Obamacare is a mess that embarrasses the Democratic Party, which ran roughshod over the will of the people to pass this bill through the back door.

On its first anniversary in March, there was no celebration — no photo ops with the president, no sick boy whose life was saved because of Obamacare.

Instead of learning from this mess, Democrats now say what we really need is universal health care, where the efficiency and empathy of the federal bureaucracy will save us all.

Two stories and a little bit of history show why government-run health care would be a disaster.

First, scientists have challenged the Transportation Security Administration's contention that its full-body scanners emit very little radiation and are safe.

"Some scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer say the evidence made public to support those claims is unreliable," Michael Gravell of Pro-Publica reported.

"And in a new letter sent to White House science adviser, John Holdren, they question why the TSA won't make the scanners available for independent testing by outside scientists."

But rest assured, citizen. Everything is safe according to the government, said a report in November by Hugo Martin of the Los Angeles Times.

"The amount of exposure received by people going through the scanner is roughly equivalent to the amount you would get from two minutes in the airplane or eating half a banana," Martin wrote.

"Bananas have potassium in them and that potassium is slightly radioactive."

So which is safer, full-body scanners or bananas?

The answer does not matter because the TSA is going to make you walk through the full-body scanner or pay the penalty of being frisked.

As the man in charge of TSA in San Diego said in November, you lose your rights when you buy that airline ticket.

Resistance to government is futile, a different court ruled recently in a different case.

"Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled [May 12] that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes," Dan Carden of the Northwest Indiana Times reported.

The state argued that police should be allowed to break the law to stop domestic violence.

The court's argument seems to be that if you oppose not being able to stop the police from breaking through your door in the middle of the night, then you must favor beating women and they should lock you up anyway, even if they got the address wrong.

This is no joke. Professor Ivan Bodensteiner of Valparaiso University School of Law made that sort of argument.

"It's not surprising that they would say there's no right to beat the hell out of the officer," Bodensteiner said.

"(The court is saying) we would rather opt on the side of saying if the police act wrongfully in entering your house, your remedy is, under law, to bring a civil action against the officer."

So much for constitutional protections. The government can impose its will on the American people in the 21st century.

But the government would never knowingly put the health of its citizens in jeopardy.

Unless, of course, those citizens were poor black sharecroppers in Alabama in the 1930s.

The U.S. Public Health Service offered 500 black men in Tuskegee free medical care, meals and free burial insurance if they participated in a little experiment.

The government, however, failed to tell the men that they had syphilis and that the government's free medical care did not include actually treating these men for syphilis, even after penicillin came along in the 1940s.

Wives were affected, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

Things are different today?

Of course, they are.

Things are worse.

Following the Sept. 11 attack on America by radical Muslims, many liberals trotted out Benjamin Franklin's dire statement in the 1750s that those who trade an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither.

That warning does not just apply to the Department of Defense, but to all agencies of the government.

Sadly, Democrats want us to make just such a trade off.

Surber may be reached at donsur...@dailymail.com. His blog is at http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber.