My latest column for the American Spectator speculates on the possibility that U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson might strike down not merely the individual mandate but the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act.
The law has no severability clause, which theoretically means that Judge Hudson has to put the hammer down on the whole law if he finds the mandate unconstitutional. But, in practice, it isn’t so simple. There’s a precedent problem:
[Hudson] has shown skepticism about the mandate, but that issue is relatively straightforward compared to the severability question … and the legal precedents are less auspicious. In fact, the Supreme Court recently invalidated an important part of the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law, which contains no severability clause, while leaving the rest of its provisions in place.
What has all this got to do with Michael Vick? Well, it was Judge Hudson who sentenced Vick to a couple of years in the federal penitentiary for his involvement in dog-fighting. This suggests that Hudson is no shrinking violet.
And, make no mistake, it will take some cojones just to toss out the mandate. If he strikes down the entire law, he will become Emmanuel Goldstein. The lefties will be all over him. In fact, the “news” media are already setting up the meme:
No judge has ruled the law unconstitutional. Many observers think Hudson will be the first. That prediction is built partly on Hudson’s roots in Republican politics. He was elected Arlington’s commonwealth attorney as a Republican, briefly ran against U.S. Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.) in 1991 and has received all of his appointments - as U.S. attorney, as a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge in 1998 and to the federal bench in 2002 - from Republicans.
You will note that the word “Republican” was used THREE times in this one brief passage, which comes from a Washington Post article that also repeats the idiotic nutroots demand that Hudson should recuse himself from the ObamaCare case:
Some have called on Hudson to recuse himself from the case because he owns stock in a campaign-consulting company that has done work for the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups.
So, Judge Hudson will face a firestorm of recriminations if he does the right thing. But this is a guy whose nickname, when he was a prosecutor, was “Hang ‘Em High Henry.” So, he may be just the man for this dirty but necessary job.
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