Lisa Madigan wants no part of this fight for Illinois citizens.
When our state's attorney general first made her play for the statewide office, she did so to be an "aspiring governor" AG, not a "defend state's rights" AG.
Real politicos know the drill. Hyper-ambitious types like Ms. Madigan hang around the attorney general's office for a few years, suing a few "bad" companies on behalf of "consumers" to garner press clippings while not ruffling the feathers of those powerful folks needed for backing when it's time to run for Springfield's top spot.
Indeed, for a state attorney general, rarely does real duty call. But here we are today facing trillion-dollar Obamacare.
More than any other state in the U.S., except California, perhaps, Illinois can least afford the financial burdens thrust upon it by the bill signed into federal law this week which nationalizes our health care system. Illinois doesn't have to lie down and accept it: states have redress in our courts for such challenges to the U.S. Constitution.
Thirteen states, none of them in as precarious a financial situation as ours, are aggressively pursuing their rights. The attorneys general of those states announced they are suing the federal government this week challenging the constitutionality of the health care legislation.
Their lawsuit says the health care bill is a gross violation of the 10th Amendment, which states the federal government has no powers beyond those enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, our Founding Fathers never envisioned a federal government empowered with authority to make states spend billions for health care.
Those ignorant of American history should be reminded -- it was the states who created and gave (limited) rights to Washington. Not the other way around.
Ms. Madigan, a true blue liberal Democrat with a law school degree, doesn't want to hear about state's rights, right now. She is enamored with the socialized health care dictated by Washington bureaucrats. And as someone who in four years will be courting her party's left wing as she vies for the Democratic nomination to the governor's mansion, she has shown no interest in joining her fellow attorneys general fighting for state sovereignty and against Obamacare.
But sometimes duty calls. Ms. Madigan isn't comptroller and she isn't a state legislator. She's Illinois attorney general, the people's lawyer charged with defending the rights of those people. That's her real job, not that of preparing to run for governor someday.
If Lisa Madigan reads the U.S. Constitution differently, she should publicly make her case, explaining why thirteen of her fellow attorneys general are wrong in their legal logic. If she cannot, then for her constituents' sake, she's obligated to join them.