Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli Thanks His ‘Teammate,’ Hate Radio Host Mark Levin, For Help With HCR Case

[pampango]

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/12/14/cuccinelli-levin-hcr/

News outlets across the country are discussing a federal judge’s ruling that a key part of health care reform, the individual mandate, is unconstitutional. The New York Times and Washington Post blared A1 headlines about the decision today, and the story led each of the network news broadcasts last night, following stories about extreme winter weather in the Midwest.

The idea that health care reform might be unconstitutional was once, not too long ago, a very marginal and unknown position — it remained the province of far-right legal scholars. As Josh Marshall writes, “a year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional. … But the decision that just came down from the federal judgment in Virginia — that the federal health care mandate is unconstitutional — is an example that decades of Republicans packing the federal judiciary with activist judges has finally paid off.”

While conservatives were mounting a highly-coordinated legal challenge to the constitutionality of health care reform, the movement’s leaders were also mounting an aggressive public relations campaign to provide political cover for their radical effort to overturn a popular bill. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli began making appearances on right-wing media outlets and at widely covered Tea Party conventions to push the constitutionality issue.