Washington Times writer misleads

Because this is a day ending in 'y', it's time for another story about the misleading propaganda spread by the nation's most right-wing major (?) newspaper.

Donald Lambro is the chief political correspondent at the Washington Times. Last year, I exposed him for spreading the bogus meme that tax cuts for the working class were welfare.

Today, Lambro has a new piece that spreads blatant misinformation in plain sight and actually expects nobody to notice. If it's not an outright lie, it's certainly misleading.

The gist of Lambro's rant is that health care reform is unconstitutional because it is. To back up this stance, Lambro laments the prospect of people being required to buy medical insurance. Lambro says, "Congress has never before required citizens to purchase any good or service, but that is what both House and Senate health bills would mandate."

What about auto insurance, Donald? Car insurance is probably mandatory in all 50 states now. Granted, it's the states (not Congress) that require it, but Lambro's point is deliberately misleading.

What about taxes? Congress charges us taxes to pay for things like bailouts for big banks. How is that not requiring citizens to purchase goods and services for banks?

Don't get me wrong: Being required to buy health insurance isn't a good thing. But if you object to it, support single payer. Under single payer (which the Washington Times thought cops militantly oppose), this wouldn't be a worry.

The bigger question is: is it unconstitutional to require people to buy health insurance? If it is, that means it's also unconstitutional to force us to buy car insurance. You can't have it both ways.

So there. Nyeh.

If there is any serious effort to challenge the constitutionality of health care reform on these grounds, then I have a right to expect mandatory car insurance (which keeps the working class down) to be challenged as well.