President Obama and his congressional allies want to create the perception that Obamacare is a done deal, and that Republicans need to get over it. But the events of the past week show quite clearly that that’s far from the reality. Since its passage, Obamacare has rested on shaky ground, owing to the heavy-handed tactics used to jam it through Congress against the wishes of a majority of the electorate. But now, after the Florida court decision and the vote in the Senate on repeal, Obamacare is more vulnerable than ever — politically, legally, and operationally.

At first glance, the vote last night in the Senate might look like a setback. After all, the repeal amendment failed. Senate Democrats raised a point of order against Sen. Mitch McConnell’s amendment; Republicans needed 60 votes to keep the amendment alive. All 47 Republican senators voted to do so, but no Democrats did. The repeal amendment therefore fell on a straight party-line vote, 47-51 (two senators, Mark Warner and Joe Lieberman, did not vote).

That outcome was predictable. The Senate is still controlled by the Democrats, most of whom supported Obamacare just ten months ago. But just because the vote was predictable doesn’t mean it was pointless, as some Democrats have suggested. Far from it. The battle lines in the Senate have now been drawn more clearly. Twenty-three of the 33 Senate seats up for grabs in 2012 are currently held by senators who caucus with the Democrats, including several from moderate to conservative states, such as Ben Nelson from Nebraska, Bill Nelson from Florida, Jon Tester from Montana, Jim Webb from Virginia, Claire McCaskill from Missouri, and Joe Manchin from West Virginia. If these senators run for reelection, their opponents are certain to pin tonight’s vote on them early and often.

The Senate vote is also an indication of how close Congress is to passing a full repeal bill. Yes, it would have taken 60 votes to repeal it today in the Senate because of the point of order, and a likely Democratic filibuster if no point of order was applicable. But that need not be the case if Republicans regain control of the chamber in 2013. Recall that, in the aftermath of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate, congressional Democrats made an end run around the Senate filibuster by employing the “reconciliation” process to hammer out the final agreement between the House and the Senate. That allowed the Democrats to pass the original Senate version of Obamacare (passed when there were 60 Democratic votes in the Senate) through the House, and to pass changes to that previously approved Senate bill through both the House and the Senate with a simple majority vote. In other words, the only reason Obamacare is law today is that the Democrats used “reconciliation” to pass it through the Senate without the need for 60 votes.

The same could be done for repeal. As Keith Hennessey has pointed out, if Republicans regain control of the Senate in 2012 (which seems plausible, given the number of seats in play that are currently held by Democrats), and the House remains under Republican control, Republicans could dismantle Obamacare on a reconciliation bill, and they could do so without the need for any Democratic votes. Repeal would need only a simple majority to clear the Senate. There are now 47 solid votes for repeal. With a pickup of just four repeal votes, Republicans could send a full repeal bill to the president in 2013. And if the president is someone other than Barack Obama . . . Live by reconciliation, die by reconciliation.

#ad#Legally, Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling this week that Obamacare is unconstitutional has fundamentally transformed the landscape. The individual mandate, which is at the center of Judge Vinson’s opinion, is now very much on the ropes in a legal sense. It is also highly vulnerable legislatively, with a large percentage of the electorate opposing its implementation. One way or another, the chances that the individual mandate survives intact until 2014 are low, and dropping by the day.

Further, Judge Vinson’s case has emboldened the states in their struggle for control over health-care policy. The architects of Obamacare assumed they could impose the law’s massive administrative burdens on the states without much pushback. The feds have all the money, and thus all the power, or so the thinking went. But now Judge Vinson has sided with 26 states that think the Constitution’s federalist framework means something. The truth is, Obamacare may be too cumbersome to be workable even with state cooperation, but it most certainly won’t work without the states doing most of the dirty work. With Judge Vinson’s ruling, many states are now openly wondering why in the world they should move forward with costly and risky plans to implement a program they find fundamentally flawed and objectionable.

Obamacare is hanging on by the thinnest of threads. It is the law for now, but it’s far from settled policy. The final word on it hasn’t been uttered yet. In all likelihood, the voters will get to do that, with the votes they cast in 2012.

