He is also trying to say that Raich somehow supports the claim that the individual health insurance mandate is constitutional and that's even stupider. The acknowledged power of the federal government to regulate the intrastate production of agricultural commodities tells us nothing about whether the feds have the power to compel people to buy a service they don't want. The Court made a mistake when it said that growing something for your own use affected commerce enough to trigger federal power under the Commerce Clause. But that mistake doesn't compel the conclusion that the feds can force us into the marketplace for health insurance. Far from it. Obamacare presents a very different issue and Raich will be a marginal precedent at best in the legal battle over the individual mandate. How does ingnorant crap like this get published at NRO?
The Courts are saying so too.
The Justice Department has found Raich an exceedingly useful tool in battling the legal challenges to Obamacare. In the Florida lawsuit, the DOJ claims that “Individuals who self-insure engage in economic activity at least as much as the plaintiffs in Raich.”
The same goes for Michigan, where a federal judge recently upheld the individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause power: “As living, breathing beings, who do not oppose medical services on religious grounds, they cannot opt out of this market.”
The words “Gonzales v. Raich” kick off the government’s Commerce Clause argument in the Virginia litigation.
You are free to believe as you wish.
Wickard v. Filburn can be legislated around by Congress. After all...people still grow food for their own consumption today without the govt. telling them how many rows of tomatoes they may grow or arresting them for growing to much...or too little.
What can govt. not do under the substantial effects doctrine of the Commerce Clause in your opinion?