LETTER FROM AN OLD FOGEY:

Indulge me please, for I am a doddering old fogey who was taught in civics class in the 1950s that our Supreme Court determined the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. The court, we were taught, did this by applying constitutional tenets to the particular law in question. Pretty easy stuff, I thought back in those simpler days before emanations, penumbras and psychic-like determinations of legislative intent entered the fray and politicized the process (“Supreme Court tries to make sense of poorly drafted Obamacare language,” Web, March 4).

The Affordable Care Act clearly states that subsidies for health care premiums are limited to those policies that originate in state-created exchanges. This was the intent of those who drafted the act and was not, as some would have us believe now, that unintended consequences of too-clever-by-half reasoning have rendered that part of the law a problem, a drafting error.

Either a law means what it says in plain English or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t and our leader can manipulate it at will, then our republic can exchange the bald eagle for a banana.

Published in the Washington Times on Monday, March 9, 2015.