This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

A federal judge has thrown out Obamacare's individual mandate. Judge Vincent also throughout the rest of

Obamacare. The Obama administration says it will continue implementing the

bill's elements.

Ilia Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute comments on the ruling.

Judge Vincent struck down all of Obamacare.

He said that the individual mandate was beyond Congress's power to regulate commerce

under the Interstate Commerce Clause.

And therefore, because he previously disposed of the taxing power argument, the entire

piece of legislation has to fall.

The individual mandate was the crux, the lynchpin that made everything work, and so Judge Vincent said he as a judge was not capable

of or wasn't his job of going through the legislation and picking among the hundreds of

different provisions and saying this one's okay this one's not this one's okay this one's okay this one's not this

one's okay this one's not he likened it to a a finely crafted watch whose essential

piece is defective so you're not going to pick through the other pieces, you're going to send it back to the watchmaker here Congress to fashion you a new watch.

All right, and this differs quite a bit from other rulings which are otherwise sort of divided.

Well, to be clear, yes, there are now on the merits there have been four rulings, meaning forgetting about standing issues or other procedural technicalities on the merits of

whether Obamacare and specifically the individual mandate is

constitutional. There have been two rulings going for the government and now two going

for the challengers both in the state cases the 26 states led by Florida

that was decided this week and in Virginia Ken Kucinelli's case that was

decided in December all of those cases all four of those are now up on appeal, the sixth, fourth, and

...