Joe, I’m glad you didn’t bother with law school, a prodigiously expensive barrier to entry for the legal profession. Anyway, this is enlightening. Judge Vinson was looking for a principled response to his question on the limits on federal power and all the lawyer did was to point out the obvious fact that health insurance is not the same as broccoli, shoes, or other goods. True, but an irrelevant dodge that gave no reason why the government can compel people to purchase insurance but not other goods and services.

It should be plain as day that the drafters of the Constitution did not intend to give Congress the power to dictate to people what goods they must purchase. If they had, they would have clearly inserted such a provision in Article I, Section 8. The effort by statist authoritarians to defend their every incursion into production and trade by calling it a “regulation of interstate commerce” is just appalling. If they don’t like the ruling against the constitutionality of the insurance mandate, what they should do is draft an amendment that adds to Article I, Section 8 language like this: “Congress shall have the power to compel people to purchase, and punish those who fail to purchase, any item of commerce deemed by Congress to be essential to the welfare of the nation.” Let them take that amendment to the people and see how it fares.