Search Results for: adventures in administrative

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image I wrote about the problem of the administrative state in “A new old regime,” my review of Philip Hamburger’s audaciously great book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Plot spoiler: the answer is yes.) Even with a lot of help from my friends at the Claremont Institute, it took me a long time to understand the problem. Professor Hamburger expedited the process. The problem is the unconstitutionality, unwisdom, unaccountability, and lawlessness inherent »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image Observers commenting on the administration’s latest improvisations in Obamacare have generally relied on the cheat sheet issued by the Department of Health and Human Services this past Thursday. The cheat sheet summarizes regulations promulgated by the Department. In his Forbes column “Government takeover,” Avik Roy posts a link to the regulations (interim final rule) here. The regulations are an unusual exercise in rule by decree. Cloaked in an air of »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image The Wall Street Journal devotes an editorial to the latest decree promulgated by Queen Seeb and the powers-that-be in the Obama administration: Late Thursday, the Health and Human Services Department suddenly released a new regulation that explains “there have been unforeseen barriers to enrollment on the exchanges.” The passive voice is necessary because the barriers are all the result of politically driven delays, the botched website and the exchanges that »

Adventures in administrative law, cont’d

Featured image FNC’s Wendell Goler asked Obama administration flack Jay Carney about the Obama administration’s suspension of the Obamacare employer mandate for one year. The Obamacare statute expressly provides a commencement date of January 1, 2014. Whence the legal authority on the part of the president to postpone it? The video of Goler’s exchange with Carney is below. Goler asks a good question, one directly raised by Michael McConnell’s Wall Street Journal »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image Obama presents himself as detached from the events giving rise to the controversies that now beset his administration. He’s just the president. Obama has found this a useful pose in the face of the exposure of the IRS as the handmaiden of his efforts to help friends and harm enemies. He has touted the IRS as an independent agency. How can he be responsible for the shenanigans of agents that »

Adventures in Ad Law, cont’d

Featured image The whole idea of “administrative law” — regulations with the force of law promulgated by executive agencies pursuant to powers delegated by Congress — squares uneasily at best with the Constitution and its scheme of separated powers. Obamacare presents us with a case study that amounts to a reductio ad absurdum. The agencies promulgating Obamacare regulations will produce a code that rivals the United States Code in length and complexity. »

Adventures in Ad Law

Featured image The whole idea of “administrative law” — regulations with the force of law promulgated by executive agencies pursuant to powers delegated by Congress — squares uneasily at best with the Constitution and its scheme of separated powers. Obamacare presents us with a case study that amounts to a reductio ad absurdum. The agencies promulgating Obamacare regulations will produce a code that rivals the United States Code in length and complexity. »

Sixth Circuit lifts mandate stay

Featured image John and I have declared the war on Covid over, but President Biden has painted the administration into the proverbial corner. He promised to extirpate the virus and means for us to die trying. In his blandly titled September 9 “action plan” titled Path Out of the Pandemic, Biden directed OSHA to issue a rule requiring private sector employers with 100 or more employees to mandate that employees either get »

Everything not forbidden…

Featured image We seem to be going down the path leading to everything not forbidden is compulsory. The Biden administration is writing one version of the totalitarian rule into administrative law with the OSHA “emergency temporary standard” requiring employers with 100 or more employees to “develop, implement, and enforce a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, with an exception for employers that instead adopt a policy requiring employees to either get vaccinated or elect »

Thoughts on Liberty on the Fifth of July

Featured image As we often do, we spent the 4th of July with our relatives in South Dakota. Independence Day is a good time to be in South Dakota, as the spirit of liberty shines a little brighter there than in some other precincts. This is manifested, in a small way, in the lavish fireworks displays that South Dakotans mount–not just towns, but individuals. People are not trusted with such dangerous explosives »

Banana republic stuff

Featured image I started this series of posts on the regulations promulgated under Obamacare as “Adventures in administrative law.” I recently resumed and rechristened it “Banana republic stuff,” courtesy of Charles Krauthammer. Last month’s installment of banana republic stuff came courtesy of the Treasury/IRS statement announcing regulations that delayed the Obamacare requirement for some employers — those with between 50 and 99 full time workers — and modified it for larger employers. »

Banana republic stuff

Featured image I started this series of posts on the regulations promulgated under Obamacare as “Adventures in administrative law.” Today it continues as “Banana republic stuff,” courtesy of Charles Krauthammer. Yesterday’s installment of banana republic stuff came courtesy of the Treasury/IRS statement announcing regulations that delayed the Obamacare requirement for some employers — those with between 50 and 99 full time workers — and modified it for larger employers. Here is the »

Obamacare: A man-caused disaster

Featured image In the Obama administration’s continuing rule by decree, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced that those whose health insurance policies were terminated (notwithstanding Obama’s vow to the contrary) will be allowed to buy catastrophic coverage and will be exempt from the statutory penalty if they choose to escape from Obamacare next year. Robert Pear reports in the Times that Sebelius “disclosed the sudden policy shift in a letter to Senator »

Queen Seeb approximately

Featured image Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle summarizes the conference call for journalists yesterday afternoon with Kathleen Sebelius and other members of the Obamacare team in which the powers-that-be announced further decrees and encouragements to smooth the pending implementation of Obamacare on January 1: · Insurers will be required to accept payment for policies beginning Jan. 1 as late as Dec. 31, and they will be “encouraged” to accept payment after that. »

Some call it law

Featured image President Obama and his minions have taken to instructing us that Obamacare is the law of the land. But it’s a funny kind of law — a law for the Age of Obama. Like words in the mouth of Humpty Dumpty, Obamacare is a law that means just what Obama chooses it to mean — neither more nor less. A law that is equal to the will of the ruler. »

That Obamacare magic

Featured image In the 2012 election results I learned that just about everything I “know” is wrong. One thing I thought I knew was that the average American’s natural sense of religious tolerance would be grossly offended by the Obamacare contraception mandate. False! And that the average American would find the administration’s hypothetical solution — the magical provision of the contraceptive benefit at no expense to objecting religious institutions (narrowly defined) — »

Notre Dame v. Sebelius: Ten notes

Featured image Yesterday the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other high ranking officers of the Obama administration. The complaint is available online here. I urge readers to check it out for themselves. It is a document of great interest. In this post I offer a few observations. 1. It was only three years ago that the University of Notre Dame invited President Obama to »