Sen. Mike Lee Calls Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional

Sen. Mike Lee: Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional
ThinkProgress reports: Last week, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posted a lecture on his YouTube channel where he explains in great detail his views on the Constitution. As part of the lecture, which is essentially a lengthy defense of his radical tenther interpretation of the Constitution, Lee claims thatfederal Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional: Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Suprem...

Blah Blah, Sen. Mike Lee Wants Child Labor Legal Again, Blah Blah
What a boring Friday! Why is that Loughner kid not doing anything crazy? There are so many reporters there in Tucson, ready for him to lick a bailiff. What are we supposed to talk about, each vote in that RNC election? Meh. Or that the new Utah senator says the ban on Child Labor is Unconstitutional? Fine. Yes, Mike Lee put this video up on YouTube last week. He was giving a lecture, just like a real Professor of not understanding the Constitution. Even Antonin Scalia doesn’t agree with t...

Senator Claims U.S. Child Labor Laws Unconstitutional
Children working in factories, picking crops and hauling lumber on construction sites is a vision Mike Lee, the Republican senator from Utah, apparently wants to make a reality again in the United States. In a lecture on his YouTube channel, Lee explains in great detail why he believes U.S.  Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. In Lee’s view, the Federal Government doesn’t have authority to enact federal Minimum Wage laws, Civil Rights laws or to provide Medicare and Soci

Sen. Mike Lee: Put those kiddies back to work!
No, the Tea Party is not an Extremist, reactionary force in American politics that finds our government illegitimate. They're just a bunch of folks who want to take America back to the common sense government of 1850. Before there were federal Child Labor laws. Utah's freshman Senator, Mike Lee: Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer...

Mike Lee: Federal Child Labor Laws Are Unconstitutional (VIDEO)
Freshman Tea Party-backed Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently offered an provocative interpretation of the Constitution he holds so dear, arguing that federal Child Labor laws go beyond the bounds of the document. Here's what Lee, a constitutional lawyer, had to say in a recent lecture about his view that the nation's founding political text had been fundamentally breached by (transcript via ThinkProgress): Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [child labor], so it passed a law--no more child ...

It was inevitable: New tea-partying Republican senator thinks child labor should be legal
Yes, we used to joke (or half-joke, anyway) that hey, next thing you know, Republicans are going to start demanding a return legalized Child Labor. It's not a joke anymore. As Ian Millhiser reports at Think Progress, Utah's newly elected Republican Senator, Mike Lee -- the Tea Partier who unseated Robert Bennett -- posted a video of a lecture he gave last week on the Constitution. It was quite a lecture: Not only does Lee reveal himself to be a far-right "Tenther" -- a conspiracist approach to t...

GOP Senator: Lets Reinstate Particularly Discredited Supreme Court Decisions!
I remember when I used to joke about Republicans bringing back Hammer v.Dagenhart.   Senator Mike Lee provides the punchline himself. It’s worth mentioning here that, Lee’s claims that Hammer was a regrettable outcome compelled by the Constitution notwithstanding, the majority’s reasoning was in fact remarkably specious.    The law struck down in Hammer wasn’t even a general ban; it merely prevented good made with Child Labor fro

Getting to the heart of partisan differences
GETTING TO THE HEART OF PARTISAN DIFFERENCES.... Sen. Mike Lee (R) of Utah, just a week on the job, was overshadowed a bit during the midterm season. His ideology was every bit as extreme as some of the year's more notable Candidates -- Angle, O'Donnell, Buck, Miller, et al -- but he never quite garnered the same kind of attention. Part of this is because his victory was a foregone conclusion after Lee won the GOP nomination, but part of it has to do with his skills. The freshman senator is a ...

At least he's honest
At Least He's Honest by digby I give Tea Party Senator Mike Lee a lot of credit. He says what the rest of them won't say (or don't understand) Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [Child Labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt. In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ough...

Mike Lee and the Need for Filibuster Reform
A lot of attention has been paid to incoming Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and his wacky views, but Senator Mike Lee of Utah is arguably just as insane. Consider this lecture he gave in Draper, Utah : Congress decided it wanted to prohibit [Child Labor], so it passed a law—no more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt. In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as rep..

Endgame
Do it well: — Gen Y likes walkable urbanism, but as I never tire of pointing out it’s generally illegal to build it. — Senator Mike Lee thinks Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. — “Structural” Unemployment is only a small share of the total. — Monetary Morality. — Is China already number one? (I think there are some conceptual problems with using PPP to compare aggregate output). M.I.A., “Bad Girls”. ...

How the GOP can cut and survive - Dont cut entitlements
The new Congress is less than two weeks old, but pundits from across the political spectrum are already urging the newly empowered Republicans to take on Medicare and Social Security. Conservatives argue it’s the only way to make good on the party’s limited-government Rhetoric. Centrists say it’s the only plausible way to bring the Budget into sustainable balance. Even some liberals are telling the Republicans to demonstrate the courage of their anti-spending convictions. Ref...

Medicare is Not Just a Crisis for Seniors
There is no bigger financial problem facing the Federal Government than Medicare, and its shadow will fall on both seniors and younger Taxpayers, because unlike Social Security, some of the astronomical cost of Medicare comes directly out of annual fed......

