Statism as its finest
Since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has held that Congress’s power toregulate interstate commerce amounts to a power to regulate anythingthat “substantially affects” that commerce — and a power to order anymeans that may be “necessary and proper” for that regulation. Becauseuninsured people who seek free emergency-room care substantially affectinterstate commerce, Congress can regulate that behavior by orderingthose people to buy insurance.
But the implications of that constitutional reading, … areboundless. If Congress can order you to buy insurance, why stop there?It can order you to exercise, and to eat healthy foods, etc. Moredisturbing still, it means that the Constitution itself and judicialreview under it are no more.
[snip]
That is hardly, therefore, a power to regulate anything andeverything that “substantially affects” interstate commerce for anyreason whatsoever. It’s unfortunate that many conservative critics ofthe Warren and Burger Courts, with their focus on the “rightsrevolution” of that era, did not go back to the root of the problem,which was in the New Deal Court’s deference to the political branchesand the expansion of government power that followed.