A Florida judge ruled the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act unconstitutional on Monday in a case filed by 26 states, almost all of which have Republican governors. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, a Reagan appointee expected to rule against health care reform, said the individual health insurance mandate which goes into effect in 2014 is unconstitutional, and because it’s integral to the entire statute the whole thing should be thrown out. Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty said he was proud to be a part of the lawsuit.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications,” Vinson wrote in his opinion.

The case is the second in which a judge has ruled the mandate to be unconstitutional. Several other judges have dismissed challenges to the law, citing no evidence that the law is unconstitutional.

Pawlenty, who joined the suit in his capacity as governor but did not have the authority to make Minnesota a party to the suit, praised the decision.

“Today’s court ruling correctly affirms that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress’s health care takeover violates the U.S. Constitution,” he said in a statement. “An individual health-care mandate is an unconstitutional power grab by the Federal government and drags our health care system in the wrong direction. This ruling is a big victory for states’ rights, the U.S. Constitution and market-based health care reform. I was proud to join this federal lawsuit challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate and am optimistic that higher courts will uphold the ruling.”

Among the 26 states that joined the lawsuit are Minnesota’s neighbors Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Wisconsin joined the lawsuit several weeks ago after a Republican governor and attorney general were sworn in. Iowa joined at the request of its new Republican governor and has the unique distinction of both supporting and opposing health care reform. Its Democratic attorney general filed papers in support of the law’s constitutionality but didn’t block the governor from filing the lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.

North Dakota and South Dakota have been a party to the lawsuit since April 2010.

The case will be appealed in the 11th circuit appeals court.

Minnesota Capitol. Photo: Wikipedia

Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment Wednesday that would make Minnesota the first state to require a two-thirds majority vote in the legislature to approve federal laws affecting the state. “Minnesotans enjoy inherent, natural, God-given rights,” the bill states, and “Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers.”

The bill was introduced by state Sens. Mike Parry of Waseca, Bill Ingebrigtsen of Alexandria, and David Hann of Eden Prairie, and is a companion to a House bill introduced by Reps. Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa, Bruce Anderson of Buffalo, and Tom Emmer of Delano last month.

Emmer has also authored a resolution that would lay claim to Minnesota’s sovereignty: “[T]he State of Minnesota hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.”

The bills are part of a larger conservative push, following the election of President Barack Obama, to give states power to reject federal policies. Seven red states passed Tenth Amendment resolutions following Obama’s inauguration: Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Tennessee. Five others have passed a resolution since health care reform passed: Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming.

While Republicans in several states have proposed similar legislation, Minnesota’s bills would be the first to include legislative action — the two-thirds vote requirement — against the federal government.

Republicans in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District have gone even further: they recently passed a resolution calling for Minnesota to secede from union if the federal government exceeds its authority.

Here’s the full text of the bill introduced on Wednesday:

Section 1. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROPOSED.

An amendment to the Minnesota Constitution is proposed to the people. If the amendment is adopted, a section shall be added to article I, to read:

Sec. 18. Citizens of Minnesota are sovereign individuals, subject to Minnesota law and immune from any federal laws that exceed the federal government’s enumerated constitutional powers. A federal law does not apply in Minnesota unless that law is approved by a two-thirds vote of the members of each house of the legislature and is signed by the governor. Before voting to approve a federal law, each legislator must individually affirm that the legislator has read the federal law and understands it. Citizens of Minnesota enjoy inherent, natural, God-given rights as reflected in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution and the Minnesota Constitution. Minnesota citizens have the right to seek redress for any alleged violation of these rights committed by the state of Minnesota exclusively through a jury trial in a Minnesota court and through enactment of a change in Minnesota law.

1.19 Sec. 2. SUBMISSION TO VOTERS.
The proposed amendment must be submitted to the people at the 2010 general election. The question submitted must be: “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to affirm the sovereignty of Minnesota citizens by requiring two-thirds legislative approval before a federal law becomes effective in Minnesota, and by ensuring the right of citizens to seek redress for any alleged violation of constitutional rights?

COURIC (to Palin): Do you think there’s an inherent right to privacy in the Constitution?

PALIN: I do. Yeah, I do.

Josh Marshall among others makes the obvious point, which is that Wingnut Jurisprudence 101 demands that conservatives acknowledge no such “right of privacy” — penumbral or otherwise — in the US Constitution, lest they be turned to pillars of salt and their children drowned in rivers of blood. There’s quite a lot, it seems, that Sarah Palin does not know — the specifics of the Bush Doctrine, details about her running mate’s nonexistent record of opposing deregulation, the names of newspapers she may have read (aside from the John Birch Society’s Con Con Call). It would be reasonable, then, to wonder to what degree she’s actually bothered to learn the relevant litmus tests that conservative standard-bearers are supposed to invoke whenever possible.

In all honesty, though, I have a simpler explanation: she’s confusing her (and my) state constitution with the US Constitution.

The Alaska Constitution (Art. 1, Sec. 22, amended in 1972) actually specifies a “right of privacy” that can’t be infringed. This is a big deal here, particularly for people who like to smoke an ounce (!) of weed in their homes from time to time. But even Joe Six-Packs like Sarah Palin, if asked, would cite Alaska’s strong privacy rights as one of the most important features of the state constitution, because it connotes a variety of libertarian principles that aren’t necessarily associated with abortion rights.

Sarah Palin is a deeply confused person. More specifically, though, she’s an unfortunately typical example of the kind of state political leaders that Alaska produces. I’ve written about this elsehwere, but as I’ve tried to explain to non-Alaskans for the past five weeks, the cultural and economic peculiarities of this state make it very difficult from someone to develop a broader national political vision. If Palin is genuinely unable to distinguish between the Alaska and the US constitutions, her unsuitability for high office has just been underscored.