The House will pass H.R. 2 this week. Once that bill is passed, it will be sent to the Senate for consideration. Once the Senate receives the bill, any Senator can use Rule 14 to object to the second reading of the bill. This procedural objection will “hold at the desk” the House-passed bill and allow the Senate to act on the full repeal measure.

If the bill is referred to committee, it will never get to the Senate floor. This procedural objection by one or a number of Senators will stop the bill from being referred to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP). If the bill is referred to committee, there is little to no expectation that the committee will pass the bill, let alone have one hearing on the bill.

Objecting to Rule 14 would hold the bill at the desk of the Senate and would put H.R. 2 on the Senate calendar. This procedure could be done with a letter or call from one Senator to the party leader. This would allow the Senate Majority Leader to commence debate on the matter when he so chooses. It is unlikely that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) would move to proceed to the bill, yet there is a procedure that any Senator can use to force a debate.

Any Senator can use Rule 22 to commence debate on H.R. 2 if they have held the bill at the desk. Rule 22, the filibuster rule, states:

Notwithstanding the provisions of rule II or rule IV or any other rule of the Senate, at any time a motion signed by sixteen Senators, to bring to a close the debate upon any measure, motion, other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, is presented to the Senate, the Presiding Officer, or clerk at the direction of the Presiding Officer, shall at once state the motion to the Senate, and one hour after the Senate meets on the following calendar day but one, he shall lay the motion before the Senate and direct that the clerk call the roll, and upon the ascertainment that a quorum is present, the Presiding Officer shall, without debate, submit to the Senate by a yea-and-nay vote the question: “Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate shall be brought to a close?”

And if that question shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn—except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting—then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

If any Senator can gather 16 signatures on a cloture petition, then they could file that petition with the clerk of the Senate. This would commence a proceeding that would end with a vote requiring 60 votes to shut off debate on a motion to proceed to a full repeal of Obamacare within two days of the filing of the petition. It is expected that Senate liberals would use Rule 22 to filibuster a full repeal of Obamacare. This would put many Senate Democrats in the interesting situation of voicing support for so-called “filibuster reform” while at the same time using the filibuster rule to block an up or down vote on Obamacare.

Once a bill is held at the desk, they can gather 16 signatures, then wait until the appropriate time to file cloture. They could do so next week or next year. If the courts continue to declare parts of Obamacare unconstitutional and the American people continue to despise this law, then the probability of full repeal may go up over time. At a minimum, Senators have the power to force a vote on full repeal of Obamacare if they have the will to do so.

If the supporters of a full repeal of Obamacare don’t use the Senate’s rules to force a vote on full repeal, don’t take them seriously when they say they are really want to repeal President Obama’s de facto government takeover of health care.

As Independence Day approaches, let’s remember that our Founding Fathers created a marvelous document to protect individual freedoms from the aggressions of government.

We call this the Constitution.

But along The Chicago Way, there is another text, full of decrees. The dusty scroll must be buried deep in a vault at City Hall, because few, if any, have ever seen it.

Still, Chicagoans know its power. Some may call it the Edict of Shortshanks. Others call it The Mayoral Carta. But most refer to it simply by its common name:

The Daleytution.

And a few days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Chicago’s illogical handgun ban — thus rightly affirming the Second Amendment of the Constitution even here — Mayor Richard Daley had different ideas.

He’s now working on a new ordinance that is expected to allow only one handgun per registered “qualified” individual.

Other impediments to the Second Amendment are also being considered, including insurance, training courses, licensing fees and whatever else he can think of.

Daleytutional scholars understand the inherent conflict between the Constitution and the Daleytution. But they also know another thing: He’s the boss.

I’m not advocating Chicagoans stockpile hand grenades and howitzers. These issues about where to draw the line will be debated in the courts. But the Second Amendment couldn’t be clearer.

So at his news conference Wednesday, I asked: Excuse me, Mayor? Where in the Constitution does it say “one gun, one person”?

The man was prepared for my lofty legal theories.

“No, what is happening is that the Supreme Court has rendered that certain parts of the Constitution do not apply to local and state governments,” said Daley.

“We understand that, and now we have to fashion in regards to an ordinance, and everybody’s looking at that. … There will be hearings tomorrow and we’ll present the full thing to the hearing about it, and then, for Friday.”

