Amazing developments as groups rush to file Amicus (friend-of-the-court) briefs in favor of Gay Marriage before the Supreme Court meets to decide whether such laws are constitutional, specifically California's widely despised Prop 8, which states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
The issue of same sex marriage is dividing the Republican Party as a group of more than 80 prominent members of the GOP ranging from Dick Cheney's daughter to four former governors have signed an amicus brief before the Supreme Court advocating for the legalization of gay marriage.
One of the signers confirmed for ABC News the existence of the brief signed by the Republicans and said it would be submitted to the United States Supreme Court this week. The deadline to submit briefs is Thursday.
. . . Signers included former congresswoman Mary Bono Mack of California, former presidential candidate Jon Huntsman and Meg Whitman, who supported Prop 8 when she ran for governor of California in 2010. Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, Richard Hanna of New York and former GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman also signed. In addition, three former Massachusetts governors -- William Weld, Jane Swift, and Paul Cellucci -- along with former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman are signers. The list also includes Republican attorney and Romney senior adviser Ben Ginsberg and other high profile GOP leaders, strategists, consultants, and staffers.
Some big name supporters of same sex marriage who have not signed the brief include former vice president Dick Cheney, former first lady Laura Bush, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
On Thursday, dozens of American corporations, including Apple, Alcoa, Facebook, eBay, Intel, and Morgan Stanley will submit an amicus brief in the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry case broadly arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that laws banning same-sex marriages, like California's ballot initiative Proposition 8, are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
According to a draft copy obtained by Fortune, the companies argue that such laws "send an unmistakeable signal that same-sex couples are in some way inferior to opposite-sex couples, a proposition that is anathema to amici's commitment to equality and fair treatment to all."
At least 60 companies had committed to signing the brief as of Tuesday evening, according to Joshua Rosenkranz, who is counsel of record on the brief and head of the Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. That number is expected to rise by Thursday, however, according to Rosenkranz. Others who have already committed to sign include AIG, Becton Dickinson, Cisco, Cummins, Kimpton, Levi Strauss, McGraw Hill, NCR, Nike, Office Depot, Oracle, Panasonic, Qualcomm, and Xerox.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriages. Both the First and Second Circuit Court of appeals have struck down a provision of the law denying federal benefits, like Social Security benefits or the ability to file joint tax returns, to same-sex couples legally married. Because of these lower court rulings, DOMA has been declared unconstitutional in some regions of the country but not others -- an issue the Supreme Court now has a chance to rectify by reviewing the Second Circuit decision.
The court will also consider California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage that voters passed in 2008. Prop. 8 passed after the California Supreme Court granted same-sex couples the right to marry, putting California voters in the unique position of taking away rights granted by the court. After Prop. 8 passed, a federal court followed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Prop. 8 was unconstitutional.
The high court is expected to hear arguments in both cases in March and issue rulings over the summer.
"It's been our belief all along that the ultimate fate of Proposition 8 will be in the hands of the Supreme Court," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel for the advocacy group ProtectMarriage, which sought the high court's intervention.
"I fully believe that this court's going to come down on the side of freedom and equality," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.
. . . Even if the court sides with gays and lesbians, opponents of same-sex marriage say it won't end the debate.
"The majority of Americans who have voted to protect marriage as the unity of a man and a woman are never going to go away," said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage, he said, "would launch a national culture war."
Meeting in private on Friday at their last weekly conference before the court's holiday recess, the justices considered requests to review seven cases dealing with same-sex relationships. Five of them were challenges to the federal marriage law, one to California's gay marriage ban and another to an Arizona law against domestic partner benefits.
The court had been widely expected to take up at least one of the challenges to the federal marriage law, given that two federal appeals courts had found the law unconstitutional. Less clear was what the court would do with the California gay marriage ban.
"Taking both a states' rights case like Prop 8, and a case involving Congress's authority in the DOMA ... suggests that the court is ready to take on the entire issue, not just piecemeal it," said Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the individuals defending California's gay marriage ban.
"I had thought the Court would take it in stages instead of doing DOMA and Perry at the same time," said Paul Smith of Jenner & Block, who had assisted in another DOMA challenge pending before the justices. On the DOMA grant of review, he added, "The arguments are pretty much the same in all the cases. It makes sense in some ways to have a decision below from the court of appeal."
Professor Douglas NeJaime of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles called the combination of grants in Perry and Windsor "really interesting" and added, "It's really hard to know exactly what the justices are thinking. Windsor is the DOMA case that presents the heightened scrutiny question and it was raised in Perry but the Ninth Circuit didn’t go there. The justices could be interested in saying its time to say sexual orientation classifications merit heightened scrutiny."
On the other hand, NeJaime said, "They could be prepared to split the difference and say a federal law like DOMA that denies recognition to valid state law marriages is unconstitutional, but not be prepared to find that states can't prohibit marriage themselves."
A third possibility, according to NeJaime, is that the justices will find both Prop 8 and DOMA Section 3 unconstitutional under the Constitution's lowest scrutiny—rational basis review.
I'm starting a new weekly feature called "Law Links" to alert readers to legal actions here and around the world. This has always been an interest of mine, and even more-so now that my daughter is a new attorney who just passed the Bar Exam and is in court every day.
Editor's Note: On Tuesday, December 4, we expect one or more opinions at 10 a.m. We will be live blogging.
On Friday, the Court has granted two new cases, Mutual Pharmaceutical Co. v. Bartlett (12-142) and Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (12-398 ). The Court did not act on the same-sex marriage cases. Additional orders are expected Monday at 9:30.
Even as digital technology has made reproducing, remixing and repurposing creative works easier -- with potentially enormous benefits for consumers and producers of new works -- the monopoly privileges of copyright have expanded. The result is a bizarre combination of rampant copyright violations, frequent encroachment on legitimate fair use, suppression of new technologies and business models, and the ever-present threat of draconian penalties.
