Over the weekend, something called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, an astroturf assemblage of doctors opposed to the Affordable Care Act (and health-care reform generally)that has some interesting adherents (4:58...4:59...) took the government to court to argue against the ACA's "government takeover of medicine." At issue was the fact that, rather than comply with the ACA because freedom, some of these jamokes accept only cash payment for their services, and, further, the plaintiffs argued with relatively straight faces that they were bringing their action in opposition to the tyranny of the individual mandate. Since the administration has delayed the implementation of the employer mandate, they argued, it is unfair for it to implement the employer mandate. Also, they are unfairly prejudiced by the law because of their choice to accept only cash payments. They may have filed a posthumous amicus brief from Lewis Carroll in support of this nonsense, for all I know.

The federal court of the Seventh Circuit seemed less than amused.

U.S. District Judge William Griesbach threw out the case, noting that even if association members have "cash practices" that do not accept health insurance payments -- and thus would be prejudiced by the Act -- this is incidental to the tax regime. "Plaintiffs typically lack standing to litigate the tax obligations of others," he wrote.

After which, Judge Richard Posner uncrated the meat ax and went to work.

Today, Judge Richard Posner drove this logic home. "You're suggesting a breathtaking expansion of jurisdiction, aren't you?" he asked. "You're suggesting that anyone with a potential economic injury from a law can bring a suit. Where would you stop?"

"The stopping point is if someone is not being regulated by a particular statute," plaintiff's attorney Andrew Schlafly replied. "This is a regulation of the medical field, not some remote tax." He then argued that people forced to buy insurance will never seek out cash practices in order to avoid paying for healthcare twice. This did not satisfy Posner. "That's like saying people who get food stamps don't pay as much for groceries."

As my friend Olbermann used to say, that one's deep and I don't think it's playable.

Of course, the strategy to wreck the health care of the millions of people who now have it, thanks to the ACA, is predicated on bringing many lawsuits in many courts before many judges on many grounds, spurious or not. Michael Greve, a visiting layabout...er... "scholar" from the American Enterprise Institute, gave that game away in 2010.

"This bastard has to be killed as a matter of political hygiene. I do not care how this is done, whether it's dismembered, whether we drive a stake through its heart, whether we tar and feather it and drive it out of town, whether we strangle it. I don't care who does it, whether it's some court some place, or the United States Congress. Any which way, any dollar spent on that goal is worth spending, any brief filed toward that end is worth filing, any speech or panel contribution toward that end is of service to the United States." Mr. Greve went on to urge a litigating strategy that looked beyond the mandate to "concentrate on bits and pieces of this law."

Given that calm and reasoned approach to political argument, sooner or later, Mr. Greve's side of the debate was bound to bring some risible arguments to the court, but this one is simply a gem. "Your Honor, this law unfairly prejudices my clients because of actions they freely took in opposition to it." It's like seeing the residents of Galt's Gulch appeal to the zoning board.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io