A Tale of Two Courts

With news of federal appeals court decision out of Washington, DC, in the morning on July 22nd, I thought, "this is the best of times."  By the time the day had ended, and word came of another appeals court's decision on the same issue out of Richmond, Virginia, I thought "this is the worst of times." 

As it turns out, the two decisions are a quite potent tutor on the importance of the kinds of people that are put, by our votes, in Congress, and in the White House.  As you will see if you read on, the political identity of Presidents that appoint judges provides a nearly perfect predictor of judicial philosophy. Allow me to explain:

Two federal appeals courts issued decisions regarding a contentious issue arising from the Obama administration's interpretation and application of an aspect of the Obamacare statute.   In one decision, from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, two out of three judges concluded that the IRS overstepped legal bounds when it adopted a rule permitting a insurance premium tax credit be allowed in instances where the consumer purchased health insurance through the federal health insurance exchange.  In the other decision, from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, three judges concluded that the exact same IRS rule was a reasonable interpretation of the text of the Affordable Care Act.

Briefly, Congress set up a two tiered system to accomplish its goal.  A charitable construction of Congress' goal would be to obtain the widest possible inclusion of Americans within health insurance coverages.  Until Obamacare became the law, health insurance was, virtually entirely, a question of state law and state regulation.  When the Democratic Party controlled Congress adopted the Obamacare laws, at least a thin skin of pretense required Congress and the President to pretend to respect the traditional, constitutionally affirmed, role of States in such matters.  To do that, Obamacare provides for State health insurance exchanges to be set up in States willing to do so.

Moreover, to encourage widest possible participation in those State exchanges, Congress included a provision that has the effect of subsidizing the cost of health insurance premiums by granting a tax credit for payments on such premiums.  Congress also created a federal health insurance exchange because, with more than a majority of State legislative bodies in Republican Party control, there was a reasonably predictable possibility that many States would not create such exchanges.

The Congress that enacted Obamacare, we must presume, knew how to draft legislative language creating a health insurance exchange.  After all, they employed such language twice:  in creating the State exchange program, and in creating the federal exchange program.  The Congress that enacted Obamacare, we must ALSO presume, knew how to draft legislative language providing that a health insurance premium tax credit would be available to certain taxpayers (based on income).  After all, Congress employed such language once:  in authorizing the allowance of a health insurance premium tax credit for eligible subscribers who purchased their health insurance through the State-created health care exchanges.

And therein, as they say, lies the rub.  Because the Congress that knew how to create exchanges, the Congress that knew how to authorize the IRS to allow for health insurance premium tax credits for certain income-based subscribers, that very same Congress, legislating through that very same exact bill, DID NOT authorize the IRS to allow for health insurance premium tax credits for certain income based subscribers who purchased their insurance through the federal exchange in their State because the State had chosen not to set up such an exchange.  (As it turned out, Congress was not entirely myopic.  More than half the States declined the invitation in Obamacare to set up a State exchange.)

Despite the absence of Congressional authorization to do so, the IRS announced, took comments on, and made final a rule allowing for a health insurance premium tax credit for income-qualified purchasers whose health insurance was bought through the federal exchange in those States without a State health care exchange.  That rule has the effect of spending federal tax monies.  But neither the Affordable Care Act, nor subsequent authorizations legislation, nor subsequent appropriations, have authorized those expenditures of federal funds by the IRS.

Remember that in the progressive/Democrat mindset, money in the hands of another as a result of a tax credit is an expenditure of federal funds.  That very reasoning is why, in every discussion regarding taxes and spending, Democrats insist that tax credits funded by such enactments must be funded through other taxes.  In other words, they argue, if you are going to give a tax credit that has the effect of reducing the total federal tax haul by, say, 1 billion dollars, then that "purchase" must be offset by other tax increases to cover the billion dollar loss.