The United States Supreme Court rejected a request from a Chicago-area prosecutor to review a recent ruling that the First Amendment protects a right to record the actions of police officers as they perform their public duties.
. . . The Supreme Court's decision to let the Seventh Circuit's ruling stand is a victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which spearheaded the case. The ACLU's chapter in Massachusetts also had success vindicating a First Amendment right to record the actions of public officials. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled police violated the rights of a Boston man when they arrested him for using his cell phone to record the arrest of a suspect. In March, the city agreed to pay $170,000 to settle his civil rights lawsuit.
The Associated Press said that (Judge) Kelley’s 39-page ruling concluded that the voucher program violates provisions in the state constitution regarding the Minimum Foundation Program, or MFP, which determines how public schools are funded. “The MFP … was never meant to be diverted to private educational providers,” Kelley’s ruling said.
What Jindal’s team has been doing is implementing a voucher program, potentially the country’s largest, as a result of a new law that in part allows the state to offer vouchers to more than half of its students, or some 450,000 students. About 10,000 have applied, with most of the slots given to Christian schools, some of which didn’t really have the resources to handle the influx. They also use curriculum that promotes Young Earth Creationism, the belief that Earth is no older than 10,000 years old — and that human beings lived alongside dinosaurs — despite definitive scientific consensus that it is billions of years old.
A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook . . . with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. The notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user’s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the “Berner Convention,” an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled “Berne Convention.” The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user’s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service.
Popular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:
There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users’ information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.
Fantastic News for Ohio and for the Dems in Ohio!!!
And really everybody in Ohio wins because they will get to vote during the last weekend before the election.
However, I think you should "bank" your votes now, in case there are shenanigans on election day, or bad weather, or illness, or whatever. Vote Now!!!!!!
The only loser is Ohio Sec. of State Jon Husted who is a jerk for trying to help his party leaders suppress the vote in an important swing state. It's good to see the Supremes smack down a jerk for a change, instead of being jerks themselves.
And Husted has already issued an order for early voting to go forward:Link Here
DIRECTIVE 2012-50
October 16, 2012
To: All County Boards of Elections
Directors, Deputy Directors, and Board Members
Re: Uniform Days and Hours for In-Person Absentee Voting from November 3, 2012 through November 5, 2012
I hereby set uniform days and hours for in-person absentee voting, for UOCAVA and non-UOCAVA voters alike, as follows: Saturday, November 3, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Sunday, November 4, 2012 – 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Monday, November 5, 2012 – 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
This Directive expands the uniform days and hours for in-person absentee voting established by Directive 2012-35, which remains in effect. As such, Boards are reminded that any voter in line when that day’s hours for in-person absentee voting ends, may remain in line to apply for and receive an absentee ballot in person.
If you have any questions regarding this Directive, please contact the Secretary of State’s elections attorney assigned to your county by calling (614) 466-2585.
Sincerely,
Jon
Without noted dissent, the Supreme Court at midday Tuesday turned aside a plea by state officials in Ohio to allow them to close down voting opportunities on the final three days before election day on November 6. The ruling was a significant victory for President Obama and for Democrats, especially since they claimed that the shuttering of voting offices on the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before election day would be likely to affect low-income and minority voters — many of whom may be expected to vote Democratic.
The Court acted in a one-sentence order that contained no explanation. The action, though, left intact a lower-court order that required voting officials in the crucial electoral state to open the polls on that final weekend to all voters, if they open them to any voters. Ohio officials wanted to allow voting then only by members of the military and their families, on the theory that they might be called away suddenly on military duty. While it is up to each county’s election officials to decide whether to be open for voting on those days, many if not most — and, crucially, major cities — are expected to do so rather than shut out military voters altogether. Under the lower-court order, all voters must be treated the same for early voting.
Sometimes idealogy has less to do with politics than the fact that someone is just basically an insensitive loud-mouth lout. It's as if these people grew up watching Archie Bunker and thought he was the perfect role model. What they seem to have missed is that Archie was never a lovable guy, but a caricature of an all-American bigot and the essence of loutishness.
Did I mention he was also written as a stupid character with little understanding of other peoples' lives and experiences? I think some of these politicians should realize that.
Here's Congressman Bill Young of Florida insulting a constituent who is asking a perfectly legitimate question about raising the minimum wage:
Constituent: Jesse Jackson Jr.'s passing around a bill around to increase the minimum wage to 10 bucks an hour. Do you support that?
Young: Probably not.
Constituent: Ten bucks and hour to give us a living wage?
Young: How 'bout gettin' a job?
Constituent: I do have one.
Young: Then why do you want that benefit? Get a job!
Constituent: I have a job!
Uh, Congressman Young? The point isn't the job, it's making enough money. You fail at logic. I'm surprised you didn't just call this guy "Meathead." And why shouldn't we all care about the minimum wage? You fail at sympathy for the American people, too.
Or how about Chris Collins, running for Congress in New York District 27? He obviously lives in a world of his own where it's okay to oppose health care because he thinks no one dies from cancer anymore. How con-veeeen-ient! Now he can hate Obamacare without feeling guilty.
"People now don’t die from prostate cancer, breast cancer and some of the other things,” Collins said.
. . . In fact, over 28,000 men will die of prostate cancer this year. According to the American Cancer Society, “Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men, behind only lung cancer. About 1 man in 36 will die of prostate cancer.”
Approximately 40,000 women will die from breast cancer in 2012. The American Cancer Society says it’s the “second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer.
Hey, get educated, bro.
The flip-side of that remark comes from the head of the New Hampshire Tea Party, who seems to understand that cancer kills, but he wants it to kill some specific people: the Supreme Court Justices who wrote the majority opinion ruling that gave the green light to Obama's Health Care program.
Merrimack, New Hampshire libertarian and Tea Party president Mike Malzone has gone further than others in his outrage, declaring in a Facebook post on the Merrimack Tea Party page, “I hope the (5 supremes) get colon cancer.”
