Here’s a crucial paragraph from Judge Vinson’s opinion:
“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? and we would have a Constitution in name only.”
He might also have mentioned the Stamp Act of 1765. The colonists were outraged over the government’s law mandating that they buy governmentally approved (stamped) paper IF they wanted to use paper. (To make the Stamp Act equivalent to ObamaCare, it would have to have mandated that they purchase the official paper even if they didn’t want paper.) British officials charged with enforcing the law had to flee to avoid being tarred and feathered. Are we to believe that the same people who said No Way to the Stamp Act nevertheless meant to give the government power just a few years later to force people to buy whatever politicians said they must?
