U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon - a Bill Clinton appointee - in Lynchburg, Virginia, became the second judge to uphold the constitutionality of the insurance mandates of the new federal healthcare law.  The suit that was brought by Liberty University essentially argued that the mandate to buy insurance or to pay a penalty was not a proper exercise of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In his opinion, Moon wrote, "there is a rational basis for Congress to conclude that individuals' decisions about how and when to pay for health care are activities that in the aggregate substantially affect the interstate health care market." Under this rationale, everything we do or refuse to do under the sun can be regulated by the government using the Commerce Clause argument.  As anyone who has been following the legal twists of this saga knows, even the Obama administration had started to give up on the Commerce Clause...(Read Full Post)