When the post was met with outrage, Malzone backtracked a day later, while waxing lachrymose. “I didn’t wish for anyone to die, but I said I do wish for them to feel our pain,” he said. “No one cares about me, they all make their promises and then go do what they g**damn feel.”
Boo-hoo. Call a Wahhhmbulance! Another narcissistic insensitive lout whining because the Supreme Court upheld the law of the land. But he also manages to remind us that there are terrible illnesses like colon cancer, which does kill if untreated, and that's why we need health care for everyone. So thanks for reminding us.
Finally for your inspection, we have Congressman Joe Walsh (R-IL) who said his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, was not a "true hero" even though she is a double-amputee veteran of the War in Iraq. He compared her to John McCain, whom he says never talks about his military service, which just isn't true! Everyone knows all about John McCain's service in Vietnam and his time as a prisoner of war. McCain wrote a book about it, and talked about it the whole time he was running for president in 2008.
Duckworth lost both her legs after Iraqi insurgents hit her helicopter with a rocket propelled grenade in 2004. She is now challenging incumbent Walsh in Illinois' re-drawn 8th Congressional district. "Now I'm running against a woman who, my God, that's all she talks about," said Walsh, a Tea Party freshman. "Our true heroes, it's the last thing in the world they talk about."
Did that stop him? Of course not - louts will never shut up. Here merely repeated himself: Story Here
“Of course Tammy Duckworth is a hero. I have called her a hero hundreds of times in the past four months. Just like every man and woman who has worn the uniform, her service demands -- demands -- our utmost respect. That’s why I recognize our veterans at the beginning of every one of my public town halls. However, unlike most veterans I have had the honor to meet since my election to Congress, who rarely if ever talk about their service or the combat they’ve seen, that is darn near all of what Tammy Duckworth talks about.
Duckworth responded on the Martin Bashir show:
Yet another irresponsible comment from someone who's supposed to be a sitting Congressman. He's irresponsible in his words and he's irresponsible in his votes. Time and time again he votes against the people of this district, and he really disrespected 23 million veterans across this nation with those comments....
. . . He's lived up to his words that his district is not going to get squat from him, and he's in Washington to be a poster child for the Tea Party. He's lived up to that. I hope to win in November and I will be a servant to the people of the district. I've served this nation my entire life, lived up to my responsibilities, and I hope that I'll get the chance to continue to serve.
Later on Duckworth told Ed Schultz:
He's just trying to shift the focus away from the fact that he's done nothing in his two years in Congress other than be an extremist loud-mouth for the Tea Party....
Health care is a big hot-button issue in light ofthe Supreme Court ruling so surely the Republicans had some agreed-upon talking points ready, right? At the very least, they could all get on board with the idea that the health care mandate is a tax - Obamatax - because at least their own Tea-publican base loves that idea, right? Am I right?
Wrong. They cannot get on the same page. Confusion reigns. They have a few memes like "Repeal and Replace" but beyond that each talking head seems to not know what the others are saying, so they are like a cross between a mythical Chimera with several heads and Dr. Dolittle's Push-Me-Pull-You. If what they babble about seems chaotic, what the public hears is mostly crickets chirping. There is no there there. They got nothin'.
Mythical Chimera = Republicans on Health Care
Mitch McConnell: Diabolically unable to show compassion, but also no plan.
WALLACE: One of the keys to "Obama-care" is that it will extend insurance access to 30 million people who are now uninsured. In your replacement, how would you provide universal coverage?
MCCONNELL: Well, first, let me say the single the best thing we could do for the American health care system is to get rid of Obamacare....
WALLACE: But if I may, sir, you've talked about repeal and replace. How would you provide universal coverage?
MCCONNELL: I will get to it in a minute. The first step we need to take is to get rid of what is there....
WALLACE: But respectfully sir, because we are going to run out of time and I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?
MCCONNELL: That is not the issue....
WALLACE: You don't think the 30 million people that were uninsured is an issue?
MCCONNELL: Let me tell you what we are not going to do....
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) attacked the new law, saying it amounts to a “middle class tax increase” that’s largely going to affect Americans making less than $120,000 a year.
“It will cost the economy between 800,000 and a million jobs,” Mr. McConnell said on “Fox News Sunday.”
. . . White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew hit back, saying that the new health-care law was a “penalty” that only 1% of the population who can afford insurance, but decide not to purchase it, will pay.
“The law is clear: it’s called a penalty. Second of all, what the Supreme Court ruled was that this law was constitutional,” Mr. Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Everyone who has insurance–everyone who chooses to buy insurance–will not pay it.”
The Romney Campaign Agrees . . . with the White House???
* surrogate confusion *
CHUCK TODD (MSNBC): What you just said is that Governor Romney agrees that it's not a tax. But you guys call it a penalty.
ERIC FEHRNSTROM (TOP ROMNEY AIDE): The governor disagreed with the court. He agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice Scalia which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax.
TODD: So ... I think we're talking around each other. The governor does not believe the mandate is a tax, that's what you're saying?
FEHRNSTROM: The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court's ruling that the mandate was a tax.
TODD: But he agrees with the president that it is not, that you shouldn't call the tax penalty a tax, you should call it a penalty or a fee or a fine?
NORAH O'DONNELL: But access to affordable health insurance, but you're not saying you would be for a law that would prevent discrimination of those individuals?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: No, we just believe there is a better way to make sure that they have affordable access to quality health insurance.
NORAH O'DONNELL: So when you repeal this, what are you going to replace it with?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: I just started pointing out. We're going take a common-sense, step-by-step approach that puts in place the kind of policies that will make our-- our health insurance system more what I call patient-centered and lower cost. The only proposal out there last year that would lower the cost of health insurance came from Republicans. Why? Because we've got policies that really will help bring down the cost of health insurance. It's clear that Obamacare is increasing the cost of health insurance for all Americans and making it virtually impossible for small employers to hire new workers.