That’s the day his “full thing” will get the aldermanic rubber stamp.

The mayor is correct that the court left the door open to local governments to regulate some aspects of gun ownership. But the justices probably didn’t realize that Daley will rip that door off its hinges.

The Second Amendment reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

However, the Daleytution takes a more subtle and nuanced view: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed, except when the mayor feels like it.”

Gun rights and crime often get mixed in the political soup, and sometimes the politics get racial, particularly in Chicago.

Daley has run out of money, so he can’t hire enough police to adequately patrol the streets. Even when the city coffers were full, he was fearful of flooding high-crime neighborhoods with cops. He has always been afraid of headlines about white cops shooting black teens.

Complicating his response lately has been the federal perjury trial of Jon Burge, a white ex-police commander convicted the other day of lying under oath when he denied torturing African-American suspects.

Daley was Cook County state’s attorney when Burge was allegedly beating confessions out of people and making cases in the 1980s. Back then, Daley campaigned for mayor twice as the law-and-order prosecutor candidate.

“Well, we did everything possible at that time, if you look back, you can change a lot of things,” Daley said Wednesday, again dodging the question of what he did about Burge, which was absolutely nothing.

A reporter asked: So what things would you change?

“No, a lot of things in my life. Not just that,” said the mayor.

Chicago’s handgun ban has been ridiculously ineffective. One recent weekend, some 50 Chicagoans were shot, and some 30 shot the next, most with handguns.

I asked Daley if the court’s decision has given him the ability to redirect the political heat regarding violent street crime back toward the justices.

“John, no, the heat will always be on my back,” he said. “You know, on my back, or my front, whatever you want to describe it. It’s always there. What I have said is that we are a country of laws, not a country of guns.”

For the 28 years of the Chicago handgun ban, law-abiding citizens couldn’t have handguns to defend themselves. Politicians can carry. One alderman even waved her pistol at a political meeting. Taxpayers subsidize the mayor’s phalanx of armed bodyguards.

Meanwhile, criminals carry guns because they’re criminals.

After the mayor’s news conference, I ran into Colleen Lawson, one of the plaintiffs in the handgun case against the Daley administration.

She and lawyer David G. Sigale were in the hallway. They said they’d challenge whatever restrictions Daley comes up with. I figure they’ll win.

“One of the greatest things that has come about as a result of our lawsuit is the awareness of citizens that things here in Chicago are not the way things are supposed to be,” Lawson said. “That the rest of the country doesn’t work like this. That it doesn’t have to be like this. That you don’t have to be bullied.”

What she doesn’t seem to understand is this: The rest of America has the Constitution. But Chicago has the Daleytution.

And that’s the law of this land.

Schwarzenegger suggests that there should be some measure of parity between the amount that Californians pay to support the federal government and the quantity of services or federal funding they receive in return. He might have a legitimate complaint on this score, if only we were still governed by the same constitutional provisions written in 1787 and ratified in 1791. The Founders understood, and concurred with Schwarzenegger, that the several independent, sovereign states should not be disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of funding the operation of the federal government. To protect against this, the apportionment clause (Article I, Section 2) was written to ensure that each state share the responsibility of providing for those federal activities enumerated in the Constitution, in direct proportion to the number of citizens residing in each state.

It is gratifying to see Schwarzenegger arrive at the Founders’ view of budgetary fairness some 219 years after the fact, but his argument comes 108 years too late. The Sixteenth Amendment effectively overrides the apportionment clause, and authorizes the U.S. Congress to levy direct taxes against individual incomes, “without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Not only does this amendment authorize Congress to tax some states more than others (with respect to their proportional populations), but as of this writing, no intrepid litigator has yet mounted a successful general welfare argument to prevent the feds from spending the proceeds just as disproportionately. You can hardly swing a dead cat these days without hitting someone who will argue that passage of the Sixteenth Amendment dealt a potentially fatal blow to both state sovereignty and individual liberty, and much progress could be made in restoring responsible governance and economic prosperity with the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. Nonetheless, since 1913, it has been the law of the land. Sorry, Arnold, but on this count, you lose — especially since California was among the earliest states to ratify the Sixteenth Amendment in January of 1911.

