With Day 1 down, we once again return to the Heritage Foundation's Todd Gaziano to help frame Day 2:
BusinessInsider: The Supreme Court just wrapped up the second day of oral arguments in the landmark case against President Obama's healthcare overhaul, and reports from inside the courtroom indicate that the controversial law took quite a beating.
Today's arguments focused around the central constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to force Americans to either pay for health insurance or pay a penalty.
According to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were "a train wreck for the Obama administration."
"This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN.
Toobin tried to put a little bit of a spin to entice the liberal audience with the Roberts comment, and of course these are all assumptions at this point, but the liberal media is in shear panic mode over the direction of today's proceedings and the skepticism among many of the justices. This is not just going to be the cake walk they'd hoped for.
ADDENDUM: More Levin analysis, via theRightScoop, "Levin plays clips from today and explains why the Solicitor General’s argument to regulate your inactivity amounts to nothing less than Totalitarianism." And similarly, he expounds on his website:
The government is trying to make the argument that because you may eventually need something, such as food, that the government can tell you what to do and how to get it. The "Anticipatory participation," argument can't work because then government would control the whole field. The Obama Administration is pursuing Obamacare because they see it not as a benefit for healthcare, but as a power grab opportunity that helps advance the cause of statism.
ADDENDUM II: Here's more of those hard-hitting questions of Day 2...
Justice Kennedy expresses the concern of the mandate fundamentally changing the relationship of a citizen with the government.
Justice Roberts: Mandate cell phones?
Justice Alito: Mandate burial services?
Justice Scalia 'benchslaps' Solicitor General Verrilli with the Constitution!
ADDENDUM III: This is great. A new RNC ad, with a description via Freedom's Lighthouse:
Here is a new ad put out by the Republican National Committee (RNC) on the difficulty Don Verrilli, Jr. – the lawyer representing Barack Obama’s “ObamaCare” Health Law – had in making the case for “ObamaCare” before the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday. Many on the Left are horrified at the job Verrilli did yesterday, choosing to focus on him rather than obvious reality that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. It’s just hard to defend, a “tough sell,” which is the point of this ad.