But, setting aside the highly political nature of the seemingly intractable dispute over Obamacare, judges and lawyers ARE REQUIRED to accord a kind of respect to a legislative body's language choices.  For example, if a statute stated,  "No Motor Vehicle Operator Permit or License is to be issued to a person unless, first, the Department of Motor Vehicles obtains a copy of a birth document certified by the Department of Vital Statistics to be a true and correct copy of the original," then courts and judges, following hundreds of years of legal history and development, would know that the DMV could not accept a hand drawn, with crayon, reasonable facsimile of a birth certificate unless it bore a certification that it was a true and correct copy of an original birth certificate.  Neither courts, nor lawyers, nor governors, nor legislators, NOR EVEN PRESIDENTS, have any legal justification for pretending that a statute includes language it omits, nor omits language it includes.  Certainty in the law requires that this be so.

Returning to the appeals courts decisions and the impact of political identity of presidents making such appointments, there remains this to be said.  Six different judges participated in the making of the two appeals court decisions yesterday.  Four of those judges were appointed by Presidents who are Democrats; two of those judges were appointed by Presidents who are Republicans.  All three judges in the Fourth Circuit majority, and one judge, the dissenting judge in the DC Circuit decision, were appointed by Democrats.  Two judges, the majority in the DC Circuit decision, were appointed by Republicans.

As they say, elections have consequences.

It is not every day, however, that one consequence of elections is that potentially criminal conduct by the President or his administration will be given a wink and a nod from the bench.  But yesterday was one of those days in Richmond, Virginia, and in Washington, DC, where the dissenting judge was willing to give the wink and the nod, but failed to garner a majority.

And while some will say that raising the specter of criminality is hyperbolic,  I disagree for a well-founded reason.  For more than a century, a federal law known as the AntiDeficiency Act expressly bars federal agents and agencies from spending unappropriated funds.  That statute is direct and clear:  "An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not ... make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation[.]"  Violation of that statute is, itself, a crime:  "An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government knowingly and willfully violating [that] section [] shall be fined not more than $5,000, imprisoned for not more than 2 years, or both."

Thus, not only is the IRS rule unauthorized by the Affordable Care Act, it puts the Commissioner of the IRS and IRS employees in the position of violating the Antideficiency Act.  Unlike other federal executive adventures outside the law, such as the alleged violations by the Reagan administration of the Boland Amendment, violations of the Antideficiency Act are, expressly, criminal acts subject to prosecution, and conviction carries the risk of fines and imprisonment.  The decisions of the DC Circuit and the Fourth Circuit directly conflict with each other, invite uncertainty as to the meaning and application of the Affordable Care Act, and raise the twin specters of judicial disregard for statutory language and IRS administrative disregard for Congressionally authorized appropriations.

Ultimately, these cases, one or both, will come to the Supreme Court of the United States.  The "losers" in either case can, of course, apply to the same appeals court for reconsideration.  In fact, because of the OTHER COURT'S DECISION, there are better than normal prospects in both cases that the decisions by panels of the DC Circuit and the Fourth Circuit will be reconsidered by the entire court of appeals in each case.  After all, conflicts between courts of appeals on a question of federal law are a justifiable reason for such en banc review by the whole court of a panel decision.  But there is little doubt that the Supreme Court will have the opportunity, and may have the need, to review these cases.

The opportunity will arise if any party below is dissatisfied by the outcome they got at the appeals court in their case; that outcome is assured.  The need will arise in either of two possible circumstances.  First, if, at the end of the day, the decisions of these two courts remain in conflict as to the meaning and application of the Affordable Care Act, then Supreme Court review is always helpful in insuring that a single rule of law governs throughout the United States.  Second, if, at the end of the day, the Supreme Court, in evaluating requests for hearings, concludes that one of the courts, or both, have incorrectly construed and applied the language of the Act.  For now, the uncertainty created by the Obama Administration's lawless extension of the State Exchange health insurance premium tax credit to federally operated health exchanges is compounded by the uncertainty of the conflicting decisions yesterday.

Legal observers are often invited to make predictions of future actions by courts.  And this takes me back to the topic of this post.  Since taking office, Obama has now appointed enough appeals court judges so that Democrat-appointed judges constitute majorities of the active judges in both the DC Circuit and Fourth Circuit.  Given that party of appointment is, at present glance, a direct predictor of judicial outcome, I will make this prediction:  if either appeals court grants rehearing by the whole court, then it is likely that the whole court will uphold the IRS renegade rule.  And that is a certainty that benefits no one.

