Sen. Coburn Laments "Freedom and Liberty" 30 years Ago, Sen. Amy Klobuchar Snaps Back.

The health care mandate was a Republican idea in the early 90's, to stress the need for personal responsibility. Now the Republicans are portraying that streak of individualism as a loss of liberty and freedom. Because everyone lets them get away with this incredible hypocrisy, they're encouraged to go a little bit farther the next time. Enter Sen. Tom Coburn, who laments to Elena Kagan how free we once were 30 years ago. Below is a clip of Coburn's question to Kagan, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar's gutsy answer.

Slate: As he put it to Kagan: "Have you ever contemplated the idea of what your freedom was like 30 years ago and what it's like today?" She has not, Kagan said.
"A lot of Americans are losing confidence because they're losing freedom," Coburn explained. Coburn scored a huge win for Fox News by posing this hypothetical to Kagan: If Congress passed a law requiring Americans "to eat three vegetables and three fruits, every day, does that violate the Commerce Clause? That's on the front of a lot of people's minds, not vegetables, health care. The very fact that the government is going to have the ability to take away, mandate what I must buy or must not buy—a very large loss of freedom."

It fell to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. … was so astonished by Coburn's claim that Americans are on the brink of tyranny in 2010 and determined that there were no women on the Supreme Court. She then asked Kagan whether maybe women, at least, are a bit more free now than they were 30 years ago. Kagan agreed.

Klobuchar probably could have added that more Americans are "more free" today because of Thurgood Marshall, too. And she could have added this partial list of congressional statutes and Supreme Court decisions that have arguably made a lot more Americans freer since 1980: the Civil Rights Restoration Act (1988), Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988), Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the Civil Rights Act of 1991, National Voter Registration Act (1993), the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), United States v. Lopez, (1995), Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995), United States v. Virginia (1996), Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Voting Rights Reauthorization and Amendments Act (2006), Georgia v. Randolph (2006), D.C. v. Heller (2008), the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (2009), Graham v. Florida (2010), and McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010).