Justice Antonin Scalia will speak today to a group of Tea Party Members of Congress organized by ultra-conservative Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), an arrangement that even President George W. Bush's former ethics attorney finds questionable:
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[T]he decision of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to speak at the first class on Monday has raised legal hackles about his participation in what turns out to be a closed-door event in conjunction with Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus.
One of the most outspoken critics is University of Minnesota law professor Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush. Painter notes that Bachmann is among 63 House members who filed a brief in support of a lawsuit by more than two dozen states challenging President Obama's health care overhaul. The case could easily end up before the Supreme Court.
Yet, if Bachmann is expecting Scalia to validate her comically wrong view that health reform is unconstitutional, she's in for a rude awakening. Like most of the right-wing lawmakers challenging the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Bachmann's brief focuses its ire on the provision requiring most Americans to either carry insurance or pay slightly more income taxes. But, in a case called Gonzales v. Raich, Justice Scalia practically drew a roadmap to a future opinion declaring this provision constitutional.
Scalia wrote in Gonzales that “where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective,â€
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