Why Having Two White Parents That Remain Together Through Life Is Sucky

The fact is, having one black parent is good enough to make Barack Obama America's first "black president."  So what that he didn't know his father?  So what that his father bedded and illegally wedded Barack's mother?  So what that his father's influence in his life is an after the fact construct for a book ghost written for a future president by a past domestic terrorist?  If a person of the general incompetence and sloth of Barack Obama had sought the presidency but had brought to it the pedigree of two Caucasian parents, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee in 2008.  So, how is it that having a black father that one really never knew is better than having two Caucasian parents?

Because the guy with one black parent he never knew can get away with anything, because the danger is constantly present for his political opponents that confronting the man will be made to be the stuff of racial intimidation.

The Attorney General of the United States told us that, as to matters of race, we are a nation of cowards.  No.  Not being hyperbolic here, the words were "a nation of cowards."

Well, I suppose I think he's right.  We all knew the dangers associated with targeting a man with dark skin for public chastisement and political excoriation as soon as Clarence Thomas uttered the words "high tech lynching of a uppity black man."

So what else explains the refusal of John Boehner to institute impeachment proceedings against Obama?

Is it that Barack Obama has not committed acts justifying impeachment?

No.  Without effort, sitting here at my computer, I can identify a dozen or more grounds on which impeachment is justified.  Remember that among the key articles of impeachment against Richard M. Nixon was the abuse of using the IRS against political opponents.  This Administration's abuse of Tea Party and conservative organizations through the IRS is just the same kind of political abuse that warranted the article of impeachment against Nixon.  The naked criminality of destroying and "losing" the hard drives of seven involved IRS computers is self-evident.

Is it that the Republicans in the House would be committing electoral suicide in a year they had hoped to gain House seats, and perhaps control of the Senate?

Well now, that's entirely possible.  It is possible that by doing their constitutionally sworn duty they would be risking electoral success in November.  I guess I think that it is that very concern that proves the truth of Holder's race cowardice indictment of the Nation.  If the things done by Obama had been done by a man with two Caucasian parents, rather than just one, there is little doubt that severe consequences, likely impeachment, would have long since followed.

The thing is, and I do not know the answer to this question, if the standing of the Congress is so very low while it has done so very little to protect this Nation from this Administration, will it cause further damage to impeach the President, or, instead, will impeachment actions by the House lead the People to rise in hope that this long national nightmare is over?

We won't know.

As much as Obama likely despises Clarence Thomas because of the Justice's principled constitutional conservatism, there's little doubt in my mind that the House would have to be prepared to deal with an echo of Thomas' "high tech lynching of an uppity black man" allegation.  And, that, my friends, is why I think that Holder, like a broken clock, is proved right.

No principled constitutionalist of my ken thinks that this President cannot be properly made the subject of Articles of Impeachment.  Without regard to the wisdom of any particular effort at impeachment, there is no question that the House has the power to impeach, a power sufficiently broad that it might impeach a President for putting mayo on a Reuben.  So we are left to the COWARDICE of the Republicans in the House, who, for fear that they might be portrayed as conducting a "high tech lynching" of Obama, are refusing to do their duty.

Next Time, Boehner, Put the Potato in Front!

There's a somewhat colorful joke involving two guys exchanging ideas on picking up women at the beach:

The more successful fellow told the other that one of his secrets was to put a good sized sweet potato in his Speedo and then strolling the beach.  Thinking it sounded like a plausible plan, the second fellow did just that.  After walking the beach for an hour and meeting with nothing but raucous laughter or looks of disgust, he returned to where he and his friend had set up on the beach.  He told his buddy how disappointed he was that this seemingly fool proof method of garnering the gals had such a major glitch.  His buddy retorted, next time, put the sweet potato in the FRONT of your swimsuit!

If you are offended, you've probably moved on.

If you aren't, then perhaps you've noticed that the person with "an artificially inflated masculinity" just might be the Republican House leadership.  They've organized the Benghazi Select Committee AND they've held Lois Lerner, IRS corruptician, in contempt.  These stunningly, seemingly, forceful actions they took in a matter of hours of each other.  But watch out where the sweet potato goes!

Congress demanded Lois Lerner's testimony.  Lerner had waived her privilege against self-incrimination when she took a testimonial oath in a hearing before Congress, offered an opening statement in which she denied wrong doing AND THEN asserted her right against self-incrimination.  Lerner failed and refused to testify.  Because she disobeyed a Congressional subpoena to testify, the House voted to hold her in contempt.