NORAH O'DONNELL: How does it make it hard for small employers to hire more workers?
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER: Because they're being required to either provide health insurance or pay a fine. Well, I'm sorry, a tax. It's now a tax since the court said it was a tax.
NORAH O'DONNELL: Chief Justice John Roberts said it was a tax.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): He-- even though, the President had tried to admit for, you know, over a year that it wasn't a tax and nobody believed it and now we know it. But it-- it's getting in the way of employers hiring new workers. Because of these increased costs of government-run health insurance and the fact that, if they don't, they have to provide a tax, so employers--
~~~*snip*~~~
NORAH O'DONNELL: Why not, then, if you like some of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act, why not work with it rather than ap-- repeal the whole thing.
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): No, no, no.
NORAH O'DONNELL: Even Mitt Romney said--
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): No, this has to be-- this has to be ripped out by its roots. This is government taking over the entire health insurance industry. The American people do not want to go down this path. They do not want the government telling them what kind of insurance policy they have to buy and how much they're going to pay for it and if you don't like it, we're going to tax you. It has to be ripped out and we need to start over, one step at a time.
NORAH O'DONNELL (overlapping): And so you say so-- so-- so to heck with all these provisions like additional preventative care for children, for women--
REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (overlapping): All of them. All of-- we can-- we can replace. While we replace this, we can have a common-sense debate about which of these provisions ought to stay and which ought to go.
Yesterday CBS News dropped a stunning bombshell when they published insider information about the machinations of the ACA Health Care ruling by the Supreme Court. The reporter is Jan Crawford, and everyone wonders who her sources are, whether clerks or the justices themselves. She says she had two sources - standard in most news stories. Maybe she just had some non-denial denials, as Woodward and Bernstein had while getting two sources in the Watergate case?
She reports that Chief Justice Roberts had originally sided with the conservatives to strike down the health care mandate, but Roberts didn't agree with Scalia and the others that they should strike down all of Obamacare. So he wrote his own opinion allowing the mandate as a tax, and the liberal justices got on board with it.
Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - often thought of as the "moderate swing vote" - was the one determined to bring Chief Roberts back to the fold, badgering him for weeks to flip again and strike down Obama's plan, described in the article as a "relentless" effort. In the end, the conservatives put out an "unsigned dissent" ignoring Justice Roberts' ruling - rather vindictive.
Therefore, the shunning of Roberts as a traitor began long before the public knew of the verdict. The fury of Republicans on Twitter and everywhere else must have come as no surprise after all. No wonder Roberts told reporters that he was planning to go to Malta to teach a class: “Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress,” he told reporters. “It seemed like a good idea.”
Roberts focused the majority opinion on a much more difficult legal proposition: The tax power. But Roberts also would limit Congress' authority in future cases under the commerce power.
Roberts then engaged in his own lobbying effort - trying to persuade at least Justice Kennedy to join his decision so the Court would appear more united in the case. There was a fair amount of give-and-take with Kennedy and other justices, the sources said. One justice, a source said, described it as "arm-twisting."
Even in Roberts' opinion, which was circulated among the justices in early June, there are phrases that appear tailored to get Kennedy's vote. Roberts even used some of the same language that Kennedy used during oral arguments.
~~~snip~~~
The fact that the joint dissent doesn't mention Roberts' majority was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him.
The language in the dissent was sweeping, arguing the court was overreaching in the name of restraint and ignoring key structural protections in the Constitution. There are clear elements of Scalia - and then, there is Justice Kennedy.
"The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty in peril," the dissent said. "Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead our judgment today has disregarded it."
I flipped over to CNN the other night because I wondered how they were covering their own bad reporting about the Supreme Court decision, and instead I landed in Erin Burnett's show - always a bad moment. I couldn't stand her when she was on CNBC, but at least she had the late great Mark Haines there to pull her back from her corporate rants. On CNN, that's what they pay her to do, I guess.
Her message: "America just woke up with a tiger in the bathroom."
Viewer: Huh? What the hell is she on about there?
Other message: "We are all losers, because we have to hate what ACA does not do - lower the cost of health care."
Me: Change the channel fast!
Seriously?
It's insulting to our intelligence to hear a lecture on the "high cost of health insurance" on the day it became more affordable, especially from someone who started out working for Goldman Sachs, and who made their career out of tossing around million dollar figures on Squawk Box as if it were chump change. Did I mention her significant other who works for Citigroup? She's gone back to that evil bank manager voice that she used in her first piece with CNN about Occupy Wall Street, when she found some teenager who was hypnotized by her boobs and lectured him on the error of his ways. Poor kid.
In this piece she shakes her head in mock-sympathy and sounds as if she's been weeping over the ACA ruling all day. Then she delivers her condescending Debbie-Downer opinion that the only important thing is bringing down the cost of health care, and help for the poor just doesn't matter.
Well guess what, Erin? Now insurers have to give rebates when they make us overpay! And the really poor won't be "overpaying" or paying much at all, and that's what the plan is for.The rest of us can keep what we have, but we also get to keep our kids on the plan until age 26, which will save millions of dollars of out of pocket expenditures by families.
That we should be unhappy that more people are insured is one of the stupidest talking points, but the Republicans are lucky to have news people like Erin to get the message out there. Let's all feel sorry for the big insurance companies and their investors, right?
When CNN cleans house in a few weeks (if it even takes that long) she should be right at the top of the list. Buh-Bye, Debbie Downer!
CNN's Erin Burnett cherry-picked numbers to claim that the health care reform law was "a massive fail" because medical costs are expected to grow more in 2014 than they did in 2010.
But the massive fail here is on Burnett: health care costs in 2010 grew at historically low rates as the country emerged from a deep recession, making it an inappropriate point of comparison.
. . . Burnett took one of the lowest rates of health spending growth on record and compared it to the year that will bring the largest impact on growth, and declared that everybody loses.
