alexpgp | You know someone would come up with this...

Another ruling on the merits of the legal challenge to the "individual mandate":

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress’s power...However, this Court finds the distinction, [...] to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forgo health insurance is not “acting,” especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that choice. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something. They are two sides of the same coin. To pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.

As I read this, the judge in the case is basically suggesting that everything, including "mental activity (i.e., the choices you make, and more significantly, the choices you fail to make), is properly the subject of government regulation and oversight.

This is doubtless something that will make a lot of politicians—Democrat and Republican—drool in anticipation of what they could do with such power.

Let's hope that some subsequent "judicial guidance"—if it must find a way to impose an awkward law for which nearly 1000 exemptions have been granted (mostly to parties that supported its passage)—restores some sanity to the discussion of what is and is not within the purview of state control.

Cheers...