By itself, it may seem of small moment that the Congress held her in contempt.  It MAY SEEM that this is just some sort of honorific that belongs to a select few (former) government officials that occasionally find themselves between the Devil of Presidential directives and the Deep Blue Sea of Congressional commands.  And, as it turns out, it actually MIGHT JUST BE of small moment ... unless the next steps are taken.

So what are the next steps?

Two avenues of action follow the failure and refusal to answer questions of Congress. 

First, such willful failure CAN be prosecuted as a misdemeanor under federal law.  Conviction can result in fines and imprisonment.  But such a prosecution would take place under the direction of the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, who, of course, answers to the Attorney General, Eric Holder.  So it remains to be seen whether Holder will allow, let alone require, the US Attorney in Washington, DC, to prosecute Lerner.  The likelihood that Holder will authorize such a prosecution, with its likely production of embarrassing exposures of the Obama administration’s political abuses by the IRS, seems quite small.

Second, Congress has inherent authority to enforce its subpoenas and, in execution of that authority, the Speaker of the House can order the Sergeant at Arms of the House to accomplish the physical arrest of Lois Lerner ANYWHERE in the United States, and her incarceration in House facilities in the Capitol building.  This latter approach might strike some harshly.  After all, we are accustomed to the arrest and investigation process to be entrusted to law-enforcement personnel, not law-enactment personnel.  Still, the precedent exists, and a House that would not be further diminished in stature must look to maintaining its powers and prerogatives, including the power to compel testimony in furtherance of the House’s constitutional duties.

Now we can sit back and watch as, by turns, Holder and Boehner jockey for position as least mindful of the House’s judgment that Lois Lerner deliberately committed contempt of the Congress.  Don’t expect much from Holder, he’s got to plug holes in the Obama Ship of State, not drill new ones.  And be surprised at any positive step from Boehner because he is from the Limp Noodle Wing of the GOP.

History Favors the Political Pulpit

In the mid-2000’s, the House of Representatives had introduced a piece of legislation – the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act – designed to address the bullying of pulpits by the IRS, and by liberal advocacy groups such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.  Had it been enacted, the Act would have changed the tax code by adding this language to it: 

“`(q) An organization described in section 170(b)(1)(a)(1) or section 508(c)(1)(A) shall not fail to be treated as organized and operated exclusively for a religious purpose, nor shall it be deemed to have participated in, or intervened in any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office, for purposes of subsection (c)(3) or section 170(c)(2), 2055, 2106, 2522, or 4955 because of the content, preparation, or presentation of any homily, sermon, teaching, dialectic, or other presentation made during religious services or gatherings.'”

The legislation would not have affected the status quo for certain churches, and would have leveled the playing field for others.

The churches unaffected by the legislation would be those for whom no serious threat of IRS enforcement activities ever existed.  Those churches include the 500+ African American churches that not only had direct endorsements of  Jesse Jackson’s 1988 short-lived campaign for the Democratic nomination for President but actual had a coordinated, pulpit plea for donations to Jackson’s campaign.  Churches for whom the playing field would be leveled would include, for example, the Church at Pierce Creek, a Binghamton, New York church targeted for enforcement by the IRS after it ran paid advertisements in national daily newspapers opposing the 1992 candidacy of Bill Clinton because of disapproval of his stance of issues of concern to the Church.

The legislation had opponents.  In answer to some of their arguments, I penned a blog post on the Act, and the historical basis for political sermons even in election seasons.  As we move toward Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial election, there may be reason to anticipate church voices speaking to the election.  Take these thoughts as my view that the voices should not be silenced:

Let My People Go: Unleashing the Church by Unmuzzling the Pulpit

May 28, 2009 at 10:11pm

Wherein we learn that some folks have nothing to fear but liberty itself.

In an episode of the old “Star Trek” television series, Captain Kirk and two of his officers are kidnapped during transport and made to serve as slaves/thralls on the planet of Triskelion. Those who are familiar with Captain Kirk’s embodiment of the American ideal of liberty will realize the collision that had to occur between his fierce independence and the demands of servitude, particularly when that servitude was enforced with a restraining collar that was used to temporarily (or permanently) asphyxiate the sullen or disobedient thrall.