Medicare Option
Here’s an idea. Right now, if you’re over 65 in America and you have a Health Problem, you’re entitled to have the Federal Government pay for your treatment. These treatments are often expensive, and are also often a pain-in-the-ass to undergo. What if in addition to being entitled to get the treatment you were also entitled to just pocket the money. Maybe at the margin you’d rather have a Vacation in Paris and a shorter life than spend more time in the Hospital. Obvio...

The Higher the Debt Ceiling, the Deeper the Hole
When some newly elected members of Congress declared their resistance to increasing the nation's Debt ceiling earlier this month, it set off a firestorm of frenzied warnings that a refusal to raise the limit on the U.S. Debt would trigger financial Armageddon. For example, Austan Goolsbee, the chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview on ABC's This Week, "If we hit the Debt ceiling, that's essentially defaulting on our obligations, which is totally unpreced...

Argument recap: Choosing the rule for warrantless searches when police create exigent circumstances
On Wednesday, the Court heard oral argument in Kentucky v. King. During oral argument in Kentucky v. King on Wednesday, the Court struggled to find the proper test for determining when police are prohibited from justifying a warrantless search with exigent circumstances that they create.  Because neither side supported the Kentucky Supreme Court’s two-prong test, a straightforward affirmance seems very unlikely; instead, the Court focused on whether the state’s proposed “l...

Obama: Time to tackle nation's challenges again (AP)
WASHINGTON – Citing "great challenges for us to solve," President Barack Obama is pledging to work with Democrats and Republicans in the aftermath of the Arizona shooting that killed six, grievously wounded a member of Congress and brought legislative debate to a virtual standstill. In his weekly radio and Internet address, the president moved to turn the page from the week of solemn observance for the dead and the Victims to the governing business ahead. "We carry on because we have to,...

OReilly: Bachmann, Palin snubbing media after Arizona shootings
More than seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state law criminalizing “Homosexual conduct,” the Unconstitutional provision remains on the books. “The law is unconstitutional. It needs to be deleted from the statute,” said Chuck Smith, deputy Executive Director of LGBT Advocacy Group Equality Texas. There wasn’t a great deal of fanfare last week when U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley released a three-year-long committee staff review of the financial activit...

New Hampshire to Consider Parental Notification on Abortion
The New Hampshire legislature will once again consider Legislation to allow parents to know when their minor daughters are considering an Abortion — a topic that has reached the Supreme Court. Republicans, who enjoy a majority control of the state House, announced their legislative agenda yesterday and it included Legislation helping parents not be in the dark when their daughters are contemplating an abortion. Without such a law in place, parents would have to pick up the pieces after the...

Leftovers - January 14, 2011
Classy: Maine's Tea Party Gov. Paul LePage tells the NAACP to "kiss my butt." Sen. Mike Lee says Child Labor laws are Unconstitutional. The Washington Times claims "blood Libel" outrage is evidence of a "Pogrom" against the right. The argument against mixed-party seating at the State of the Union. Tim Heffernan rounds up all of Sarah Palin's 'sorries' in the past year. ...

Clues About the Supreme Court and the ACA?
I have some thoughts about what the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant cert in a commerce clause case (with an angry dissent from Thomas) might mean for the constitutionality of the Individual Mandate. The short version: probably not much. It does make it an odds-on favorite that Scalia will vote to hold the mandate Unconstitutional, but given that the case involves the Regulation of Health Care rather than pot this isn’t shocking. Otherwise, we don’t know a lot more than we did ...

The Entitlement Debate
I don’t like being on the other side of a debate from (my sometime co-author!) Yuval Levin, either. But let’s head straight to the disagreements. Yuval writes that “a strategy of taking no action and blaming Obama for inaction would be a little peculiar.” What’s peculiar about Republicans’ saying that they hope Obama moves on entitlements and stand willing to work with him if he does-and to work with his successor if he doesn’t? Yuval writes that h...

Should GOP wait to tackle entitlement reform?
With the Republican takeover in the House, many fiscal Conservatives and Independents hoped to see serious budgetary reform as the focus of the 112ths session.  Did that include entitlement reform?  National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru argues in the New York Times that the Republicans didn’t get a mandate for restructuring Social Security and Medicare, and that it should only be attempted if Barack Obama signs onto the project.  Otherwise, it will have to wait for a Republican Presi

Leave Entitlements Alone?
In The New York Times today, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru urges Republicans to wait to tackle entitlement reform: Reforming [Social Security and Medicare] is vital to our nation’s long-term fiscal health — which is why Republicans should resist this advice and leave the issue alone. Reform is impossible this year or next unless President Obama takes the lead on it. What’s more, Republicans have no mandate for reform, and a failed attempt will only set back the cause. Some R

Podcast of the day: Witness- the birth of Medicare
It’s funny that the BBC frequently does American history better than, well, Americans. Recently, the BBC4 program, Witness, did a Podcast on the Great Society and the birth of Medicare. What I found interesting is that although LBJ was the president to sign the bill into law, the concept of Medicare was not a new one. It had been introduced into Congress years earlier but had to wait until Democrats outnumbered Reoublicans by a ratio of roughly 2:1. Think about that for a moment. In ord...