Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Those opposed to Obamacare, virtually all Republicans, probably should have realized that the Supreme Court does not convene to decide political issues. On Thursday, a little less than a week before Independence Day – And here one can hear disappointed Republicans grumbling, “A day that will live in infamy…” – the Supreme Court adroitly stepped over the political puddle, leaving Obamacare, apart from some few minor adjustments, virtually intact. Republicans had argued that the mandate provision, which assigned a penalty for people or businesses that declined to bow their necks to the Obamacare scimitar, was unconstitutional. Should the court find the provision constitutional, it would herald in a new and ruinous doctrine; namely, that the federal government can order citizens to purchase a service or product, a power never before exercised by congress. The court decision said, in effect, that Congress had no constitutional authority to claim such power through appeal to the c...