This is the statement referenced by Judge Vinson in the footnote on page 76 of his opinion.

From Ed Morrissey.

Ouch! Not only are a majority of states in court challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare, federal judges keep ruling in their favor.

The Washington Times cherishes Senior United States District Judge Vinson’s use of Barack Obama’s own words in a footnote.

In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, when the then-Illinois senator argued there were other ways to achieve reform short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.

“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, ‘If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end [page 76] of his 78-page ruling Monday.

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The Wall Street Journal gave Judge Vinson’s ruling a rave review, describing it as “introduc[ing] ObamaCare to Madison and Marshall.” Everyone is collecting great passages from Judge Vinson’s opinion.

‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Federal Judge Roger Vinson opens his decision declaring ObamaCare unconstitutional with that citation from Federalist No. 51, written by James Madison in 1788. His exhaustive and erudite opinion is an important moment for American liberty, and yesterday may well stand as the moment the political branches were obliged to return to the government of limited and enumerated powers that the framers envisioned.

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Don Surber found another of the best apothegms in the decision.

“It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.”

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