Gene Healy: Obamacare is unconstitutional | Washington Examiner

Gene Healy: Obamacare is unconstitutional | Washington Examiner: "As Harry Reid's health care bill moves to the Senate floor, the debate over Obamacare finally begins in earnest. Shouldn't the Constitution be part of that debate? By what authority, after all, could Congress force all Americans to buy health insurance?

In a recent press release, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argues that constitutional objections to the individual mandate are 'nonsensical,' because 'the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.' We eagerly await your orders, ma'am!

Pelosi is wrong, but that doesn't mean the court can be counted on to strike down Obamacare. Legislators have an independent obligation to consider the constitutionality of the laws they're debating -- and the individual mandate is flagrantly unconstitutional.

In answer to the question 'by what authority?' Reid's bill offers the Commerce Clause -- the go-to provision for friends of federal power. That clause gives Congress the power 'to regulate Commerce ... among the several states.'

It was a modest measure designed to regularize cross-border commerce and prevent interstate trade wars -- so modest, in fact, that Madison described it in the Federalist as a clause that 'few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained.'"