More on that Canadian jeweler and the gay couple

I've now read more about that case that I posted about on Tuesday. It is very clear that the lesbian couple did not know about the jeweler's beliefs at the time they ordered the ring. As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation site says:

White and Renouf visited the store and later gave specifications and a price range for potential rings.

“They were great to work with. They seemed to have no issues. They knew the two of us were a same-sex couple,” White said.

“I referred some of my friends to them, just because I did get some good customer service and they had good prices.”

That was before one friend went in to purchase a ring for his girlfriend — and instead found a distressing sign.

It reads: “The sanctity of marriage is under attack. Let's keep marriage between a man and a woman.”

The friend took a picture of the poster, which made its way back to White.

“I had no idea about the sign up until that point,” she said.

“It was really upsetting. Really sad, because we already had money down on [the rings], and they're displaying how much they are against gays, and how they think marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

The couple went to the store the following day, and asked about the sign.

“They just said that that's their beliefs, and they think they can put up whatever they want. I just said it was very disrespectful, it's very unprofessional and I wanted a refund,” White said.

As I said Tuesday, this changes the situation from what Cooke seemed to think. Cooke outlined a scenario where the couple concluded the deal in full knowledge of the jeweler's anti-gay beliefs. But it's clear that this was not the case. They found out about this after the order was placed.

John Kasich?

It seems that Governor John Kasich, of the state of Ohio, is planning to run for the Presidency, adding yet another name to the list of declared candidates. Gov. Kasich might make a very good President. He has experience as Governor — and was overwhelmingly re-elected to his second term after a very close election that put him in originally, which implies that Ohioans thought he did a good job in his first term as Governor. He also has experience in the Congress, which means he needs no schooling in Federal issues, unlike many Governors who may have concentrated on state-level issues. I would say that his only negative is that he is not well known. He would have to conduct an extensive campaign to make people aware of who he is. For myself, I think he would be easy to support.

An episode that anti-gay people seem to think justifies their bigotry

In the online site of the National Review, a column by Charles C. W. Cooke dated May 22, 2015 reads:

In the American Conservative yesterday, Rod Dreher related the following story:

So, a Canadian Christian jeweler custom-made a pair of engagement rings for a lesbian couple, Nicole White and Pam Renouf, at their request. Later, when they found out that the jeweler personally opposes same-sex marriage, they went to pieces and demanded their money back. The couple now believes the rings they ordered will have been tainted by having been fashioned by jeweler Esau Jardon’s hands, given what impure thoughts he holds in his mind.

One could be forgiven for wondering how we are all supposed to keep up. Last month, as Indiana’s rather tame religious-freedom legislation was being torched by the mob, America’s more devout dissenters were informed that the price of participation in the marketplace was the subjugation of one’s conscience to one’s Caesar. “You can’t opt out of the law,” the agitators explained. “This isn’t the Jim Crow South!” Their core message? That if we all keep quiet about our views — and if we treat commercial transactions as commercial transactions — nobody will end up getting hurt. Or, put another way: “Cater my wedding, you bigot.”

In Dreher’s story, alas, the opposite case appears to obtain. “We can’t be expected to honor our contracts with companies that disagree with us,” the outraged couple is arguing, “for that might taint our nuptials.” The new message? That we can’t all get along by keeping quiet, but instead need to positively affirm one another or face the consequences. Or, put another way: “Even if I ask you to, don’t cater my wedding, you bigot.”

Would that the agitators could settle on a strategy.

Being a dastardly free-market type, I have no objections whatsoever if White and Renouf prefer not to use a vendor whose religious convictions they abhor. Choice, not force, is the guiding star of the classical liberal’s ship: If a free person objects to a business because it has a political sign in its window or because its owners are wearing a yarmulke or because its clerk is using a Mac rather than a PC, that’s fine with me. But we ought to be clear about exactly what happened here. As CBC News confirms, White and Renouf did not walk idly past the window and immediately cross the offending jeweler off their list, and neither did they converse with him a little and discover him to be objectionable. Rather, they found him to be charming and pleasant and happy to acquiesce, and, having been suitably impressed by his offering, they happily entered into a contract with him. And then, having later uncovered what was in his heart, they refused to take “Yes” for an answer.

