Pawlenty/Bachmann in 2012!

Pawlenty/Wilson in 2012!

Gingrich/Pawlenty in 2012!

Huh, hopping into the Rick Perry world...

Pawlenty/Jindal in 2012 - that's the ticket!

This would be funny if it wasnt' so sad. Are Republicans going to do this every time legislation comes up that they don't like? Scream about "sovreignty" as loud as they can, and then take the money anyway? It's as if what they ultimately do doesn't matter as long as they said they weren't going to do it.

This is what the opposition looks like: Optics matter; actions don't. And if they don't like something, they threaten to take their states and go home.

In effect, Pawlenty is threatening to withold access to medical care from the citizens of Minnesota. Where I'm sitting, that looks like a hostage situation.

I suppose you'll also be ready to invoke state sovereignty to keep FEMA and public education out of Minnesota as well?

Go for it...you live in a liberal state, and the last governor who took on the Prez, from a conservative state no less, lost and then ran his career off a cliff. So c'mon, play games with us.

Go for it, Timmy. But can we keep Al?

Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Minnesota provoking a Second Nullification Crisis over health care reform? the idea is so laughable that it makes me with the Republicans would just give up the pretense and start wearing their clown suits in public.

It is time for all Americans to wake up to the tactics of the righ wingnuts like Bachmann, Pawlenty and others. These people are not interested in what is good for America. they are only interested in furthering their own ideology. There is a related post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?page_id=588

I think that Joe Wilson and Tim Pawlenty should run together.

Good lord...I guess Tim Pawlenty thinks in order to win his party's nomination in 2012, he better get on board and embrace the Bachmann/Palin/ Wislon and Birther wing of the republican party. Sad and utterly pathetic!

IANAL, but I would think that Sec 514 of ERISA would place a high hurdle on Pawlenty's attempt at nullification. That's the section that Dennis Kucinich's amendment to HR 3200 specifically waives to permit states to adopt their own single-payer insurance systems if they choose.

My view is that the Kucinich amendment is worth expanding to allow any state not only to adopt single payer if it wants but to opt out of Obamacare altogether and maintain the status quo. I think tossing a poisoned bone to states-rights nuts is a decent tradeoff if it allows those states with active single-payer legislation (especially Pennsylvania, followed by California) to move ahead with those efforts.

Let the states be the laboratories, and let Rethugs like Pawlenty go down in flames for denying their constituents even the weak improvements of Obamacare, much less the stronger medicine of single payer.

The amendment is in peril of being stripped out of the bill by Pelosi and Hoyer, who have great latitude in merging and reconciling the versions of HR 3200 that came out of the three House committees with jurisdiction over it. After that, it will still hang by a thread in House/Senate conference to hammer out a joint health financing reform bill. I think it deserves strong support, particularly from "pragmatic" progressives who say they support single payer but are pushing for Obamacare as the only possible compromise. They can have their compromise without hobbling states that want to push the envelope on real reform.

i can't see where Minnesotans will go for this.
average people really do need some health care reform.
it really isn't a political issue, for most of us it's a necessity.

I know the Republicans love this fiction... that they can just opt out of any Federal rules they don't like. In South Carolina, Joe Wilson and his cronies must be rubbing their hands in anticipation of getting rid of those pesky rules about racial integration.

It doesn't matter what Minnesotans think of this - Pawlenty hasn't been seen or heard from since he decided he was the Republican savior. He hasn't been in this state in months. Correction: not since he decided to bail on the budget mess he left.

Make no mistake about this. Pawlenty is doing this to garner support from the southern states. From a southerners point of view, it was states rights that started the civil war and not slavery. So this appeals to the southerners greatly.

Wow, the cretinous behavior seems to have no limit.

Pawlenty's desperation is palpable. He was queued last of all the young Rethug hopefuls, but with the implosion of so may of the stars he's hoping his mediocrity will be just boring enough to slip past the radar. The problem is courting the crazies will alienate way too many middle-of-the-road voters.

How could Obama blunder so terribly? In his campaign/inauguration speeches, he mentioned potential missteps, but this is an all out clusterf!@#. Miserable, miserable, miserable.

http://www.enewse.com/

Why don't the Republicans just pool their resources and light an enormous cross? Make a Pay-Per-View event out of it. Sarah Palin in a USA bikini, water skiing around the whole thing. It'd save them time and money.

I'm sure Pawlenty's stock just went up in Secessionville. Pawlenty/Brooks '12 or Pawlenty/Calhoun '12...

Party of Lincoln.

Seriously whats wrrong with these guys?

Van Jones was right "republicans are assholes"

Ha, that's funny. Pawlenty forgets he's the governor of Minn, not South Carolina. He may not be running for reelection, but I bet any chance by him to nullify health reform would result in almost immediate impeachment. Go for it, Timmeh. Prove what an impotent fool you are.

