Ken Cuccinelli: A 'Death Panel' of One

As the Washington Post, Richmond Times Dispatch and other newspapers are reporting, Virginia's resident nutcase and village idiot, Ken Cuccinelli, has already filed suit challenging the new federal health care reform legislation signed into law b President Obama today. Cuccinelli falsely campaigned as a supposed moderate - moderate compared to Attila the Hun or the Mideval Inquisition? - and now is confirming that he is a Kool-Aid drinking teabagger and false Christian in the uber-Christian mold of The Family Foundation and other "family values" organizations which hate everyone that doesn't just look just like its lemming like members. Here are highlights from the Washington Post:
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Virginia's lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal health-care reform law has formally been filed. Within five minutes of President Obama signing the bill at a White House ceremony this morning, state solicitor general E. Duncan Getchell Jr. and Deputy Attorney General for Civil Litigation Wesley G. "Wes" Russell Jr. headed to the elevators of their sixth-floor office in Richmond and strolled outside, where they were greeted by television cameras, for the short walk to Richmond's federal courthouse.
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The suit argues that the legislation's mandate that individuals purchase health insurance exceeds the federal government's power to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. And it asserts that Virginia has standing to sue over the issue because of a new state law that prohibits the mandate in the state. "The collision between the state and federal schemes also creates an immediate, actual controversy involving antagonistic assertions of right," Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli writes in the suit.
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As an attorney with thirty three (33) years of legal practice (some of it in major law firms and a Fortune 50 corporation), I find Cuccinelli's arguments disingenuous at best. As Senator Max Baucus explained in a Washington Post article, Cuccinelli's law suit is likely frivolous, and one can only hope the Court awards sanctions against Cuccinelli personally. Here are highlights:
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Those of us who voted to proceed to the health reform bill and who voted for cloture on the substitute amendment take seriously our oath to support and defend the Constitution. And we have looked at this question seriously and concluded that the penalty is constitutional.
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And those who study constitutional law as a line of work have drawn that same conclusion. Most legal scholars who have considered the question of a requirement for individuals to purchase health coverage argue forcefully that the requirement is within Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.
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Take Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a renowned constitutional law scholar, author of four popular treatises and casebooks on constitutional law, and Dean of the University of California Irvine School of Law. Professor Chemerinsky has gone so far to say that those arguing on the other side of the issue do not have “the slightest merit from a constitutional perspective.”
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As a second example, I refer my colleagues to an article by Mark Hall, law professor at Wake Forest University. Professor Hall’s article is a comprehensive, peer-reviewed analysis of the constitutionality of a Federal individual responsibility requirement.
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In it, Professor Hall concludes that there are no plausible Tenth Amendment or States’ rights issues arising from the imposition by Congress of an individual responsibility to maintain health coverage.
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Professor Hall notes further that health care and health insurance both affect and are distributed through interstate commerce. And that gives Congress the power to legislate a coverage requirement using its Commerce Clause powers.
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Turning now to how Cuccinelli's lawsuit is betraying the needs and interests of Virginians, the Huffington Post has an informative column. Besides demonstrating that Cuccinelli is uncaring to the reality of many Virginians, it also shows Cuccinelli's obscene hypocrisy when he claims that he is a believing Christians. Christ must want to vomit - as must Thomas Jefferson. Here are highlights from the Huffington Post:

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In Virginia, where I live, Cuccinelli could ultimately deprive some two million people of care they would otherwise receive under the new legislation. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates:
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1.2 million [Virginia] residents who do not currently have insurance and 344,000 residents who have nongroup insurance could get affordable coverage through the health insurance exchange.
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684,000 residents could qualify for premium tax credits to help them purchase health coverage.
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1.1 million seniors would receive free preventive services.
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190,000 seniors would have their brand-name drug costs in the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole" halved.
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93,400 small businesses could be helped by a small business tax credit to make premiums more affordable.
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The people who will be most harmed if Cuccinelli succeeds will be Virginians who have jobs but make too much to qualify for Medicaid and too little to afford health insurance. That would include most of the people who live in Wise County, located in Virginia's Appalachian Southwest.
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While I have not investigated the issue yet, I wonder how long it will be before rational Virginians will be looking for the mechanism to have Cuccinelli removed from office or whatever means is available under Virginia law.