On a recent Uncommon Knowledge, constitutional scholars Richard Epstein and John Yoo have a feisty conversation with Peter Robinson on the likelihood of the Supreme Court striking down Obamacare, its political implications, and the general rule of law in our country.

They ask whether an individual mandate is constitutional – can the government force citizens to purchase health insurance?   In other words, can the government compel people into the marketplace?  If so, what’s the stopping point?  Pretty soon they’ll be telling us what we can eat, what car we have to buy and that we need to exercise a certain number of minutes per week.  Where is the individual liberty in that?

Yoo and Epstein discuss the potential fallout from the decision, whether Romneycare is constitutional, and whether the Federal Government has the right to coerce states using grant money.  Outside of health care, they speculate on the 2012 court, censorship and the FCC.

Check out the full episode, here:

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After 19 debates Mitt still doesn’t have a straight answer. Rick Santorum skillfully dissected Romney on the topic. If Romney is the GOP nominee, you can be sure Barack Obama will do the same.

Appearing to have been stuck in, you’re angry mode, a tactic Romney is deploying to target Newt Gingrich, it was all he seemed to have as a fall back when very effectively pressed on the subject by Rick Santorum in last night’s debate.

“We cannot give the issue of healthcare away in this election,” Santorum declared, striking a resonance with conservatives everywhere.

Based upon various Twitter accounts, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh picked up on the topic this morning, stressing the importance of the exchange between Santorum and Romney. Liberal blogs and outlets such as Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post are picking up on it with video, as is The Hill, among others.

The Weekly Standard also took notice. ObamaCare played a big part in fueling Tea Party anger with the Obama administration. Along with conservatives coming away with the impression Romney doesn’t share their anger over state run health care–fairly, or not–any Romney and GOP criticism of ObamaCare can now be met with an ad quoting Romney as saying it isn’t something to get angry about.

That’s bound to undermine existing and new Republican attacks on what continues to be a sore subject on the Right, especially among conservatives and Tea Party members. From the Weekly Standard:

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, First of all, it’s not worth getting angry about.

The exchange offered a stark reminder of one inescapable set of facts:

President Obama spent the bulk of his first 15 months in office ramming his signature legislation down the throats of the American people. Yet, as his State of the Union Address made clear, he’d rather not bring it up. So if Republicans are going to have a mandate to repeal this unprecedented threat to liberty and fiscal solvency, they will have to bring it up — or, rather, their nominee will have to bring it up. And he will have to know why he opposes it — not merely that he does.

Immediate post-debate reaction last night seemed to favor Santorum as the winner of the overall debate. What’s less clear is how badly Mitt Romney may have hurt himself by highlighting what many view as a critical weakness of his in pursuing the GOP nomination.

That’s where the Replace part comes in. Now, I won’t whine and complain about how things seem to take a long time to get done in Washington, but the replacement for ObamaCare should be on the assembly line, waiting to be packaged and sent to stores near all of us. We know the talking points that make good common sense: purchase health insurance across state lines, own our health insurance policies so they are portable, tort reform, free-market principles, etc. Of course, House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), the reliable person that he is, has thought through a great deal of this, and has based his conservative answer to health care reform on his Medicare reform proposal.

But, where are the details and how do we plug ObamaCare’s replacement into our lives if the law is declared unconstitutional?

Health care legislation is not like other aspects of our lives. If the Supreme Court nixes ObamaCare, all those 26 year-olds who are currently on their parents’ plans could suddenly be without health insurance. What about pre-existing conditions? How exactly will this feature, that most people find favorable, be translated into a conservative health care reform plan? How will free-market principles become part of health care reform? And what’s the timeline?

Republicans need a single, detailed plan that all Americans can understand easily. That means Republicans will need to work together, using Congressman Ryan’s plan as a foundation. Delay, or failure to comprehend that Americans- both individuals and businesses- are anxious about health insurance and health care costs, as they have been since ObamaCare was passed, will only create more of an image of incompetence and invite further ridicule from liberal Democrats and their cronies, the formerly mainstream media.