CNN's viewers most certainly did.
No surprise that like Governor Jindal of Louisiana, Rick Scott of Florida is saying "NO!" to Obamacare. Just remember that Governor Voldemort has health care through the state, plus he is a millionaire. He's also the former CEO of a hospital, so he's not anti-health care no matter what lies he tells now. But hey - no sweat off his bald head if he denies healthcare to the masses, right? He gets to decide who is worthy enough, just as he does with voting rights. [/snark]
"Florida is not going to implement Obamacare. We are not going to expand Medicaid and we're not going to implement exchanges," Scott's spokesman Lane Wright told The Associated Press on Saturday. Wright stressed that the governor would work to make sure the law is repealed.
Scott said the state will not expand the Medicaid program in order to lower the number of uninsured residents, nor will Florida set up a state-run health exchange, a marketplace where people who need insurance policies could shop for them.
"We care about having a health care safety net for the vulnerable Floridians, but this is an expansion that just doesn't make any sense," he told Fox host Greta Van Susteren on Friday.
Scott has gone back and forth on the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Congress cannot withhold federal Medicaid funding from states that opt out of a requirement in the overhaul to expand coverage to those just above the poverty line.
It's truly an American spectacle to see the Republicans spewing vitriol towards Chief Justice John Roberts ~ or as they are calling him on Twitter "Chief Traitor Roberts."
Do these morons have any idea what they sound like to people out here in the heartland whose lack of health insurance has been keeping them trapped in a bad job or even keeping them from having children? I can't be the only person who thinks the Republican Party the past few days sound like a bunch of cruel sore losers who would begrudge benefits to anyone less fortunate. What a bunch of hypocrites!
Remember folks ~ Every single one of those politicians and pundits on TV have Major Medical for themselves and their families. That goes for any politician on a local, city, county or state level, no matter how much they like to slam "government." That is an act - they don't really mean half the stuff they say!
And they are lying and using propaganda techniques to scare the public into thinking that Obamacare is everything from a communist plot to "take away our guns" to turning the IRS into Obama's private army. Come on - who believes this horse hockey? Rush Limbaugh is NOT the voice of truth, people. He is a whiny complainer who uses his bully pulpit to mock our President as an illegitimate criminal bent on destroying America. I think it's the opposite - it's as if he is looking in a mirror and talking to himself. The Republicans want to destroy America and rebuild it in their own image, and that's not a pretty sight.
Guess what? We won't ever see these politicians on the right cutting their own health care plans to balance the budget. No, they look out for themselves and their own familes. Why do you think these bozos want to get re-elected over and over? They are NOT volunteers. They wouldn't do it if the money and benefits weren't there, and many republicans are in the 1% anyway. They just don't want to help anyone else. They are cold, mean, and lacking basic empathy towards other human beings, and they don't even pretend to care anymore.Even Romney doesn't try to court the voters on the fence by displaying empathy. I don't think he has any.
What do the Republicans and Teapublicans have to do or say to prove to "undecided voters" that they are nasty people? Kick a dog in the street? They've already had the vomiting dog on top of the car. Slap a woman? They are threatening women with transvaginal probes and calling them sluts and whores - isn't that enough? Yell fire in a crowded building? That is what they do in a figurative sense every single day when they insist that Obama is single-handedly bringing on Apocalypse Now.
And no, I don't buy the theory that "both sides are just as bad" and I think the constitutionality of Obamacare proves that. The President ironically now has a "mandate" and the seal of approval of the Supreme Court, thanks to that low-down scumbag, Dread Pirate Roberts. But it's the Republicans who can't have it both ways. If a ruling was good enough for Citizen's United to be constitutional, then it's good enough for Obamacare to be constitutional. End of story . . . or it should be.
Let me explain it the way my parents explained it to me: It is always the Democrats who give us large social programs that raise the standard of living. It has been that way since Franklin Roosevelt. It was that way when Kennedy and LBJ were in office. In the old days when Republicans had more backbone, they would join in and vote for worthy programs that would help needy citizens, but now the Republicans follow their leaders like so many chickens in a pecking order, and they get so scared when the others start squawking at them. The underling Republicans hurry to prove their worth to their Overlords by slamming Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and now Justice Roberts. Insults are the new key to success in the Republican Party. But when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. They will say "NO!" to anything Obama puts forth so they can stay in the Republican Club, but meanwhile they have no good ideas of their own.
Shouldn't the American people have a right to the same benefits that these bloviating ignoramuses take for granted as a job perk? These nutters who pray loudly and publicly to God for deliverance from the evil Obama - yes, they even pray on Twitter and Facebook - get right up off their knees and onto the nearest soap box to slam unemployed people as "lazy freeloaders," sick children as "wanting a handout," and now a Supreme Court Justice as "Benedict Arnold" or "Judas."
We need to get smarter as a country and point out this bad behavior and lack of statesmanship loudly and often. More than that - it's just plain immoral to hate sick people and leave them suffering until they die in the richest country on earth. It's immoral to shut out millions of people from health care just because they are too young for Medicare or because they have to work three part-time jobs in this economy just to pay for rent and food.
The conservatives are taking a morally indefensible stance and I can't see it's going to help Romney win at all. He's the one who helped craft the original health care plan in Massachusetts. And his plan is still in force and 98% of the people there are covered. And that's a good thing, not a scary thing. Believe it.
I don't like to brag, and I'm not always correct, but I got one prediction right this past week when I told my husband and daughter that I was absolutely sure of one thing: Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana would be the very first politician to say that he didn't want any stinkin' Obamacare for his state.
And sure enough . . .he's been saying "NO" all over the place. Anyone who has ever taken child psychology or had a toddler in the house remembers "The No Stage in which a child who wants independence suddenly reacts to every question with that word. Governor Jindal wants his state to be so independent that he says to "NO" without even thinking of the consequences, much like a half-awake toddler with no responsibilities. Frankly, if I had a Governor like that I would be planning a move to another state.