When the couple “found out what he really believed about same-sex marriage,” Dreher writes, they “balked, and demanded their money back — and the mob threatened the business if they didn’t yield.” Which is ultimately to say that White and Renouf sought to break their contract — not, you will note, because he was rude or because he failed to deliver on his promises, but because they made a window into his soul and they did not like what they saw — and then, when he objected, to subject him to bullying and to threats until he caved. Is that “tolerance”?

Wait a minute. It isn't that the couple “made a window into his soul” — The jeweler posted a sign proclaiming his views. Did the couple see that sign before ordering the ring? Probably not. So they ordered the ring, had it prepared, and then saw a sign in the jeweler's shop demeaning their worth as a couple. Suppose a Jewish couple had a ring made, and then discovered a Nazi swastika on display in the store. Should they not have canceled the transaction? I think they'd be right to call it off, even if the ring had already been made.

Cooke's column continues:

I rather think not. Indeed, ceteris paribus, one has to feel extraordinarily sorry for the vendor here, for by the standards that were established during the Indiana debate he did precisely the “right” thing. Carefully putting his religious reservations to one side, the man took on a pair of customers with whose decision he fundamentally disagreed, and he promised to do the best for them that he could. And still, it wasn’t good enough.

Were this a Monty Python sketch and not a horrifying power play, the tendering conversation would presumably have proceeded like this:

Customer: We are a lesbian couple who would like you to make us a wedding ring.

Business owner: Okay. I do not support gay marriage, but I will serve you as anybody else. This, I understand, is how it works.

Customer: You can’t deny me service simply because you hold different views from mine.

Business owner: Indeed. I have no intention of doing so. Society is better off when our differences remain private.

Customer: Okay, let’s do business.

Business owner: Great.

Customer: Your private views are disgusting. You can’t make me do business with you. Give me my money back or I’ll unleash the kraken.

If this is to be our new standard — and time will tell — it would be useful to know what legal protection our recalcitrant firms will reasonably be able to recruit to their side. In both Canada and in the United States there already exists a pernicious imbalance in the supposedly free marketplace. If a browsing consumer doesn’t happen to like the politics or the race or the religion of a given business owner, he is quite free to decline to associate with it. Thus do some progressives like to skip Chick-Fil-A, an openly Christian business; thus do some conservatives prefer to avoid Apple, whose owner Tim Cook irritated them during the Indiana fight. By that very same law, however, it is strictly verboten for a business to discriminate against customers they themselves dislike — even if they feel that by fulfilling their legal obligations they will be violating their consciences. Are we really going to add to this already lopsided arrangement a general right to break contracts after the fact? Are we going to hand the integrity of our signed arrangements over to the whim of the mob? And if we are not, what are we to expect the government to do about those whose consciences now demand that they renege on their word?

I think one question that needs to be answered is “Did the couple know the jeweler's anti-gay-marriage beliefs before ordering the ring?” If they did, Cooke would have a point here. But if not, (and I suspect that was the case) I think they were every bit justified in acting as they did. And by the way, I'm not a “progressive,” but I boycott Chick-fil-A, not because they are owned by a Christian, but because they choose to insist that their franchisees keep the same Christian rules, such as closing on Sundays.

Finally, Cooke continues:

After the pusillanimity that was shown in Indiana, I daresay: not much.

Horrified by the hatred that had been cast his way, the jeweler appealed to what he imagined were the first principles of his adopted nation. “One of the reasons my family chose to come to Canada,” he noted, “was the freedom of rights.… Nothing in that shop or in these posters is against the law.… There’s nothing there that means to discriminate or to hate anybody else.… For the same reason, I ask to have the same respect in return, especially when it’s in my own business.” One is almost touched by the naïveté. This isn’t about respect, friend; it’s about power.

No, it is about the right of people to do business with people that do not think they are sub-human. But Cooke does not recognize this.

Marco Rubio?

I hadn't given a lot of thought to Marco Rubio as a 2016 candidate. But perhaps I should. There is an article entitled “A Hillary Clinton Match-Up With Marco Rubio Is a Scary Thought for Democrats” by Jeremy W. Peters on The New York Times' site which implies that Rubio is very good at capturing his audience's sympathy. And of course, his history of doing so well against the former Governor, Charlie Crist, among Republicans that Crist left the party and still lost when he tried to run an independent campaign certainly points to Rubio's electability, which is an important factor. He may be somewhat more conservative than I'd like, but he may well be a good choice. After all, anyone who scares Democrats interested in putting Hillary Clinton in the White House as much as is implied by that article is worth looking at.