But the use of the collar as a means of restraining independence was already a decade old in America when “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” was beamed into American homes in 1968. But instead of a Triskelionian collar serving to constrain belligerence, the strictures of obedience to which I refer were accomplished by threatening the tax-exempt status of churches for the political expression of their “collared” clergy. And it is that constraint and enslavement that are squarely targeted by the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act.

It appears, however, that Pat Murphy is entirely comfortable with the illiberal circumstance of federal censorship of speech in houses of worship. But for two points, Pat Murphy’s concerns about the Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act would be well taken. Unfortunately for Pat, those two salient points make all the difference in the world. Because they are dispositive, they deserve consideration. The first point about which Pat appears to be wrong is the current state of affairs for religious houses of worship in United States of America. If the current state affairs for churches in America could be described as “well enough,” then it would make perfect sense to leave “well enough” alone. Too many tales have been written about the disasters that befall folks who continued to tinker in pursuit of a perfection that cannot be attained on this mortal coil. Houses of worship would do well – if indeed they have got it as good is it can get – to decline to tinker with their circumstances.

Do houses of worship have it good as it can get? By “as good as it can get,” I mean to ask only, do houses of worship enjoy the freedoms that our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence, and our history suggest that they should. Plainly they do not. Instead, since 1954, the United States government has asserted a right to decide appropriate topics for discussion and instruction in American churches, synagogues, and mosques. That year, then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson slipped through the Congress that now familiar band on political involvement by organizations that enjoy nonprofit status under federal law. Johnson’s stealth attack on the liberty of American religious institutions reflected the danger one religious organization in Texas presented to his reelection prospects.

Apparently, Senator Johnson considered his continued presence in the United States Senate a value more important than the liberty of the pulpit in United States houses of worship. So, in a perfectly understandable – yet entirely inexcusable – act of self-preservation, Johnson pushed through the restriction that now is used by the Internal Revenue Service as a muzzle on the Nation’s reverends, rabbis, and religious. There was a time in our Nation’s history, when our religious leaders could be counted on to speak truth to power. In his powerfully persuasive, “Propaganda and the American Revolution,” Philip Davidson demonstrated the key role played by pastors in pulpits in creating a condition of openness to the idea of revolution. Davidson reminded us that these clerics, because of their service and their attire were known as the “black brigade.”

Examples abound of their clear exposition of Scripture, their persuasive rhetoric, and their unflinching pronouncements. Those unfamiliar with the role served by American clergy during the time of the American Revolution and the founding on our Republic would do well to spend some time reading in a collection of sermons from that era. The collection is entitled “Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805," edited by Ellis Sandoz.

One particularly relevant sermon – given Mr. Murphy’s concern regarding the threat that reinvigorated liberty of speech may pose to American pulpits – was John Mitchell Mason’s “the Voice of Warning to Christians on the Ensuing Election of a President of the United States.” Reverend Mason delivered the sermon while he was the pastor of the Scotch Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street in New York City, and published it as was a custom of the time and circulated following its publication.  Entitled “the Voice of Warning,” Reverend Mason’s jeremiad stated in clear and unmistakable terms the threat that Mason perceived in Thomas Jefferson should he win the pending election contest for the presidency.

Mason explained in the subject of his sermon in this way:

“To lay before the people of the United States, proofs that a candidate for the office of their first magistrate, is an unbeliever in the scriptures; and that to confer such a distinction upon an open enemy to their religion, their Redeemer, and their hope, would-be mischief to themselves and sin against God . . . .”  

II Political Sermons of the Founding Era, 1730-1805,” at 1452 (Ellis Sandoz 2d ed. 1998). 

Entirely as an aside, one ground upon which Rev. Mason found Jefferson an unacceptable candidate for chief magistrate (President) was related to Jefferson’s peculiar views regarding the natural history of the African. Mason correctly quotes Jefferson as saying, regarding the African, “their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life . . . .”