(Oh wait . . . sometimes he says yes - remember the Gulf Oil Spill? And if there's a hurricane, he'll be right there criticizing Obama for not helping them enough. Oy. But the rest of the time it's "NO!")
If Jindal is just saying "NO!" to win friends and influence people in the Republican Party, that isn't really working either. On Friday, the day after the Surpreme Court gave the green light to the President's healthcare plan, Bobby Jindal flubbed up on a Republican Party Conference Call by calling the program "Obamneycare," a slur left over from the primary that fuses together Obama's plan with Romney's in Massachusetts (on which Obamacare is based).
Really I think Mr. Jindal needs to say "NO" next time a microphone is shoved into his face.
"It really raises the question of what's next, what's allowable," Jindal said. "Taxes on people who refuse to eat tofu or refuse to drive a Chevy Volt ... this whole ruling I think is ridiculous. It's a huge expansion of federal power."
and
"We're not moving forward with the exchanges," Jindal said. "Instead, we're going to do everything we can to defeat President Obama, get rid of ObamaCare."
Here in Louisiana, we've not applied for the grants, we've not accepted many of these dollars," Jindal said. "We're not implementing the exchanges. We don't think it makes any sense to implement Obamacare in Lousiana. The next opportunity we have to get rid of this law is to get Governor Romney elected, and I absolutely believe that he will be elected in November, and one of his first actions will be to repeal and replace this law."
The Affordable Care Act requires states to have exchanges. A state has several options: It can build the exchange itself, or it can collaborate with the federal government to build it, or it can let the federal government run it. The state has to tell the feds what path it has decided to take by mid-November. If the state does not want to run its own exchange, or collaborate with the feds to run it, the feds will begin setting up the exchange themselves in January.
If Jindal is serious about not implementing an exchange, the latter course is what will happen under the law, says Kathleen Stoll, the deputy executive director at the pro-Obamacare Families USA.
“If the state hasn’t moved forward, at that point, the feds have to come in to run the exchange to protect the citizens of Lousiana,” Stoll says. “The irony is that Jindal has made a choice to waste time and available federal dollars he could have used to build a state exchange uniquely tailored to his vision and the needs of the people of Louisiana.”
Of course, Jindal is probably banking on Obama losing the election, and Romney fulfilling his promise to repeal Obamacare on day one of his presidency. But that’s a pretty big gamble.
Whatever the political leanings of Chief Justice John Roberts, his choice to vote with the Liberal side of the Supreme Court in the ACA ruling was an honorable and brave thing to do. He rose above the fray and followed the rule of law, not the ramblings of some right-wing talking points. I don't agree with all his decisions - Citizens United is an abomination - but in this particular case, he did the right thing.
The fact is, John Roberts has a whole host of new fans and admirers because he helped save Obama's Health Care plan for America. And we won't forget.
My favorite tweet from yesterday, and possibly from all time, was this:
I have no idea if the person who tweeted that was a liberal or a conservative, or whether he agreed with the verdict rendered. They might love Justice Roberts or hate his guts. In a literary sense it works either way because Professor Severus Snape was an ambiguous character up until the end of the Harry Potter series when we saw his true nature. Both sides saw Snape as a traitor, yet he was actually just walking a dangerous line and trying to do the morally right thing under tough circumstances. And at the end of the story, he was the "bravest man" Harry Potter ever knew.
Sometimes that happens in real life. For me, after this ruling, Chief Justice Roberts is a hero like that.
Am I being corny? Perhaps, but listen to Chris Matthews waxing poetic about Roberts yesterday:
Roberts Rules! Let's Play Hardball.
. . . Let me start with one of the great days in this country's history. Today the Supreme Court led by the Chief Justice himself decided that Barack Obama's Health Care Act squares with the American Constitution. All the drum-beating, all the horrors floated up by the right-wing fever swamps are, after today, simply the hate-vapors of the perennial rejectionists to progress, the "rear guard" funded by the Koch Brothers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Today's Hero ~ Chief Justice John Roberts, who walked to the forefront of history and said yes to progress and and no to the role prescribed for him by the Right. He would not be that man, he would not let the court named for him carry historic blame for denying health care to tens of millions of Americans. He would not be the ramrod for yet another right-leaning partison-appearing Supreme Court ruling that would have been the third strike over the plate following Bush v. Gore and Citizens United. So let's start tonight by looking at this bold, defiant, grand decision by Chief Justice Roberts . . .
Earlier this week we read Justice Scalia's bizarre dissent on the Arizona Immigration case, in which he went into absolutely Pureblood Death Eater mode while comparing illegal Hispanics in Arizona to freed slaves before the Civil War and those with "contagious diseases." It's easy to see Roberts as the reverse - someone who decided to put the Law ahead of prejudices or his own personal opinions. And indeed, he ruled the opposite of Scalia in that case, as well as the ACA case.
Supreme Court expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Linda Greenhouse, wrote about Roberts role in the Immigration decision for the New York Times:, implying that Roberts willingness to go along with the majority might have driven Scalia nuts, LOL:
The first thing that jumped out at me was the name of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on Justice Kennedy’s opinion, along with the expected names of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor. The chief justice was, apparently, in complete agreement with the majority as evidenced by his silence – the dog that didn’t bark, you might say. He felt no need to write separately to express even a shade of difference from the majority or a hint of sympathy with the dissenting views of his usual allies. Beyond Justice Scalia’s transparent dislike for the president, perhaps it was the chief justice’s apostasy that drove him around the bend.
Yes, horrors that the Chief Justice wouldn't succumb to all the dog whistles in Justice Scalia's dissent. Maybe Roberts just isn't a racist?
About the Health Care Ruling, Greenhouse analyzed Roberts' role which is officially "Chief Justice of the United States."
. . . the title that he actually goes by, chief justice of the United States, seemed a good fit. He spoke for the country.
