor Obama teaches a different lesson: When Congress refuses to enact my agenda, I will use my pen and phone to bypass them.

As today’s students become tomorrow’s leaders, the role of civic education becomes all the more critical to ensure that the checks and balances continue to prevail over the pen and phone.

…

The president, himself a former constitutional law lecturer, should be far more careful when he brazenly teaches students across the country that the separation of powers can be ignored when the ends justify the means. Long after DAPA is gone, this tragic lesson will linger in the hearts and minds of our citizenry, and our republic will be worse off for it.

Or, if you want the short-version, watch this SNL parody of “Schoolhouse Rock.”