This is just plain weird.

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), master of the pithy C-SPAN clip, made an original argument today for why health care reform is unconstitutional during an emergency House rules meeting about the GOP’s upcoming vote to repeal it.

After Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) said that health insurance counts as interstate commerce and therefore falls under the Congress’s constitutional powers, King argued that there are people who never even use health care — and therefore a law requiring them to buy insurance is unconstitutional.

“There have always been and likely will always be, babies that were born, lived and died within the jurisdictions of the individual states,” he said, “who never cross a state line, access no health care and therefore do not impact interstate commerce. Therefore, to compel someone who fits that category to buy an insurance policy” does not fit under the interstate commerce clause.

“You find the baby that was not born in a hospital or with a midwife, who did not receive inoculations,” Polis said. “You find that baby and identify them and I’ll be happy to have that discussion.”

“I hate to tell you but they show up in garbage cans around this country, sir,” he said.

It really makes you wonder what goes on in the minds of people who can come up with these very disturbing and extreme examples, seemingly right on the tip of their tongue.

Mr. King has a history of coming up with them, and frankly it’s kind of creepy that there’s someone in the halls of Congress who has these visions of dead babies in garbage cans as an argument against the Commerce clause of the Constitution.

HT to digby.