His decision to call the mandate a tax and to provide a clearly reluctant fifth vote for upholding it as within the Congressional taxing power was a deeply pragmatic call that saved the Affordable Care Act. Certainly by no coincidence, it also saved the Supreme Court from the stench of extreme partisanship that has hung over the health care litigation from the moment more than two years ago that Republican state officials raced one another to the federal courts to try to erase what they had been unable to block.
. . . But it is Chief Justice Roberts’s extraordinary role that is most intriguing. He has just completed his seventh term as chief justice, and at 57 could well serve another quarter-century or longer. Clearly he is playing a long game.
. . . John Roberts doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act. He went to great lengths in his opinion to show his total agreement with the plaintiffs’ core argument: that the requirement to buy health insurance was an unprecedented effort by Congress to force people into a market they had chosen not to enter, to create commerce where none existed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion pierced gaping holes in the chief justice’s analysis. But he stuck to his position, coming within an inch of invoking what Justice Ginsburg ironically labeled “the broccoli horrible” and warning that “under the government’s theory, Congress could address the diet problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables.”
Since there were four justices who also saw the mandate that way, as Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Anthony M. Kennedy explained in an unusually structured opinion that all four signed as co-authors, the mandate might have died right there. But then the chief justice abruptly pivoted and declared that because the penalty for not buying insurance functioned as a tax, it could be upheld as a tax and the mandate was therefore constitutional.
“I think this term was the turning point in the legacy of John Roberts,” Harvard law professor Laurence H. Tribe said in an e-mail to the Globe. “He now has a chance to be a truly great chief justice. Of course, he dissented in some of the liberal-leaning decisions of the current largely conservative court, but when push came to shove he was where he needed to be.” Tribe, who taught Roberts and President Obama at Harvard Law School, said Roberts’s decision to become the swing vote in a 5-4 decision “saved the day — and perhaps the court.”
In the same article, Joel B. Grossman of Johns Hopkins University said:
“It’s kind of an act of leadership rather than an act of ideology . . . I can’t imagine his sympathies were with expanding congressional power, but I think he recognized that there might even be a crisis if he cut this law off at the knees.”
. . . “He is going to be chief for a long time and one thing you don’t want is to lose control of the court,” he said. “This fits the model of wanting to keep the court together and perhaps even to approve something he personally found distasteful.”
Roberts must have known that the conservatives would see him as a sell-out, shun him socially, and immediately launch ad hominem attacks as bad or worse as those aimed at the President. And in fact, it started in less than 24 hours.
Ben Shapiro, Editor of Breitbart.com launched a series of damning tweets:
This is the greatest destruction of individual liberty since Dred Scott. This is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.
Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky took a different route, issuing a Press Release that dissed the entire decision as moot somehow, as if Justice Roberts had no authority to render a verdict. In fact, he carefully doesn't mention Roberts at all, which is telling, and refers to the majority opinion as "couple people" who "declare something." Yeah, the Supreme Court doesn't matter unless they rule your way.
Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.
Actually, Rand, that's exactly what makes it so.
. . . Paul may want to review the 1803 case of Marbury V. Madison, which formed the basis for judicial review. In other words, it's what gave the Court its teeth -- it clearly defined the Court's role in the separation of powers in the federal government, making it the "supreme expositor of the Constitution."
This means that what the Court says goes -- regardless of whether a freshman Senator from Kentucky disagrees with it.
Rand Paul had so much criticism over his silly remark that he was still trying to explain in an interview the next day: Interview From Marketplace Health Care:
Hobson: Well thanks for being here. I want to start by asking you about some comments that you made yesterday that have gotten a lot of attention. You said: "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be constitutional, does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional." Do you stand by that statement? Paul: You know, I still agree with Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy and Alito that the Constitution doesn't justify the law. Hobson: You're agreeing with the dissenters -- but that was not the ruling that the Supreme Court came down with. Paul: Right, but that's all I'm saying, if if you ask Justice Scalia if he thinks the law is Constitutional, he'll still tell you "no." So I'm entitled to have my opinion as to what is constitutional and what is not. No one's talking about whether the ruling has validity or not, I'm just saying that I agree with the dissenters that don't believe the law is constitutional
Okey dokey.
Next . . . the apoplectic and hyperbolic (and repetitive) Rush Limbaugh slamming Roberts as some kind of Evil Taxman out to destroy the world:
What we have been told by the Chief Justice of the Court and four liberals on the court - Obamacare's just a massive tax increase.
. . . the Chief Justice was just hell-bound, hell-bent to find a way to make this law applicable, so you know what? As a tax increase it works because there's no limit on the federal government's ability to tax....
. . . John Roberts said (mocking voice) "It's not our job to forbid this, it's not our job to protect people from outcomes, it's not our job to determine what is right or wrong or any of it. We can't forbid this if it's what the elected representatives and the people want." . . . But what if we were deceived?
. . . What happened today was that we were bludgeoned with a tax that requires us to do what the government mandates. We must do what they say. . . . It is a 'stealth tax' and that's what it was all along. A massive behavior modification program.
. . . Chief Justice says (mocking voice) 'I can't forbid this. It's not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. I gotta find a way - Congress wants this - I gotta find a way to make it happen. Okay - we'll call it a tax!'
Let’s talk about Roberts. I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to hear anywhere else, that you must pay attention to. It’s well known that Roberts, unfortunately for him, has suffered from epileptic seizures. Therefore he has been on medication. Therefore neurologists will tell you that medication used for seizure disorders, such as epilepsy, can introduce mental slowing, forgetfulness and other cognitive problems. And if you look at Roberts’ writings you can see the cognitive dissociation in what he is saying.
Oh Lord - "cognitive problems"? Really? Does this also explain Mitt Romney's lack of memory about everything he has ever said?
