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Health

VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli Backtracks On Ignoring Affordable Care Act

By Josh Israel on Mar 22, 2012 at 2:14 pm

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA)

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA)

Right-wing Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) does not like the Affordable Care Act. In addition to his challenge to the law in federal court, he told a Politico reporter earlier this month that there was little the federal government could do to states if they refused to implement the law.

The Washington Post quoted the interview:

In a brief interview at the Republican Attorneys General Association meeting, Cuccinelli said it would be “contrary to the law” not to implement it. But he pointed out that it might not be easy for the federal government to force states to comply if they continued to resist. “It’s not like there’s criminal penalties out there — it becomes a power struggle,” he said. Cuccinelli noted that it would not be the first time that states have tried to obstruct federal laws, pointing out that states resisted complying with the Alien and Sedition Acts and fugitive slave laws. “There have been periods of time when states have just thrown their hands up and said, ‘We’re not going to do this,’” he said. “It’s still possible, but it’s outside the expected legal structure.

But when pressed on this subject yesterday, Virginia Organizing caught him striking a rather different tone — saying “I expect everyone to obey the law,” if it is upheld by the Supreme Court.

Watch the video:

It’s wonderful that Cuccinelli now wants everyone to obey the law. Perhaps he might start with himself.

NEWS FLASH

Virginia Supreme Court Dismisses AG Ken Cuccinelli’s Fishing Expedition Against Respected Scientist | The Virginia Supreme Court today rejected an effort by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) to obtain the papers of former University of Virginia scientist Michael Mann. Dr. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at UVA from 1999 to 2005. While climate-change deniers have long attacked his work, Mann has been vindicated for his widely-respected work. Cuccinelli had demanded Mann’s grant applications and his communications from his time at UVA; the university denied the request and successful argued in court that the AG had no authority to make such a demand.

Health

McDonnell: I Backpedaled On Ultrasound Bill After Cuccinelli Told Me It’s Unconstitutional

By Igor Volsky on Feb 24, 2012 at 10:02 am

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) disputed the notion that he’s spending too much time legislating social policy during this morning Politico forum, as he continued to distance himself from a measure that would have required women to undergo an invasive transvaginal ultrasound before receiving an abortion. Under the proposed policy, most women seeking seeking an abortion would have been forced to have a procedure, “in which a probe is inserted into the vagina, and then moved around until an ultrasound image is produced.”

The governor explained that he has focused on “getting our budgets under control” and “jobs,” not social policy, and claimed that he hadn’t read the original provision before publicly endorsing it. McDonnell also added that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a conservative powerhouse within the Republican party, advised him that the measure was unconstitutional:

MCDONNELL: We realized there were different kinds of ultrasounds and so what I recommended to the General Assembly, and they adopted the other day, is let’s make the requirement for the abdominal ultrasound… I also got legal advice from various people, including my Attorney General, that these kinds of mandatory invasive requirements might run afoul of Fourth Amendment law. So those were the reasons…After talking to lawyers and doctors on my own, after we started hearing some concerns int he legislature, I personally looked at it. I mean, normally a governor would review these hundreds of hundreds of bills when they get to your desk. You’re so busy advocating your own agenda, you don’t read every legislator’s bill. But I was certainly supportive of that concept.

Watch it:

Until the bill attracted national media attention and frustrated some in the Republican party, however, “McDonnell and his aides had said the governor would sign the measure if it made it to his desk.” Since then, he issued a statement claiming that “Mandating an invasive procedure in order to give informed consent is not a proper role for the state” and offered an amendment that would not force women to receive the procedure. Studies have shown that viewing an ultrasound does not change a woman’s mind before an abortion and only adds to the cost of the procedure.

The Virginia House and a Senate committee have passed the ultrasound bill with the governor’s substitute language.

NEWS FLASH

Time For Cuccinelli To Resign? | Virginia attorneys general who decide to run for governor traditionally resign their office to prevent the state’s top legal officer from politicizing an office that requires them to place the letter of the law above political interests. Indeed, nine of the 10 state AGs to run for the governorship since the 1940s honored this tradition. Current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA), however, refuses to do so — a break with the past that is unsurprising given that Cuccinelli has already done everything in his power to politicize the office.

NEWS FLASH

Cuccinelli Says University Is ‘Crazy’ For Wanting To Ban Guns On Campus | At a speech to a guns rights group, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) claimed that George Mason University is “crazy” for thinking that not allowing guns on campus will promote student safety. Somewhat to his credit, Cuccinelli’s office did defend the gun ban in front of the Virginia Supreme Court, as it is required to do, despite the fact that Cuccinelli personally disagrees with the law. Unfortunately, Cuccinelli has not shown the same ability to distinguish between a law that he happens to dislike and a law that is somehow constitutionally questionable when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.