Rather, in Jefferson’s opinion, “the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”  II Political Sermons of the Founding Era, 1730-1805,” at 1457 (quoting T. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, at 205, 209).  To Mason, the view that the African was created as a race distinct from the white man or the red man evidenced an incontrovertible proof of Jefferson’s rejection of the teaching of scriptures on the origins of mankind. He explained, “The scriptures teach that all nations are the offspring of the first and single pair, Adam and Eve, whom God created and placed in Paradise. This fact, interwoven with all the relations and all the doctrines of the Bible, is alike essential to its historical and religious truth.”  Id.  Multitudinous are the examples by which the former liberty of the pulpit in America may be proven.

To think that our history has been otherwise is to choose only the last forty years of our common life as the book from which our history will be taken. So, in this first point, Mr. Murphy is not well taken. Houses of worship in America are constrained greatly in their liberties in a manner inconsistent with the practices of the time of the founding of our nation, the drafting of its essential documents, and the understanding of those documents by those who drafted them. That constraint approaches a half-century in continuation.

Our nation’s history exceeds two and a quarter centuries, and in the vast majority of that time, the liberty feared by Murphy and promised by the Act in dispute now delighted in the pulpits.

The second principal point of error in Pat Murphy’s thinking is his perception of the future under the proposed legislation. Adopt this legislation, Murphy prognosticates, and the Bush Dynasty will be insured with the ultimate succession to the presidency of Jeb Bush and then the Jeb’s son, George Bush. 

Murphy’s fever unabated, he sees John Ashcroft elevated to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and set loose to undermine and wreak havoc upon established American legal doctrines. His temperature rising still, Murphy hallucinates an approaching era in which pulpit oratory is debased into mere political endorsements and there is lost forever to worshipers the expected and biblically appropriate reproof for and correction of sin and instruction in righteousness.

This argument of Murphy’s falls into one of the common logical fallacies in argument: the slippery slope. That failure in argument is familiar. If we allow point A, then inevitably effect B will occur. That effect B will in turn inevitably cause effect C. Before we know what has happened we will have leapt from A to Z. This argument musters no fact in support of its premises; this argument musters no indelible principle to prop it up. It appeals to the fears that some will always have that are unconnected to reality.

Murphy’s argument, taken to its logical conclusion, is a warrant for never passing a law, indeed, for never doing a thing. After all, the good that the law might do will be outweighed by the evil that will subsequently come. But human experience and more than a thousand years in our Western traditions teach us that the barbarians are always at the gate, that evil always runs on the fastest feet, that no good deed will go unpunished, and yet that we must still put our hands to the plow and accomplish the work of the day in which we are. At his heart, then, Murphy is a nay-saying doom-and-gloom artist whose soothsaying franchise offers no more in the line of credibility than that of the notorious Jamaican psychic, Miss Cleo.

The Houses of Worship Political Speech Protection Act restores a liberty to pulpits that is increasingly unfamiliar to those who stand in them and those who sit before them alike. That a cantankerous and crafty politician succeeded in stripping that liberty in the past is no reason not to work for the restoration of that liberty. Nor is there reason to fear the restoration of that liberty in the workings of Murphy’s febrile imagination.

Your Medical Info: Would It Make Good Bathroom Reading?

Do you think that your medical information should be private?

Do you want Sue at the beauty shop, or Ron at the service station, or Stan your accountant, or Beth your attorney to know? 

To know that you have depression? have anxiety? have scoliosis? have scabies? have wet eczema?  have muscular dystrophy? have diabetes?

Will it bother you if they learn you take prozac? take viagra? take chemo? take replacement hormone therapy? take antibiotics?

The fact is, you do, from time to time, tell others about your diagnoses, your conditions and your treatment.  But the fact also is that there are many folks that you do not tell.  And there are some folks who choose medical privacy at a high level of preference.

And every one of you suckers are enjoying the VERY LAST YEAR OF MEDICAL PRIVACY IN YOUR LIVES.

That's right.

When the IRS issues annual return forms in coming years, you will be required to provide your HEALTH IDENTIFICATION NUMBER.  It is the only way to allow the IRS to fulfill its "DUTY" of taxing folks who disobey the "universal mandate" to purchase health insurance.

Now some of you will say, "so what, just because they have my Health ID No. doesn't mean they will go giving my health records an endoscopy!"

Right.

And the IRS won't target groups that teach about the Bill of Rights for special scrutiny.