In response to Schwarzenegger’s claim that unfunded federal mandates are bankrupting his state, the most obvious question is, “So who’s fault is that?” To which specific federal mandates is the Governator referring? In his remarks on Friday, Schwarzenegger referred to mandates in the areas of health, education and welfare. Fascinating that he should choose these examples, since all are areas in which the politicians in Washington have no constitutional authority to govern, much less issue binding mandates (funded or otherwise). What Schwarzenegger is really saying is that he, as governor, the California legislature and thousands of their predecessors have voluntarily chosen to comply with one illegitimate federal mandate after another. Rather than take seriously their sworn obligation to preserve the integrity of their offices, and to defend the sovereignty of their state and the liberty of its citizens, Schwarzenegger, his counterparts and their predecessors have repeatedly taken the path of least resistance, and evaded the difficult work of doing the right thing. Now we are told that California must be saved, because it is “too big to fail”. This is like the couple in the house down the street losing their life savings to a con artist, and then self-righteously demanding that all of their neighbors pool their resources to compensate them for the loss. Thanks, but no thanks.

None of us living outside of California should imagine that our own state officials have shown greater responsibility than Schwarzenegger and his colleagues. Officeholders in every state have consistently refused to face down unconstitutional federal intrusion. The solution, however, cannot possibly come from the very same practices that created the mess in the first place. If states across the nation are unable to meet the costs of their own ill-advised obligations, where does Schwarzenegger expect them to find the surplus to help Californians meet theirs? He seems infected with the currently popular misconception that the federal government has its own supply of money to spend. To give Californians $6.9 billion, the federal government can either tax it away from the rest of us (leaving us less prepared to stave off our own collapse); borrow it from foreign lenders (leaving us and our descendants indebted to those with no inherent concern for our well-being); or simply print more money (destroying the economic value of everything we currently have). Unless folks in the Golden State know of some economic alchemy that Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and John Maynard Keynes never imagined, there are no other options.

Despite the logic of the very argument he made on Friday, don’t expect Arnold Schwarzenegger or any other state governor to lobby for repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment anytime soon. However sensible this proposal may seem in principle, those wishing to be considered “mainstream” will inevitably yield to pressure to denounce the idea of repeal as a product of lunatic fringe thinking. With the resulting opportunities for disproportionate federal taxation, don’t expect state officials to exercise restraint in trying to curry federal favor, in the hope of landing a disproportionate share of the resulting proceeds. This pathetic effort to regain a few crumbs of the loaf already taken from their citizens at gunpoint keeps state officials jumping through whatever federal hoops Washington contrives, however constitutionally indefensible they may be.

We have little hope of untying this Gordian knot, but it may soon be cut by economic realities no politician can ignore forever. Over the past year, not a week has gone by without someone blogging or “tweeting”:

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Usually attributed to Margaret Thatcher (perhaps apocryphally), this quote invariably expresses the frustration of those who think themselves unfairly burdened with the consequences of someone else’s irresponsibility. Faced with the unvarnished prospect of seeing their own state services slashed, while being taxed to maintain the existing basket of benefits Californians enjoy, citizens of other states may finally be ready to revolt against the federal spoils system that got us into this mess. Whether enough of us see the issues clearly or not, the economic reality is that we cannot all bail each other out. We’ve already run out of each others’ money.

There are a number of ideas in this world that should never be introduced to each other.

“Christian” and “rock” is one example. “Movie” and “wholesome” is certainly another. And, really, one thing we’ve always been able to count on is the boundless depravity of Hollywood. For this, I used to be grateful.

Obviously, those of us with even a tenuous grasp of decency or respect for the rule of law understand that filmmaker Roman Polanski — who, need we be reminded, alleged loaded up a 13-year-old with alcohol and Quaaludes before raping her in 1977 — should find himself putrefying in prison. Even actors must believe this, right?

No?

The subsequent skirmish over Polanski’s arrest — not exactly a momentous international incident — isn’t between right and left or blue state and red state or secularist and social conservative. It’s between a gaggle of actors and directors against everyone with a moral IQ above Woody Allen.

