Constitutional Challenges to Health Care Unlikely to Prevail

Constitutional scholars are already debating whether the individual state suits being filed by conservative attorney generals (Virginia's was the first to announce - http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2219276420100322) will successfully prove the health care bill's mandate that all Americans buy insurance unconstitutional. I believe, like Professor Esenberg, that it's unlikely. The decision will in fact eventually find its way to the Supremes, but given their distaste for second-guessing Congress, and the fact that Anthony Kennedy will be the deciding vote, it seems like more of a gamble than repeal. And, like Professor Esenberg, I believe it will be the final blow to our liberties and the check the courts once had on the legislature. As he put it, "It will be tragic because the notion of a Congress limited by the scope of its enumerated powers will have finally suffered the coup de grace. The Bill of Rights (once famously - and now ironically - thought to be unnecessary given the structural limits on the power of the national government) will become the only limitation on the power of Congress. If Congress can require you to buy health insurance because of the ways in which your uncovered existence effects interstate commerce or because it can tax you in an effort to force you to do any old thing it wants you to, it is hard to see what - save some other constitutional restriction - it cannot require you to do - or prohibit you from doing." This becomes particularly scary when the Congressmen voting to take your liberties away, aren't even able to decipher from which part of the Constitution they draw this apparent authority. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0VYOa2BRbg). Congressman Conyers believes there is a "good and welfare clause" in the Constitution. Ummm, you mean, "general welfare" clause? The clause liberals use to justify stamping on the Constitution and redesigning the framer's structures of power? As Esenberg stated, if Congress is only limited by the Bill of Rights (thank God that was drafted) then what can't they do but take your life or property unjustly after taxing it to death? The framers intended for Congress to have specifically enumerated powers and by the passage of this bill, Congress has once again ignored those limitations.