Hillary Clinton's supporters see nothing wrong?!!

Hillary Clinton still has supporters who seem to find nothing wrong with the Clinton Foundation's accepting large sums from foreign sources. The article I linked to above has a paragraph:

The Clinton Foundation story is almost perfectly designed to polarize Clinton’s supporters and opponents along traditional lines. Critics say donations from foreign governments and business interests with a stake in administration policy raise conflict-of-interest questions, but even the conservative author leading the charge on the issue, Peter Schweizer, acknowledges there’s no “direct evidence” linking Clinton to any specific quid pro quo deal. Whether you believe there’s more to the story than just bad “optics” mostly depends on whether you see it as merely the latest in a long line of trumped-up Clinton scandals that didn’t pan out or the newest example of those ruthless and corrupt Clintons flouting the rules for personal gain.

But my question — and I asked it of my wife, an enrolled Democrat who would like to see a woman President — is “Do you want a President who might feel herself beholden to a foreign party?” And she was responsive to it exactly the way I am. It is not a minor thing. It's a lot more serious than whether the Governor of New Jersey knew his underlings were going to block a lane on the George Washington Bridge.

Ireland's gay marriage vote

Ireland yesterday voted — by a 5 to 3 margin — to legalize same-sex marriage. It's hard to believe that a country which is so dominated by the Roman Catholic Church that abortion is still illegal there would vote so decisively that way. (It's been trumpeted as the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. It is the first to do so nationwide. But in the United States, of course, it's a state issue and several states (including my own, Maryland) did legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.We don't have a national vote on issues like this.

But let's not quibble. Congratulations to the Irish people for their stand in favor of freedom, and to the gay & lesbian community in Ireland for their victory.

Thoughts on the Obergefell case

One thing that needs to be noted about Obergefell v. Hodges is that the specific case of Obergefell has been consolidated with three other cases. And this may lead to a finding that legalizes gay marriage nationwide, using Loving v. Virginia as a precedent.

The specific case of Obergefell only involves recognition of out-of-state marriages in other states; this issue is really a no-brainer, because states have always recognized out-of-state marriages as valid, essentially a consequence of Article IV of the Constitution. Hoswever, whether a state can restrict marriages performed within its borders to opposite-sex couples involves a different issue. States have generally had the powers to define who can marry (minimum age and degree-of-relationship limits being common), but the precedent of Loving v. Virginia allows the Court to invalidate such restrictions if they are discriminatory. In that case, it was racial discrimination; here it is sexual discrimination. (As Chief Justice Roberts asked in the course of his questioning, “[I]f Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe, Sue can marry him and Tom can’t. And the difference is based upon their different sex. Why isn’t that a straightforward question of sexual discrimination?”) If it is looked at in this way, the precedent of Loving v. Virginia will guide the Court to legalize gay marriage nationwide.

Foreign developments and our 2016 election

During the four months or so that I was neglecting this blog, the foreign developments have been a great thing for the political Right. Both David Cameron in the United Kingdom and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel won big victories, much greater than the polls predicted. It is to be wondered whether this is a portent for the 2016 election in this country. Certainly, I would like to see that.

Right now, polls show Hillary Clinton winning against many Republican opponents — not all the Republican prospects in all the polls, but generally in most polls that I have seen. But of course, November 2016 is a year and a half away. And a lot can change in that time. Yet what if the polls are as far off as they were in the UK ad Israel? Hillary might be losing even now!

All in all, there is hope for 2016.

Politics and the Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia

Democrats are blaming Republican funding cuts to Amtrak for the Philadelphia derailment. While I think that most Republicans are misguided in their desire to cut Amtrak, I think it is an implausible stretch of the truth. Perhaps Amtrak could have worked faster at installing the Positive Train Control that would have prevented the accident if they had had more money, but I don't think that was really likely. And money isn't what made the engineer do whatever he did that made the train speed up.

Amtrak is perhaps 10% responsible — they should have worked harder at installing Positive Train Control. And the engineer is 90% responsible. But don't blame Congressional Republicans for the accident. I agree that Amtrak needs more money than many Republicans want to give it. But this is not the reason.

