Why Roberts switched his health care reform vote

``Randy Barnett, a Georgetown professor and the architect of the legal challenge to health care reform, calls the decision a "stunning victory" for his arguments. Roberts sided with the conservative wing in ruling that the Commerce Clause did not empower Congress to compel Americans to buy health insurance, instead upholding the mandate as a tax. The Commerce Clause was so widely believed to bestow this power before the oral arguments that Barnett was actually teased by two Harvard constitutional law professors in a forum about his case against the law last year. Barnett's view has quickly gone from fringe to the law of the land, and it may mean that Congress will have to rely on legislating new taxes, which are politically unpopular, in the future if it wants to pass similar regulations. ''