Currently, Republicans have the American people on their side. Most Americans continue to want ObamaCare repealed. However, if a Supreme Court decision comes before full congressional repeal, Republicans would be wise to have a reform plan ready with an easy-to-read instruction manual. True, Senate Democrats may not give it the time of day, but let Americans see, once again, the Senate Democrats as the true obstructionists they are, just prior to the election.

(Reuters) – Oral arguments on President Barack Obama’s sweeping U.S. healthcare overhaul will last 5-1/2 hours spread over three days from March 26-28, the Supreme Court said on Monday.

The Supreme Court last month agreed to hear the 5-1/2 hours of oral arguments, one of the lengthiest arguments in recent years. There have been similar marathon sessions in a handful of big cases dating back over the past 70 years.

The court said it would hear one hour of arguments on March 26 on whether the legal challenges to the requirement that all Americans buy insurance must wait until after that part of the law has taken effect in 2014.

At issue is a federal law, the Anti-Injunction Act, and whether the requirement that Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty is effectively a tax covered by that law and can only be challenged after the penalty has been imposed.

The court said it would hear two hours of arguments on March 27 on the constitutional issue at the heart of the battle — whether Congress overstepped its powers by adopting the insurance purchase requirement known as the individual mandate.

The Obama administration is defending the requirement as a constitutional effort by Congress to address a national crisis while 26 states led by Florida and an independent business group challenge it as an unprecedented intrusion of congressional authority under the Constitution.

Read more here.

A key issue of the challenge, brought by 26 states, is that of the individual mandate in the new health care law, which requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance by 2014 or receive penalties. Many economists, as well as states, have strongly suggested that the law cannot stand without the individual mandate.

As the oral arguments are heard at the same time the presidential race heats up, it will be interesting to see how Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, who supported an individual mandate in his state’s health insurance reform plan, distances himself from the mandate on the federal level. Mr. Romney has said that, if elected President, he would repeal Obamacare.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued a split opinion upholding the law. The court agreed to dismiss a Christian legal group’s lawsuit claiming the requirement that all Americans get health insurance is unconstitutional and violates religious freedom.

The requirement has been the subject of several lawsuits, with some judges across the country ruling it unconstitutional and others upholding the law. That means the Supreme Court is sure to decide the fate of Obama’s signature law. The high court is expected to decide soon, perhaps within days, whether to accept appeals from some of those earlier rulings.

The suit in Washington was brought by the American Center for Law and Justice, a legal group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson. It claimed that the insurance mandate violates the religious freedom of those who choose not to have insurance because they rely on God to protect them from harm. But the court ruled that although the requirement is an encroachment on individual liberty, Congress had the power to pass it to ensure that all Americans can have health care coverage.

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems,” Judge Laurence Silberman, an appointee ofPresident Ronald Reagan, wrote in the 2-1 opinion. Silberman was joined by Judge Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former top aide to President George W. Bush who appointed him to the bench, disagreed with the conclusion without taking a position on the merits of the law. He wrote a lengthy opinion arguing the court doesn’t have jurisdiction to review the health care mandate until after it takes effect in 2014.

States and a business group opposed to President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday for a speedy ruling that puts an end to the law aimed at extending insurance coverage to more than 30 million people.

The high court should strike down the entire law, not just the main requirement that individuals purchase insurance or pay a penalty beginning in 2014, their appeals said.

The filings, on behalf of 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business, also said the justices should act before the 2012 presidential election because of uncertainty over costs and requirements.

On the issue of timing, their cause got an unexpected boost from retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who said voters would be better off if they knew the law’s fate law before casting their ballots next year.

The 91-year-old Stevens said in an Associated Press interview that the justices would not shy away from deciding the case in the middle of a presidential campaign and would be doing the country a service. “It would be better to have that known about than be speculated as a part of the political argument,” Stevens said in his Supreme Court office overlooking the Capitol.

Read the whole thing here.