Lefties Stammer as Obamacare Declared Unconstitutional

For the first time one of the challenges to Obamacare's mandatory purchase of health insurance was successful and that has lefties stammering:

On MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” viewers were treated to Slate.com senior editor and legal correspondent Dahlia Lithwick’s theory of what is going on with the legal challenges to Obamacare. According to Lithwick, there’s a conspiratorial element behind Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s lawsuit.

He’s trying to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, according to Lithwick.

“But also what I think is really intriguing about the Cuccinelli suit is that it’s what I’m calling an aspirational view of the Constitution,” Lithwick said. “Cuccinelli doesn’t like much about the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment. There’s whole chunks of the Constitution that he wants to do away with, right? He’s challenging the EPA’s power to regulate. He’s challenging the birthright – the citizenship provisions of the 14th Amendment. He has a sort of a cut-and-paste view of the Constitution.”

Lithwick can be remembered for her 2006 musings about the Duke lacrosse team rape allegations where she claimed these charges were a statement about society’s failings, specifically on college campuses. Unfortunately for Lithwick, the charges were dropped and the prosecuting district attorney faced jail time for pushing them. But that hasn’t seemed to tarnish Lithwick’s credibility as a legal expert.

This case is no sure thing in either direction since once it get to the Supreme Court it will probably depend on what mood Justice Kennedy is in that day. However, I think there's still a good chance that the Supremes will toss the mandatory purchase requirement since there's no constitutional authority to demand that citizens purchase a consumer good, and once that provision goes down the whole thing goes down.