On the federal judge's ruling striking down the mandatory health care provision, here are a few things to ponder.

From Digby, some excerpts:  "So two judges have ruled that the health care mandate is constitutional and one GOP judge has struck it down, which means that there is are now different rulings and it's moving toward the Supreme Court for clarification. This was always part of the opponents' plan -- they telegraphed it right from the beginning -- so it shouldn't be surprising that they would eventually get a judge to rule in their favor and send it up the legal ladder.

"Reform advocates will undoubtedly look back on all this and wonder if the politics of single payer would have actually been easier....

"With the plan taking years to implement, the right having packed the courts for decades and the Republican Party being batshit insane, there was always a very good chance that some element of the plan was going to be struck down. And because it was such a Rube Goldberg mess by the end of it, the result was likely to be the whole thing falling apart."

Jonathan Turley adds: "It is important to remember that this ruling has little to do with the merits of national care reform. This is about how to interpret the Constitution and the scope of congressional power."

The backstory of this ruling judge is a classic example of how right wing GOP members of the judiciary operate.  This from TPM LiveWire:

"Henry E. Hudson, the federal judge in Virginia who just ruled health care reform unconstitutional, owns between $15,000 and $50,000 in a GOP political consulting firm that worked against health care reform. You don't say!

"As the Huffington Post and others first noted last July, Hudson's annual financial disclosures show that he owns a sizable chunk of Campaign Solutions, Inc., a Republican consulting firm that worked this election cycle for John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, John McCain, and a whole host of other GOP candidates who've placed the purported unconstitutionality of health care reform at the center of their political platforms. Since 2003, according to the disclosures, Hudson has earned between $32,000 and $108,000 in dividends from his shares in the firm (federal rules only require judges to report ranges of income)."

And my thoughts as an advocate of single payer from the git go: Forcing people to buy health insurance from plundering. profiteering private insurers without the choice of a public option alternative was authoritarian, undemocratic, and terrible public policy.