Yesterday was a bad day for all the States Attorney General and Wing-Nuts who think that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Lawyers from the conservative Thomas More Law Center (set up by billionaire Catholic wacko Tom Monahan) got slapped around pretty good by District Court Judge George C. Steeh. He completely demolished the spurious arguments in his 20 page decision.

The Thomas Moore Law Center (TMLC) took a shot at the claim most likely to succeed against the ACA, namely that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which allows Congress to regulate interstate commerce did not extend down to mandating that individuals purchase a product.

Basically this argument is that citizens can’t be required to participate in a market. They have to have the right to not participate if they choose to do so for economic reasons. Like nearly all conservative arguments this sounds moderately reasonable as long as you stay inside the frame that it is presented in. When you are just looking at the individual there may be a hardship in being required to purchase insurance. It is not going to be cheap and the subsidies are not going to cover everyone.