The Philadelphia derailment

The Amtrak engineer on the train that derailed in Philadelphia says he was not using drugs (and offered a blood sample to prove it) and was not using his smartphone. (I had suspected the first, my wife the second.) He does not remember what happened in most of the time around the derailment. Evidence shows that the train was speeding up when it should have slowed down just before reaching the curve where the train derailed.

The train had been inspected by Amtrak not long before, and found to be in good shape. Some action by the engineer, therefore, must have caused the train to accelerate to over 100 mph when it should be traveling 80 and slowing down to 50 as it approached the curve. It certainly wasn't on autopilot!

Right now, my inclination is to blame the engineer. But because he can't remember anything, we will probably never know the true story. However, if I were a juror in a trial, I would certainly find the engineer guilty of negligent manslaughter.

The Dzhokhar Tsarnaev death sentence

The jury in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev case has made their decision — and sentenced him to death. I, for one, applaud. I was fearful that in Boston, a city with a high proportionn of the population opposed to the death penalty, the jurors might include some who were sufficiently opposed to it that they could not sentence Tsarnaev to death. But fortunately this did not occur.

There are some who argue that sometimes a person gets convicted who is not truly guilty, and a death penalty applied to such a person is irreversible. I certainly do not deny that wrongful convictions do sometimes occur — there was a case that recently cane to light where a man in Virginia served 28 years for a rape and it was finally established that the perpetrator was a man who looked uncommonly like the prisoner. But nobody claims that Tsarnaev is the wrong man. Not even he nor his lawyer. The only defense that anyone has offered was that Tsarnaev was a pawn of hs older brother. And Tsarnaev's own actions after his arrest make it clear that he mas acting consciously. The jury did not buy that argument.

Giving a murderer anything short of the death penalty, in my opinion, says that the lives of the murderer's victims are less important than the life of the murderer. And I cannot accept such a valuation. So Tsarnaev's sentence is absolutely justified, and, as I said earlier, I applaud it.

Returning to the blogging scene (continued): The Supreme Court cases

Getting back to blogging, there are not a lot of things that can be discussed at the moment, which is part of the reason I have not been active the past few months. There are two pending Supreme Court cases which I think are very important: King v. Burwell, which could throttle Obamacare if it is decided on the plain language of the statute, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which might lead to gay marriage being recognized nationwide. But until June, the Supreme Court is keeping silent on how they will rule. And yet, the Justices have likely made their decisions already, so nothing I say can do much. (Of course, I doubt my blog is being read by any Supreme Court Justices, but one can only hope!). And besides these cases and the 2016 election, which I discussed yesterday, it's hard to come up with a topic to discuss. But I will try.

Returning to the blogging scene: The 2016 candidates

Recently I got a question as to whether I was sill blogging. And that reminded me that it has been a long time since my last post, and that I ought to get back. A lot has happened since my last post, and it will take a bit to get current.

One development that I do not like is that Chris Christie, my preferred candidate for the nomination, seems to have lost a lot of his support, and instead of being at the top (or near the top) in the polls, is somewhere in the middle of the pack. While I still consider him the best candidate, unless he recovers that top position, I suppose I will have to consider other options. There are other candidates, such as Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker, who could be good Presidents, and my only reason for not supporting them for the nomination is that I feel they have less chance of actually being elected, so if they begin to look electable to me, I could certainly support them.

A couple of candidates have been discussed recently who have a number of attractive attributes, but who lack, to my mind, some important qualifications for the Presidency. If Carly Fiorina had won the election for Senator from California when she ran, I would consider her a high-quality candidate for the Presidency. However, as it is, she is totally inexperienced in the ins and outs of partisan politics, and I can't consider her ready for the Presidency. Her executive experience, to be sure, is excellent, and this is an area where the current incumbent's total lack has shown. So perhaps she would not be a terrible choice, and if she should secure the nomination, I would certainly vote for her against Hillary Clinton in November of next year.

The other person I consider attractive in some ways but insufficiently experienced in some areas for the Presidency is Ben Carson. He is certainly an intelligent and thoughtful man, who could be very useful in a Republican administration as Surgeon General, or at the head of a task force on finding a replacement for Obamacare, or as HHS Secretary, but he has none of the political experience I think necessary.

There are also a number of people who are more experienced in politics and who have, specifically, the executive experience needed for the Presidency: such Governors and former Governors as John Kasich and Mitch Daniels. I could easily support either of these two or others like them, but I fear they need to become better known to the public. They suffer the same flaws that Jon Huntsman did in 2012.

