With all the dilemma's and conspiracies surrounding Healthcare Reform, one might ask them self is this reform is constitutional. Many political leaders have been speaking out that the government requiring all citizens to purchase the healthcare public option is merely unconstitutional and doesn't justify freedom by any means. Government sticking their nose in individuals personal lives has never worked out quite right. If you recall the United States Constitution almost never came about, because the southern states didn't want to give up their rights. So slavery was adopted to ratify the new constitution and do away with the Articles of Confederation. Then in the 1920's the government tried to outlaw the sale and consumption of alcohol. What happened there you ask, well the country as a whole began to rebel. Political leaders became even more corrupt, and ultimately the 18th amendment was repealed by the 21st amendment. So what I am trying to convey to you all is that requiring all Americans to purchase healthcare IS unconstitutional. So the question I have (please comment I like feedback) is outlawing illegal drugs unconstitutional since it's manipulating human behavior? (politicalpluralism.com)
Obama’s Lucky Streak
Mark Sanford's pain is the president's gain.
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South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is smart, handsome, principled—and no longer a political threat to President Obama in 2012. After going AWOL and admitting to an extramarital affair in Argentina, the now resigned chairman of the Republican Governors Association and oft-mentioned presidential candidate is political toast. But Sanford's pain is Obama's gain. By my count, Sanford is no less than the 10th horndog whose comeuppance has benefited Obama. This happily married president always seems to get a piece of the action.
Obama first realized the political benefits of sex scandals in 1995 when his congressman on Chicago's South Side, Mel Reynolds, resigned (and went to jail) for having sex with a 16-year-old. A local state senator, Alice Palmer, left her seat to run for Congress in a special election; Palmer lost to Jesse Jackson Jr. and decided to try to reclaim her seat. But it was too late: Obama challenged her petitions, kept Palmer off the ballot and won election to public office for the first time.
Obama also benefited from the mother of all sex scandals, President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. Had Clinton managed to keep his pants zipped, his vice president, Al Gore, almost certainly would have been elected president in 2000. (A big George W. Bush campaign theme was to "restore honor and dignity to the Oval Office"). If Gore had served two terms, in 2008 the country would have been ready for a different kind of change—the Republicans. No Monica. No Obama.
A footnote to the impeachment drama came when then House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had blasted Clinton for Lewinsky, was himself revealed to be in an extramarital affair with a staffer. Just as the House was voting on impeachment, his successor, Bob Livingston, was outed as an adulterer (by Larry Flynt) and forced to resign. The double whammy undermined the Republican revolution; the new speaker, Denny Hastert, proved a weaker leader than Gingrich and the GOP slowly lost seats. This put control of the House within the reach of Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats in 2006.
Emanuel succeeded that year in retaking the House for many reasons, but the one Republicans pointed to most often was the case of Florida Republican Mark Foley, the GOP representative who tried to seduce underage House pages online. By some accounts, the Foley scandal, which erupted just weeks before the '06 midterms, cost Republicans 12 seats. President Obama now enjoys a comfortable Democratic margin in the House that lets him put a progressive stamp on legislation.
But Obama wouldn't have been elected to the U.S. Senate, much less president, without a few more sex scandals yet. In the 2004 Illinois Democratic Senate primary, Obama badly trailed multimillionaire Blair Hull for months. He and Michelle agreed that if he lost that race, he was out of politics. Then divorce papers revealed that Hull's wife had accused him of physically assaulting her. (Hull said he didn't want to "relitigate" his divorce.) Obama was already moving in the polls, and he had to fend off other candidates, but after the scandal he surged into the lead and won the primary.
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