Back up to speed

Have you all missed me? Contrary to rumors that I am making up now in order to create hype, I have not passed on, and am finally back to give you all a fresh dose of Leaning Right and Left!

The biggest story of the past few months has no doubt been Health Care Reform. For the most part, the reforms enacted seem positive, like provisions banning insurance refusal for "pre-existing conditions". What worries me is the Individual Mandate, set to take effect in 2014, that requires nearly ALL Americans to purchase a Federally-approved health insurance plan or pay a substantial penalty. Nowhere in the Constitution is Congress given the right to impose such a requirement on the people, and it would seem that the 9th and 10th amendments expressly disallow such a huge federal intrusion into what should be the domain of the people and the states. As one GOP congressman said during floor debate, "The [Federal] government can't make us buy insurance, a car, or even a box of doughnuts!" Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and 13 other state Attorneys General have, in fact, filed a lawsuit on these very grounds, and I hope the courts use this opportunity to fix what would have been an otherwise positive bill.

In other news, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, sank, and is now leaking thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day. I have been an ardent supporter of offshore oil drilling in the past, and my support hinged on the fact that (excluding the 1979 Ixtoc I incident caused by the notoriously mismanaged Mexican PEMEX) there had been no major oil spills linked directly to drilling. The environmental catastrophe that seems to be upon us in the Gulf has thrown a wrench into the works of that line of reasoning. As a result, I believe that my support for conservationism comes first, and unless the current disaster is determined to be the cause of sabotage or a mistake that can be easily avoided in the future, I have no choice but to back off of my support. I sincerely hope that efforts to minimize the spill's impact come to fruition in the next few days.