At the same time, conservatives who have bemoaned "judicial activism" for decades should show some restraint in cheering on a decision that, ideology aside, would reverse the trajectory of 70 relatively uncontroversial years of an expansive reading of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

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Ever since a monumental battle in the 1930s, in which Roosevelt's New Dealers forced the Supreme Court to back down on the issue, Congress has used an expansive reading of the commerce clause to legislate in a vast range of new areas.

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David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce described the figures as "grim reading".

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The Commerce Department's initial reading of U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product Friday was mostly in line with expectations.

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Between July and September, the U.S. economy shrank by 0.5%, according to the Commerce Department's new gross domestic product reading, making it the sharpest fall since the third quarter of 2001.

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On Wednesday, a reading of home-builder sentiment rose to a near five-year high, and the Commerce Department said Thursday that home construction last month increased 10% from a year earlier, topping economists' expectations.

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He warned against reading too much into the results of the survey because many of the companies were using e-commerce to take costs out of supply chains rather than sell to customers.

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