Nick is a soldier who recently served an eight-month tour in Afghanistan.  Here is a video of how Chuck, his dog, welcomed him home.

There are a number of constitutional and logical slips in the seductive argument that Paul Krugman puts forward in favor of the constitutionality of the individual mandate.  First, the question why any form of health insurance involves a question of “interstate commerce” at all.  Under the current elastic and indefensible definitions of interstate commerce, any form of local activity that influences the quantity and price of goods in interstate commerce becomes itself a form of interstate commerce, at which point there is precious little that lies outside that domain. 

Note the potential reach of this argument  by the standard definition that Krugman embraces, getting sick and buying insurance influences the ability of the United States to deal with foreign nations, so that Congress can presumably regulate it as a form of commerce with foreign nations.  More impressively, since the health of their populations influences health in this country, why not say that the Constitution gives the Congress the power to expand the health care benefits that Canada, Great Britain and the rest of the world supplies to their own population.  It is a form of constitutional newspeak to treat all these local activities as though they were commerce among the several states, when they are, most emphatically anything but.

Tonight, as I am sure you’re all aware, is Earth Hour. I hope you all intend to take this event as seriously as I shall. First, I shall raid my attic for my last stash of rarer-than-hen’s-teeth incandescent light bulbs – you know, the kind without mercury in them; the kind that lights up a room; the kind that doesn’t give you headaches – and plug them into every available socket. Then, during Earth Hour, I shall light up my house like a Christmas tree, while turning on every conceivable electrical appliance, perhaps even to the point of opening my freezer door and melting the ice with a blow heater.

Yes, I know – what with the price of electricity these days, due to all those eco tariffs – that this will cost me a great deal of money. But that’s the kind of guy I am. I’m doing it not for me but for the Children of Tomorrow. I want them to have a future, a meaningful future with jobs, and a functioning economy and power on demand rather than rationed according to the whim of some Lisa-Jackson-style Eco Commissar.

That simple and eloquent sentence, by writer Danielle Bean in the National Catholic Register, says it all.  An expectant mother, in the hospital with appendicitis, is told that the young life inside her has some problems and will likely be disabled somehow.  She was advised to abort the baby.  What if?

Some decisions in life do not lend themselves to a “do over.”  A pebble cast into the water, produces unforeseen ripples, …or not, depending on the decision of the person holding it.  What if this young woman had followed the doctor’s advice?  She would have never known the unique gifts and beauty of that child.  She would have been deprived of that person’s love, and of the joy that only that person could bring into her life.  The world, for that matter, would have been deprived forever of the magnificent talent of Andrea Bocelli, because that young woman was his mother.

In responding to Peter’s request that I address the question posed by Paul Krugman, I can do no better than to quote extensively from a piece entitled What is Wrong with the Individual Mandate? that I posted last December in response to a similar question posed by ParisParamus:

There is a simple answer to the question . . . . Government exists first and foremost for the sake of our protection. Without it, our lives and our property would not effectively be our own. Government exists also to promote our well-being. For its support, however, taxation is necessary, and we have tacitly agreed that, to be legitimate, these taxes must be passed by our elected representatives. By our own consent, we give up a certain proportion of our earnings for these purposes.

I’ll be watching the Final Four from New Hampshire tomorrow night. This time of year is complicated and emotional for me. My middle daughter was born on Final Four Saturday in 2006. My father died just weeks after being thrilled by Butler’s run in 2010. It was the last great joyful experience he had; a last-ditch drug to battle his cancer, a kind of steroid, gave him the energy to watch both games and talk enthusiastically about them for days. 

Tomorrow’s contest brings back another memory for me, my first ever visit to the state of Kentucky. I figured it would look something like North Carolina or Virginia, Southern states I’d spent considerable time in. But it was starkly different. I arrived at dusk, and the rolling ride over local roads wound past blue fields lined by white picket fences and across wooden bridges over burbling brooks. While there, I saw a nighttime horse race under lights. I saw Rick Pitino coach a game at the University of Kentucky. I saw The Age of Innocence in a Louisville theater and went for ice cream afterward. I visited this historic Shaker village — what native Staten Islander knows of Shakers? — in Harrodsburg and went to Dairy Queen for the first and only time in my life. I left with a determination to live forever in the state after graduating college. That was 1993. I’ve never been back.