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Gene Healy: Obamacare is unconstitutional
As Harry Reid's health care bill moves to the Senate floor, the debate over Obamacare finally begins in earnest. Shouldn't the Constitution be part of that debate? By what authority, after all, could Congress force all Americans to buy health insurance?

In a recent press release, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argues that constitutional objections to the individual mandate are "nonsensical," because "the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited." We eagerly await your orders, ma'am!

Pelosi is wrong, but that doesn't mean the court can be counted on to strike down Obamacare. Legislators have an independent obligation to consider the constitutionality of the laws they're debating -- and the individual mandate is flagrantly unconstitutional....

...Supporters of national health care are counting on congressmen not to take that obligation very seriously. Their attitude toward the rule of law echoes that famously expressed by FDR in 1935. Trying to push through a key New Deal measure, Roosevelt wrote to an important congressman: "I hope your committee will not permit doubts as to constitutionality, however reasonable, to block the suggested legislation."

Barack Obama fancies himself Roosevelt reincarnated; in this, at least, he has a legitimate claim to FDR's legacy.