Justice

Cuccinelli: Senate GOP ‘Jobs’ Bill ‘Tramples the States and Violates the Constitution’

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 31, 2011 at 9:50 am

Earlier this month, Senate Republicans cobbled together many of their longstanding objectives, and called it a “jobs” bill to try to draw attention away from President Obama’s popular American Jobs Act. Yet this plan backfired on the Senate GOP leadership when Tea Party lawmakers began lining up to denounce a key provision of their makeshift “jobs” bill as unconstitutional. This provision — a proposal to impose damage caps on medical malpractice suits in both state and federal court — has now attracted the ire of yet another Tea Party heartthrob, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli:

With Senate Bill 197 — legislation that would have the federal government dictate how state judges are to try medical malpractice cases and cap what state courts may award — several Republican senators have reminded us that federal impositions on states that run contrary to the U.S. Constitution and to the spirit of federalism have never been the sole prerogative of just Democrats. . . . This legislation expands federal power, tramples the states and violates the Constitution. And if it were ever signed into law — by a Republican or Democratic president — I would file suit against it just as fast as I filed suit when the federal health-care bill was signed into law in March 2010 (15 minutes later).

In reality, the constitutional case against federal tort reform is very weak. Congress enjoys broad authority to regulation national economic markets, such as the market for health care, and that includes the power to regulate those markets badly. If people don’t like the laws their elected officials put in place, our democratic Constitution empowers them to vote those officials out of office — it does not empower the law’s opponents to simply declare anything they want unconstitutional.

Nevertheless, Cuccinelli’s strident opposition to this law — and that of others such as tenther Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — should stand as a warning to Republicans who raced to embrace a crackpot theory of the Constitution the minute President Obama signed a health care law they disapproved of. Federally imposed tort reform has been a centerpiece of GOP health care policy for many years, and now this longstanding Republican goal many be unachievable because too many Republican lawmakers were conned into embracing Cuccinelli and Lee’s tenther vision of the Constitution.

Those that live by crackpot distortions of our Constitution, die by crackpot distortions of our Constitution.

Justice

Ken Cuccinnelli Proposes Rewriting The Constitution If He Loses Health Care Supreme Court Challenge

By Scott Keyes on Oct 14, 2011 at 9:50 am

Last month, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit voted to kick Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act out of court. ThinkProgress spoke with Cuccinelli about the ruling this past weekend at the Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC. The attorney general was unfazed about his defeat, arguing that “this was always going to be decided at the Supreme Court.” When we asked what his next step would be if his challenge were to meet a similar fate in the Supreme Court, Cuccinelli proposed a radical solution: rewrite the Constitution to make the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.

KEYES: Did you take it to heart that the Circuit Court didn’t side with you guys?

CUCCINELLI: This was always going to be decided at the Supreme Court. We’re 1-1 at the moment and we’ll see what the Supreme Court has to say and finish it up.

KEYES: And what if they don’t end up ruling your way? What next?

CUCCINELLI: We’ll have to reassess at that point. Then we’ve got a much more powerful federal government than we had anticipated. If people are up to it, that’s going to take a constitutional amendment to reduce. Just if all you care about is the health care bill you’ve got to get it repealed. Those battles happen at the ballot box.

Watch it:

As CAP’s legal expert Ian Millhiser explains, the Affordable Care Act is clearly constitutional and should survive challenges from Cuccinelli and other tenther conservatives. Because Cuccinelli cannot tolerate this outcome, however, he apparently thinks the solution is to simply to rewrite the Constitution to fit his worldview. The law may be constitutional now, but it sure as heck won’t be after conservatives like Cuccinelli change the rules.

Of course, this type of legal Calvinball is nothing new for tenther conservatives. Cuccinelli is just one of a growing number of tenthers who dismiss any laws they don’t like as unconstitutional.

LGBT

VA Attorney General Cuccinelli: States Should Have Right To Enact Marriage Equality

By Igor Volsky on Aug 11, 2011 at 2:42 pm

During an interview with an NBC affiliate, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) said that states should have the right to enact same-sex marriage legislation, but left the door open for supporting a constitutional amendment that would repeal their laws:

CUCCINELLI: The only amendment I would expect to see to the constitution would be a nationwide protection of traditional marriage and restricting marriage to one man and one woman…There doesn’t have to be uniformity, I certainly see it as one possible course we get on. But there is nothing Constitutionally or historically that demands that this be addressed uniformly across the country…As between these two options, I would certainly prefer for the states to decide.

Watch it:

Cuccinelli’s position sounds eerily similar to that of Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who until recently also spouted the very same 10th Amendment rhetoric. But Perry’s comments outraged conservative Republicans, and he quickly placated the party base by reiterating his support for a constitutional amendment that would prohibit states like New York or Vermont or Massachusetts from recognizing same-sex marriages. In other words, when push comes to shove, Republican officials who feel like they need the support of social conservatives to win elections are willing to dismiss the 10th Amendment and force everyone to conform to their views of marriage. Cuccinelli is clearly leaving room for a pivot.

In fact, he has already gone a long way in imposing a radical anti-gay agenda on Virginians. Cuccinelli instructed state universities that they could not protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, opposed extending adoption rights to gay couples, and even terminated the state’s relationship with law firm King & Spalding for backing out of its contract to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act.

NEWS FLASH

American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Blasts Attacks On Climate Scientists | In a rare political statement, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences has issued a condemnation of “the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists,” including “harassment, death threats, and legal challenges,” and “unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists.” The statement concludes that “we think it would be unfortunate if policymakers became the arbiters of scientific information and circumvented the peer-review process.”

Related Posts

By Brad Johnson on Jun 29, 2011 at 12:37 pm

Justice

Justiceline: June 20, 2011

By Ian Millhiser on Jun 20, 2011 at 8:00 am

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice.

 

 

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