How insane is this? Republican Senator John Ensign believes (or pretends to) that if you conscientiously believe that a statutory requirement is unconstitutional, you should have the right to refuse to comply, and not be subject to “fines or the interpretation of a judge, potentially, all the way up to imprisonment”:

ENSIGN: We’ve allowed exceptions for religious and various other reasons. But some people hold the Constitution pretty high in their lives, and if they believe that this thing is unconstitutional, and they then say, “I choose not to have health insurance, I’m not going to buy it,” we could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously — because they believe in the U.S. Constitution — we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, potentially, all the way up to imprisonment. That seems to me to be a problem.

Shouldn’t outright lunacy have some consequences for politicians?