Kookster - #451

#451 JOEL HANSEN
NEVADA AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY LAWYER

If anything illustrates the fact that the kooks are coming out of the woodwork this
election cycle, you don't have to look much farther than guys like Joel Hansen of the Nevada Independent American Party and NOTHING has them more upset than Health
Care Reform.

While several states, such as Virginia, Missouri, Alabama and South Carolina have
sued based on the 10th Amendment, Hansen is going all out, saying the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act violates the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth,
Tenth and 13th amendments.

(I cannot for the life of me understand how the PPAC violates the Third Amendment,
which prohibits the quartering of troops in people's homes or the Ninth Amendment,
which specifies that the enumeration of the amendments cannot be used by judges
to determine the importance of one over another.)

Hansen's biggest stretch is the 13th Amendment, which outlaws slavery. Hansen
claims the PPAC constitutes peonage by forcing them to pay a debt by threat of
legal sanction. He says nothing about the same thing being done with auto insurance. Hansen also claims the First Amendment in involved because the PPAC forces people to pay for abortions, which is a violation of religious freedom. He cannot, however, point to anywhere in the bill where there is such a thing and federal law --in the form of the Hyde Amendment--prohibits that anyway.

Hansen has a long 32-year history of supporting crackpot notions, such as representing people who want to be paid in 'honest' money, namely gold or silver
coins and not Federal Reserve Notes, which he claims are worthless. (However, he's
happy to take them.)

With thanks to TPM Muckraker and the Law Vegas Review Journal

S. Olson