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

About 15 House Democrats, led by Ohioan Dennis Kucinich (who is also a presidential candidate) and including Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, are sponsoring a resolution to start impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney. Esteemed colleague Abdi Aynte’s interview with Ellison about the impeachment is here.

The idea seems unlikely to go far. Ellison’s spokester, Rick Jauert, conceded as much, telling the Associated Press that Ellison “has no illusions that this is going anywhere and that’s fine. We’ve got more important things to do that affect people’s daily lives.”

Kucinich has not specified which of Cheney’s many controversial actions he considers to be high crimes and misdemeanors. House Judiciary Chair John Conyers hasn’t committed to holding hearings on impeachment (although he did say on the George Stephanopoulos program July 8 that growing support for impeachment might encourage Bush to be more forthcoming about various matters he is stonewalling).

Still, the idea itself is sensational. Bill Moyers devoted his latest “Bill Moyers Journal” to it. And every development will be covered. So it seems worth reviewing the course outline for Impeachment 101 with these four points to remember:

more inside1. Be careful of your terminology. The word “impeachment” is often used, incorrectly, to refer to the removal of an office holder. But (as Art. 2, Sec. 4 indicates) you have to be impeached before you can go on trial for your high crimes. And you have to be convicted before you lose your job. Bill Clinton was impeached, but not convicted and therefore served out his term.

Article 1, section 2, Clause 5:

“The House of Representatives… shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”

Translation: impeachment happens in the House, requires a majority vote, but is the equivalent only of indictment in a criminal court.

Article 1, Sec. 3: Clause 6:

“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments… When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members
present.”

Translation: The trial occurs in the Senate, but requires a two-thirds vote to convict. For Cheney to be removed from office, all of the Democrats plus one third of the Republican senators would have to agree to remove him from office. One is never supposed to say “never,” but this is unlikely. No Democratic senator voted for any of the articles of impeachment against Clinton.

2. The term “other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” has never been precisely defined. As a practical matter, any article of impeachment that obtained enough votes for conviction would be adequate to turn an officeholder into a former officeholder (although the Constitution also specifies that losing the job and being disqualified from holding any future federal “office of honor, Trust or Profit”) is the only punishment.

Anyway, the chances are slim to none that the Supreme Court would nullify an impeachment on the grounds that the crime wasn’t high enough.

You may not believe this (no one ever does the first time they hear it) but the crime for which President Andrew Johnson was impeached, and came within one vote of being convicted, was firing a member of his cabinet after Congress had passed a blatantly unconstitutional law
forbidding the president to fire any of his appointees without congressional approval.

3. Impeachment is very rare. In all of U.S. history there have been only 16 federal officials impeached, including two presidents, a senator, a cabinet member, a Supreme Court justice and 11 judges of lower federal courts. Only seven cases resulted in a conviction by the Senate and removal from office, all of them involving the lower court judges.

President Richard Nixon is often mistakenly included on the list of impeached presidents, but he resigned before impeachment came to a vote in the full House.

4. No vice president has been removed or impeached. The closest we can come to vice presidential impeachment cases are:

• Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson’s vice president, got away with murder — the killing of Alexander Hamilton in a New Jersey duel — committed while Burr was vice president. But he stayed out of New Jersey, was never tried for the crime and no effort was made to impeach him. Burr subsequently went on trial (before the Supreme Court, no less) for treason. But this was after his vice presidency, and he was acquitted.

• Schuyler Colfax, vice president for two full terms under President Ulysses S. Grant, was implicated in the same financial corruption scandal that tarnished Grant’s reputation. Colfax did apparently profit corruptly from the case. A bill of impeachment against Colfax failed in a party-line vote, in part because Colfax’s term was almost over. Impeachment scholar Michael Gerhardt of North Carolina State University Law School says that among the reasons the Cheney impeachment idea is unlikely to get traction is that he has just a year and a half to go in his term, and impeachment is usually a long, slow process.

• Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s vice president, resigned his office and pleaded no contest to corruption charges stemming from his pre-vice presidential work in Maryland.

Although it wasn’t an impeachment, the Agnew case might have a slight whiff of the Cheney case about it. The investigation of Agnew’s crimes were coming to a head as the Watergate scandal was building against Nixon. Getting Agnew safely out of the vice presidency in case Nixon faced impeachment was surely a factor that added urgency, to spare the nation the crisis of having the president and vice president simultaneously under clouds.

In the Cheney case, it works a bit differently. Many who want to impeach Cheney would also like to impeach President Bush. (Ellison told Aynte that he isn’t ruling that in or out.) But removing Bush while Cheney was next in line would strike the Cheney impeachers as unappealing. So, going after Cheney first…

By the way, if Cheney was impeached, the very modern (ratified in 1967, responding to the JFK assassination) 25th Amendment would authorize President Bush to nominate a new VP, subject to confirmation by a majority of both houses of Congress. If you enjoy contemplating a series of mind-bending what-ifs, start thinking about that one.

Two final Constitutional quirks worth mentioning:

• Although the chief justice is required to preside over presidential impeachment trials, the trial of lesser officials is refereed by the presiding officer of the Senate. The vice president normally has first claim on that assignment.

Professor Gerhardt says Senate rules provide for the Senate’s president pro tem to take over that job; he doesn’t believe Cheney would try to claim the right to preside over his own trial; and if Cheney tried, a majority of senators would surely insist otherwise, the professor believes.

• In light of the recent Scooter Libby commutation, this final, seldom-mentioned clause: Article 2 of our sometimes very prescient Constitution gives the president the “power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States EXCEPT IN CASES OF IMPEACHMENT.