Since it’s inception, the Republican Party has been going after the flawed but needed Health Care Reform package, using a twisted interpretation of the Commerce Clause. The media is buzzing that one of those cases bore fruit today when a Virginia District Court Judge rules that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. What the MSM is NOT telling you is that the judge in the case is a Republican activist who received money for working against HCR.

A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation’s sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama’s signature domestic initiative. U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance. In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by 2014 is an unprecedented expansion of federal power that cannot be supported by Congress’s power to regulate interstate trade. "Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market," he wrote. "In doing so, enactment of the [individual mandate] exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution.] Hudson is the first judge to rule that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. He said, however, that portions of the law that do not rest on the requirement that individuals obtain insurance are legal and can proceed. Hudson indicated there was no need for him to enjoin the law and halt its implementation, since the mandate does not go into effect until 2014… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

What he’s not saying is that federal courts have upheld individual mandates to purchase auto insurance. Because the mandates were state rather than federal mandates, the basis for them was not the Commerce Clause. I would be surprised to see him upheld at the Appeals Court level. Two other District Court judges in other districts have upheld the law. Of course, the big worry is that when this gets to SCOTUS, there are four activist Republican ideologues, who have repeatedly shown a complete disregard for the Constitution in making their decisions.

Now, here’s the dirt.

News outlets have noted that Hudson, as an owner of Campaign Solutions, Inc. (a Republican consulting firm that worked the 2010 election cycle for John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, John McCain, and other GOP candidates who’ve placed the purported unconstitutionality of health care reform at the center of their political platforms) had a conflict of interest inasmuch as he has received between $32,000 and $117,000 from Campaign Solutions as a result of its work on this issue… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Wikipedia>