Harvey Weinstein, the noted producer of “Pulp Fiction,” has been one of Polanski’s staunchest defenders, claiming that the Polish director had already served his time (directing movies in Europe) and that we should trust his take on the situation because “Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion.”

Imagine, if you can, the impenetrability of this man’s iron-clad bubble. Weinstein’s success is predicated on dispensing tales from the darkest, twisted corners of the imagination. Don’t get me wrong, for this I am also grateful. Some of Weinstein’s ethically magisterial works, for instance, have included: “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (tagline? “They can die quickly. They can die slowly. But they must die!”) and “Death Proof” (plot? “Two separate sets of voluptuous women are stalked at different times by a scarred stuntman who uses his “death-proof” cars to execute his murderous plans”).

Now, I ask you, if Weinstein possessed even a scintilla of decency, would he have subjected this nation to “The Nanny Diaries”?

When Weinstein began circulating a pro-Polanski petition after the director was apprehended in Switzerland, Allen — a man who, somewhat prophetically, carried on an affair with a teenager in his film “Manhattan” — immediately signed.

As did Martin Scorsese, a true giant of cinema, whose depiction of psychotics, mobsters, teenager prostitutes, drugs, mayhem and crass violence can only be called genius.

But moral? Compassionate? Not exactly.

Polanski himself made a name directing “Repulsion” (Plot? “Left alone when her sister goes on vacation, a sexually repressed young beauty goes insane with surreal fantasies of seduction and rape”) and “Rosemary’s Baby,” wherein a housewife is imbued with the devil’s spawn (co-starring Charles Grodin!).

I enjoy many of these charmingly decadent films for what they are: fantasy, titillating, coarse, absurd and escapist. There are few people who possess the talent to send us to a world where violence is without consequence; where serial infidelity is patched up with a couple of witty sentences; and where middle-aged men (often, incredibly, resembling the ones directing the film) can secure companionship from lithe 20-year-old beauties as effortlessly as they can jump from building to building chasing would-be terrorists.

The problem is that apparently many of these people have a problem distinguishing between art and reality. As well-known blogger Allahpundit recently twittered, “Word on the street: Polanski’s next film is so good, Europe’s going to let him (redacted) an eight-year-old. It’s THAT GOOD.”

Where are the average, serial-marrying, middling Hollywood immorals as their profession is sullied by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, who asserts that Polanski wasn’t guilty of “rape rape” or Debra Winger, who calls the rule of law “Philistine thuggery”?

What is the average American to make of this incident? Despite the coverage, not much.

1. Hollywood denizens are extraordinarily out of touch.

2. We send them to jail when necessary.

3. Always, always ignore them unless they have a script in hand.

A single case sometimes shines a lurid light on an entire country, and the case of Fiona Pilkington does just that for contemporary Britain—both its population and its officialdom. A coroner’s inquest was recently held in the case, two years after the events in question.

On October 23, 2007, Pilkington, a single mother of low intelligence, used gasoline to set fire to her car, with herself and her 18-year-old, severely handicapped daughter inside. They both died in the conflagration.

The reason that she killed herself and her daughter was that local youths had abused them for years. They taunted her and her daughter for hours on end, standing and shouting outside their home, pelting it with bottles and stones, and repeatedly intruding into the garden. Pilkington, who was inoffensive, shy, and retiring, called the police a total of 33 times, but they did absolutely nothing, though they knew what was going on. The local chief of police issued an apology at the inquiry into the affair. If he had meant it, of course, he would have immediately resigned his post.

The deep spiritual sickness of contemporary Britain is evident in the following comment on the inquiry in the liberal newspaper, The Guardian: “Although much of the abuse centred on the taunts about the children’s disabilities, police failed to recognise it as a hate crime rather than simple antisocial behaviour, which would have made it a far higher priority.”

In other words, the seriousness of an offense committed in Britain now depends upon who the victim is. If a person is not of an identifiably protected group, he or she is not entitled to police intervention against abusive stone- and bottle-throwing youths. He is not entitled to protection at all.

The Guardian’s article appears to accept that such behavior, so long as it targets a member of an unprotected group, is merely undesirable—“anti-social” rather than obviously criminal. The rule of law is fast evaporating in Britain; we are coming to live in a land of men, not of laws.