Not that we should be surprised that an appointee of George W. Bush would screw up everything he touches – just like the guy who appointed him – but this is truly pathetic.
Legal experts are attacking Judge Henry Hudson’s decision on the merits, citing an elementary logical flaw at the heart of his opinion. And that has conservative scholars — even ones sympathetic to the idea that the mandate is unconstitutional — prepared to see Hudson’s decision thrown out.
“I’ve had a chance to read Judge Hudson’s opinion, and it seems to me it has a fairly obvious and quite significant error,” writes Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University, on the generally conservative law blog The Volokh Conspiracy.
Kerr and others note that Hudson’s argument against Congress’ power to require people to purchase health insurance rests on a tautology.
Not that any of this will matter to a fanatic like Ken Cuccinelli, but perhaps it WILL matter when it gets to a serious judge without an obvious ideological and political agenda, as Cooch certainly has (for his part, Hudson has an ownership stake in a “GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform”, and almost certainly should have recused himself from ruling in this case).
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