Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito lit up the court room today when he questioned Solicitor General Don Verrilli about whether the penalty for failing to purchase health care under the ObamaCare mandate was a tax.

Here is the exchange:

JUSTICE ALITO: General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the Court ever held that something that is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act? SOLICITOR GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Justice Alito, but the Court has held in a license tax cases that something can be a constitutional exercise of the taxing power whether or not it is called a tax. And that’s because the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct tomorrow is different from the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct today. Tomorrow the question is whether Congress has the authority under the taxing power to enact it and the form of words doesn’t have a dispositive effect on that analysis. Today we are construing statutory text where the precise choice of words does have a dispositive effect on the analysis.

So, according to the Obama administration’s argument, it’s a tax when we need it to be and not a tax when we need it to be. That makes perfect, constitutional, sense if you ask me…

See the whole transcript and more on ObamaCare & SCOTUS day 1 here.