Maybe the United States dodged a bullet this week. Make that a deep-penetration bunker buster into the original idea of America. On Tuesday, the justices of the Supreme Court sounded, on balance, to be disposed against affirming the Obama health-care law's mandate.

ObamaCare is the coup de grâce of America's policy mandarins.

The Obama administration's lawyers argued that the mandate to purchase health insurance is a routine extension of the Commerce Clause, which in the 1930s became the most potent sentence in the U.S. Constitution. It is not a certainty that Tuesday's discussion of the ObamaCare mandate means it will be overturned. It's still worth thinking about the implications if the court affirms the law's individual mandate.