There are many frightening aspects of the new healthcare law hidden around every corner of its legislative labyrinth, camouflaged behind dense impenetrable briars of legalese. But, like the purloined letter of literature, there plenty of the law’s detestable provisions hiding in plain sight.

As a candidate, Barack Obama repeatedly promised never to raise taxes on American families earning less than $250,000 a year or on individuals earning less than $200,000. He reiterated that vow on February 24, 2009 during an address to Congress. On March 23, 2010 the president broke that promise, however, when he signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, codifying thereby every one of its component taxes and penalties.

Satisfying the simultaneous desires to be a member of the winning team and yet be worthy of individual attention, self-described “pro-life” Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan finagled a feting by President Obama hours before the vote on the healthcare “reform” bill. To the surprise of no one familiar with President Obama’s ability to attract allies, Representative Stupak emerged from the meeting and anti-climatically declared his intent to support the bill.

It’s becoming customary to pass healthcare bills late at night and on holidays and weekends. It happened again Sunday night as the House of Representatives by a vote of 219 for and 212 against to pass healthcare legislation and give President Obama the landmark slice of social engineering that was the premier plank of his platform.

In the aftermath of the killing of Julius Caesar, Mark Antony tried to assume the tyrannical power seized by his mentor. Cicero, the famed Roman friend of liberty, opposed Antony’s various attempts to aggregate all power into his own hands. Time and time again, Cicero rose in the Senate and the in the Forum to denounce Antony and catalog his crimes against the republic.

President Barack Obama does not know how to take a hint. Despite Scott Brown’s remarkable victory in the special senatorial election in Massachusetts and the momentous maneuvering in nearly every state to block federal healthcare demands, President Obama continues his Sisyphean labor of rolling this giant ball of taxes, penalties, and mandates up Capitol Hill, across the Tenth Amendment, and onto the backs of working Americans.

CSPAN was the broadcaster of Thursday’s bipartisan healthcare summit. The political cenacle convened at Blair House in the nation’s capitol to hash out a compromise agreement for the still very unpopular A to Z restructuring (read: nationalization) of the American healthcare industry (from the insurance policies that cover treatment to the method and manner of the treatment itself).

Newt Gingrich, architect of the “Contract with America,” and John C. Goodman, founding president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, wrote an op-ed column for the Wall Street Journal offering suggestions to President Barack Obama, who seems desperate to find ways to garner bipartisan support for his push for healthcare reform.

Many Democrats broke with their morning routine last Wednesday and skipped reading the morning paper. The headlines were full of the report of their party’s demise and not even Colombia could produce a coffee strong enough to rouse them from the droopiness of defeat. There wasn’t a paper in the country that didn’t document (in the largest possible font size) the demise of the Democratic Party thanks to the victory of Scott Brown in the special election to fill the seat of the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

On page 1,980 of the recently passed Senate health care overhaul readers will find the mandates regarding the so-called “Cadillac Tax.” Simply, the Cadillac Tax is a 40 percent excise assessed on all employer-provided health insurance policies that fall into the “luxury” category.