There are a couple of people that I could never support, however. If a religious-right extremist like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum (Is Rick Perry going to run? If so, he falls into this class.) should get the GOP nomination, the GOP loses my vote. I still would never vote for Hillary Clinton, but my vote would go to any obscure third-party candidate I could find rather than one of these men.

“The first Ferguson indictment”

There was a very nice article published on The Washington Times' website by John Solomon, dated November 24, 2014, and entitled “Analysis: The first Ferguson indictment goes to … the news media.” I would like to quote it, because I think it is spot on:

In the end, the first and perhaps only indictment to emerge out of the Ferguson tragedy went to the news media and its culture of frenzied coverage.

St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch explained Monday night in excruciating detail why 12 grand jurors chose not to indict Ferguson, Missouri, Officer Darren Wilson in a case that reopened long-simmering racial wounds in America, describing how some of the eyewitnesses quoted by news media and circulated via social media later recanted or were disproven by the physical evidence.

Some of the witnesses “pretty much acknowledged they saw parts and made up other parts of it,” Mr. McCulloch said in disputing some of the early media reports in the case.

To make his point, the prosecutor agreed to release all of the evidence gathered by authorities and presented to the grand jury.

“The duty of the grand jury is to separate fact from fiction,” Mr. McCullough said after excoriating news media coverage of the case.

“The most significant challenge encountered in this investigation has been the 24-hour news cycle and its insatiable appetite for something, for anything to talk about, following closely behind with the non-stop rumors on social media,” he said.

The prosecutor said the exhaustive review of the evidence identified a “lack of accurate detail” in some of the initial reports that fanned the flames of the local community, including erroneous reports that Mr. Wilson shot the unarmed victim Michael Brown in the back.

The prosecutor said the grand jury sorted through inconsistent and conflicting eyewitness accounts and “interviews on social media” that proved wrong, and it deserved credit for sticking with the evidence.

“They are the only people who have heard and examined all of the evidence of all of the witnesses,” he said.

The media’s performance was put on trial anew at the news conference where the results were announced, when Mr. McCulloch scolded a reporter for suggesting that police could kill with “impunity.”

The announcement proved a cathartic moment for career law enforcement officials, some of whom seethed for months over what they saw as one-sided media coverage and lopsided political sentiments.

“While the legal system has exonerated Officer Darren Wilson for his split-second decision on that August afternoon, he very much remains a victim of a politicized agenda that deemed him ‘guilty until proven innocent,’” said Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director who serves currently as the president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. “Although he will walk free, his life has been forever changed, as he has been exploited in a cynical effort to turn civilians against cops in fulfillment of an anti-law enforcement agenda.

When all the final details are reviewed and the smoke settles, one question that should be asked is whether the media’s age-old adage to “get it first, but first get it right” has been hijacked by a sentiment of “get it first, and hope it is right.”

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I will let John Solomon speak for me.

A bit of a surprise

The decision by the grand jury in Missouri not to indict Darren Wilson somewhat surprised me. My prediction was that Wilson would be indicted but acquitted on trial, because of the difference between the standards for evidence in the two kinds of proceedings. In a grand jury decision, one expects an indictment if there is even a case for the prosecution. In the actual trial, of course, the defendant is “innocent until proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” And I was certain, from the evidence I have so far seen, that Wilson would be found not guilty because he clearly acted in self-defense.

Apparently, however, the grand jury did not even think there was probable cause that would justify a trial. The case was even more clearly a case of self-defense than the evidence that had been made public demonstrated.

Of course, there are going to be riots. Some people are still convinced that Wilson shot Michael Brown out of racism. It is a shame that some people see racism everywhere. My wife has heard people (including her) described as racist simply because they would not vote for Barack Obama; it could not occur to those people that she might not be willing to vote for even a white person with Obama's history and qualifications. But here it is quite clear: Michael Brown, a big man, over 6′ tall and nearly 300 pounds, hit Wilson in the face badly enough to injure him and was grabbing for his gun when the shooting occurred. This is about as clearly a case of self-defense as can be imagined. And apparently that convinced the grand jury.

Marion Barry

Marion Shepilov Barry, former mayor of the District of Columbia and still a political force because he has been continuing to serve as a council member, just died. And even publications that are not local have chosen to make this top-level news. (Yes, USA Today is published in this area. But it aspires to be “the nation's newspaper,” not a Washington-area local paper.)

I think the fascination that the rest of the country has with Marion Barry is that he succeeded in getting re-elected over and over, despite a history that would sink most politicians. How many people would be politically alive after being arrested and convicted in a drug bust?

In turn, though, this is why many of us cannot fathom how people can expect the nation to give District voters the chance to elect Senators and Representatives on the same basis as if they were a State. Any place that kept re-electing a convicted druggie is a place whose voters must seem crazy to the average American. Certainly I understand that idea.

My worst fears confirmed

Barack Obama is the man who, shortly after taking over the Presidency, told a group of Republican members of Congress that “elections have consequences.” And he is also the man who, a few days before this year's election, told another group of people, this time prospective voters, that “these policies are on the ballot.” A third Obama quote that needs to be brought up was his remark after this election that “To those of you who voted, I hear you.” It certainly does not appear that the third is true; for in the light of the first two quotes, he should be prepared too make some moves toward Republican ideas. But as I said earlier, this is a President who refuses to compromise.

Everything that President Obama seems to be saying is that he knows what is best for the American people, and if Congress sends him a bill that agrees with what he wants, he will sign it, and if not he will veto it.

So much for hearing the American people.

Another sign of America losing its clout

It was recently announced that a space probe has made a landing on a comet, the first ever. And congratulations are in order for the scientists and engineers who put this mission into space.

But they didn't work for NASA, the space agency that has been doing, in fact, very little in recent years to bring us breakthroughs in space exploration. Mission control was not in Houston, Texas, but in Darmstadt, Germany. Yes, it was the European Space Agency that sent this mission into space, and while I'm happy for science, I'm not at all happy that it wasn't our space program that accomplished this mission. One more sign that the USA is becoming a second-rate power.

The two parties and identity politics

One thing that might be noted in the election results in this and recent years is the Democrats' reliance on identity politics. It is not just that Barack Obama got elected by drawing a record turnout among African-Americans and getting a record proportion of the vote among that same group. Rather, if you look at Democratic African-American office-holders, they are nearly all elected from constituencies with majority African-American electorates. (An exception might be Cory Booker, recently re-elected to a Senate seat in New Jersey. But he got his start as mayor of Newark, a largely African-American city.)

By contrast, African-Americans elected as Republicans are elected in constituencies that are not majority African-American — look at Tim Scott, Will Hurd and Mia Love — just to mention three African-Americans who will sit in the next Congress.

Scott was first elected to a seat in the House of Representatives from a majority-white district in South Carolina. When Senator Jim DeMint resigned, Governor Nikki Haley (herself an Indian-American) appointed Scott to the Senate. Tuesday he won a full term — and you can bet that this first African-American to be elected from the South since Reconstruction did not get the office because of African-American votes.

Will Hurd won a race in a basically Hispanic disctrict, running against a Hispanic incumbent. Again, his victory cannot be laid to identity politics.

Mia Love got elected from a district in Utah — and the number of African-Americans in the whole state of Utah is not enough that, even if they were all packed into one Congressional district, they could form a majority! Like Scott, she had to win based on white voters' feeling she was the best person for the job, and she did.

These are examples of the Republican Party's treatment of African-Americans as simply Americans, and it would be great if the Democrats could do the same.

Two years of inaction?

While President Obama's press conference on Wednesday seemed to be positive — and I said so in my post the next day — I fear that we will not see action to help the American people in the next two years. In the press conference, the President was asked some specific questions, and among them was one about whether he could sign legislation that eliminated the individual mandate. He explicitly answered:

“The individual mandate is a line I can’t cross because the concept, borrowed from Massachusetts, from a law instituted by a former opponent of mine, Mitt Romney, [he] understood that if you’re providing health insurance to people through the private marketplace, then you’ve got to make sure that people can’t game the system and just wait until they get sick before they go try to buy health insurance”

Of course, mentioning Mitt Romney was a gratuitous attempt at phony bipartisanship. Romney signed the Massachusetts law as a compromise with a legislature that was 85% Democratic. And it does appear that at the time he was convinced that it was necessary to prevent gaming the system. He has stated that this is an issue that should be addressed state-by-state, and if he had been elected President he would have signed an authorization for any state to opt out.

By making such statements, Pres. Obama has made it likely that there are important areas that he will not compromise on. And some of these will be necessary to compromise if any business can be done.