Why doesn't he invoke the 10th amendment and exclude the citizens of his state from Medicare?

Somehow I don't see this Supreme Court overturning the last 80 years of its history of denying 10th Amendment claims just like this one. Someone needs to tag his executive SUV or whatever with the general welfare clause.

I, for one, find this news sad.

This country needs a responsible Republican Party. If formerly reasonable center-right moderates like McCain, Grassley, and Pawlenty have to do this wingnut ritual dance in order to advance themselves in their party, the whole country suffers. They are part of the synergistic devolution of an electorate that doesn't believe in science or logic or outreach.

Good thing he's not running for re-election..This anti-everything-democratic dance is getting real old...Stupidity can't be this rampant in the folks and officials that have been elected around the country..Mass hysteria just doesn't set in this quick !!

BUT, if allowed to continue much longer, someone, somewhere is going to do something REAL stupid and then the crap is gonna hit the windshield..

Some have speculated that Pawlenty was actually a reasonable kind of guy but this just goes to show you how wrong folks can be...Facts speak for themselves..

It was a tenet of the Founding Fathers that the individual states should be the incubators and testing labs of democracy. Let's all agree to give the conservatives a single state in which to implement all of their Constitutionally-permissible social/fiscal policies and see how the experiment goes. I personally think that conservatism cannot successfully govern a community more complex that an all-Amish town of 500 people, but the experiment could be instructive.

On the contrary, Pawlenty needs to establish his Republican creditials in order to be taken seriously in the Iowa primary. He needs to prove that he is just a bat-sh*t crazy as Palin, Bachmann, Wilson, and Rick Perry in order to establish his creds with the crazies who vote in Republican primaries.

Maybe, if enough state officials become concerned about retaining (or re-asserting "state rights"), we civil libertarians might try to convince them to re-direct their outrage from the constitutionality of healthcare (which is pretty much covered in the Preamble "...promote the general welfare...", and by several established precedents) to making efforts to enforce Article V.

Over the past eight years Congress & the Executive Branch have, systematically and illegally, virtually repealed much of the Bill of Rights (via the PATRIOT Act & Protect America Act), without the consent of 3/4 of the State legislatures, as required by that vital Article.

This seems to me to be much higher priority.....

Did the 'states rights' South invoke anything similar during the civil rights era when they refused to integrate their schools?

I'm no Pawlenty expert or anything - but he has struck me in the past as a fairly reasonable, intelligent, and thoughtful person.

But I guess you can't get the nomination for Town Alderman in the Republican Party these days without going full-frontal wingnut.

Very, very weird.

Presumably Minnesota wants to keep and attract well-educated residents. If it opts out of healthcare reform, that would seem to me to be a big disincentive for people to move or stay there. How does the Governor engaging in such lunacy serve the cause of attracting the most productive residents or the overall quality of life in the State?

The thing that scares me about the Tenthers is they always have the Supreme Court Five to fall back on.

Minnesota needs a public referendum, binding or not, so the public can prove to their lawmakers they WANT a public option, at least a majority wants it.

Kansas' first woman governor, Joan Finney, tried to get a public referendum system initiated here in the Sunflkower State, but they literally drove her from rerunning for office, it scared the Republicans in charge and their bluedog dem bro's so badly.

Public referendum doesn't have to be binding, but it would give an easy peek into where the voters really stand. Let us answer OPINION questions on ballots, not just vote for people or issues.

Then, when some bluedog claims to represent his or her constituents' public opinion, at least there would be some sort of empirical gauge by which to measure that self-declared integrity.

If Minnesotans had the opportunity in the last election to add a non-binding "yay or nay" to the public option question, Pawlenty might be hard-pressed to prove his twisted version meets the public's opinion. As it is nowadays, the polls can be ignored, but not if they were included in an actual election.

I'm not talking about public initiatives actually being voted on, just issues being ascribed simple "yes or no" boxes as in do you agree or disagre3e, and "1-10" boxes to identify how important an issue might be to anyone.

And that sheet could be submitted anonymously at the same time the ballot was counted. Then no one would know who voted which way, but the majority opinion would at least be represented, if not enforced.

He has already used an arcane interpretation of Minnesota Law to knock millions out of the budget for the needy, all the while demanding more tax cuts for the rich. And in the meantime, the infrastructure of our cities is falling apart. The 35W bridge collapse was just one of the first signs. This guy is a complete idiot, who can only parrot what he is told to say. He hasn't had an original thought since he learned how to pleasure himself. And once he fully gets in the spotlight and they start taking a look at his wife, you will be amazed that someone can be so vapid.

How peculiar (ha) that the big uptick in 10th Amendment/states rights/secession talk is occurring only after a black man is in office as President. Can we say massive sublimated social anxiety attack? Sure we can.