From TheRightSphere.com:
This time the judge hearing the case threw out the entire law. It’s a long read, but worth it. Judge Vinson lays out the history and legal precedents behind the Commerce Clause and its original intent. To bottom line it for you, he completely dismantles the Progressive case for everything they’ve done since the New Deal.
I was almost moved to tears when I read this on Page 42:
It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the Act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce” [see Act § 1501(a)(1)], it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power” [Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.
And there, my fellow conservatives, is the common sense Conservatism case against ObamaCare from day one.
It’s not about not wanting to help the poor and needy. It’s not about wanting sick people to go untreated. It’s about drawing the line on what the Federal Government is allowed to do. There is a contract between the government and the people and ObamaCare (and a lot of other laws) violates that contract. Period.
Now we just need to make sure Anthony Kennedy remembers how Obama treated him at the State of the Union in 2010. It all rests on him since we know the Leftists on the bench have expansive views on the enumerated powers.