That statement is nasty two ways - not only is it egregious to bring up the private health matters of a Supreme Court Justice, it's insulting to anyone with epilepsy to imply that they can't make correct decisions. But isn't this just par for the course in Republican circles ~ bad health equals bad judgment equals "no insurance for you"? Don't the Republicans always imply that people with bad health or even children with pre-existing conditions from birth are somehow tainted and undeserving? Unless you're Ann Romney with high-functioning Multiple Sclerosis, or Dick Cheney with a defective heart, or Rick Santorum's poor little daughter, or Rush Limbaugh going blind from drug abuse. Oh yeah - that is irrelevant because they all have plenty of money for the best health care. It's only the poor and unemployed who don't deserve it.
All the more reason we need universal health care so people can get help without regard to their previous conditions or political affiliations. Death Eaters just aren't good at taking care of people. So thank you, Justice Roberts.
CNN breathlessly announced that Obamacare had been overturned without even reading the ruling, and Fox followed suit. Meanwhile cooler heads announced that it was more complicated than that, and in fact, the mandate had been upheld!
Bottom line from #SCOTUS, Obama Administration wins.Challenge to #ACA fails.
The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act meets constitutional muster and can be allowed to continue its slow process of transforming the nation’s health care system.
Thursday’s historic decision, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, was by no means fait accompli. Though the consensus among constitutional scholars has always been that the law’s insurance mandate did not exceed Congress’ Commerce Clause powers, its opponents erected a counterargument that quickly became an article of faith on the right. In the end, Roberts decision upheld the mandate as an exercise of Congress’ taxing power.
Reaction from the Right is predictable!
Obama lied to the American people. Again. He said it wasn't a tax. Obama lies; freedom dies.
Whatever the ruling is, things are going to be explosive in the morning. As soon as we get some reliable reports about the opinion as well as the dissent, I will post those here in the Snark Lane.
No one knows whether the health care law will be upheld, but it might give you hope to know that Tom Goldstein, publisher of Scotusblog says it will be upheld and NOT struck down. Maybe the Tea Party should think about that before they dress up like Minutemen and start crowing like roosters on the steps of the Surpreme Court tomorrow morning.
Goldstein writes:
In the end, you have to make a prediction and take responsibility for it. I believe the mandate will not be invalidated tomorrow. Far less important, I expect the principal opinion will be written by the Chief Justice; a majority of the Court will find it has jurisdiction; and the challenge to the Medicaid expansion will be rejected.
Most observers disagree. There are certainly good reasons to believe the Court will invalidate the mandate. Most important, at the oral argument, the questions of two critical Justices – Justice Kennedy and the Chief Justice – were on the whole critical of the mandate’s constitutionality.
But in the end, based on the entire mix of information I have, I think the mandate will not be struck down tomorrow. (I don’t have any inside information, nor does anyone else.) My prediction includes the possibility that there will not be a single majority opinion for the theory on which the mandate is upheld, and even the thin possibility that the Court will not have a majority to find the mandate constitutional.
Are there clues to what the Supreme Court ruling will be on President Obama's Health Care Plan? Possibly.
Most legal prognostications revolve around the fact that Chief Justice Roberts seems to have put himself in control of the Health Care verdict. Is that because Roberts hopes to salvage the tarnished legacy of the Court by handing down another reasoned impartial verdict? Or is it just that Roberts really has just been "bought out" by Big Pharma and wants personal credit for a huge Obama smackdown that will further damage his chances for reelection? Are there clues within the Immigration Ruling? Does the snidely tone of Scalia's dissent mean anything?
It's really a random crap shoot, and we might as well consult the Magic 8-Ball, but here are some of the possibilities predicted in the media:
The Hill calls Chief Justice Roberts the "Player of the Week."
Unlike Justice Antonin Scalia, Roberts appeared even-handed during oral arguments on the health law in March.
Democrats also noticed that Roberts sided with Justice Anthony Kennedy and liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor on the court’s ruling on Arizona’s border-security law.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has predicted the health overhaul will be held up on a count of 6-3, which would probably mean Roberts and Kennedy joining forces with the left-wing justices.
Still, the administration did not perform well during oral arguments and most legal experts expect the court to strike down all, or some, of the law.
Here's an assortment of tea leaves from ABA Journal:
The ACA Litigation Blog says a Roberts opinion is likely “marginally heartening to the challengers.” Forbes, on the other hand, says a Roberts opinion likely means the health law’s insurance mandate will be overturned.
Some experts who talked to Politico saw significance in the fact that Roberts joined Kennedy's opinion in the immigration case. One of them is George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen. "The nationalism in the Arizona case might be a harbinger of similar deference [to the federal government] on health care,” Rosen said.
But SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein told Politico it would be "totally wrong" to see a link between Roberts' stance in the immigration and health law opinions. “They’re very different cases," Goldstein said. "There are overlapping themes about states’ rights, but the federal immigration power is not the same as federal commerce power
Based on his past decisions and withering remarks from the bench during oral arguments, it's almost a foregone conclusion that Scalia would vote to strike down at least the core provision of the healthcare law that requires most Americans purchase to health insurance. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who wrote separate dissents in the Arizona immigration dispute Monday, are likely to be in that camp as well.
Roberts wrote no separate statement on Monday, a move that showed solidarity with the Kennedy majority. In addition, he likely is focusing on the healthcare dispute to be unveiled Thursday. One thing is known: Roberts is concerned about the Supreme Court's place in history. He has spoken about the need to preserve the integrity of the bench in deeply polarized Washington and has touted the value of unanimous or near-unanimous opinions.
And finally, here's an interview with Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School, in which he says he believes the Health Care Law will be upheld. Via MSNBC
Laurence Tribe: I do think that the Court will surprise a lot of people when it probably upholds the affordable care act in a decision by Chief Justice Roberts .
Chris Jansing: You think it will be upheld in its entirety?
Tribe: I think it will be upheld in its entirety. Of course I can be wrong. Everybody can be wrong, I can be wrong but I do think it will be upheld. I do think that will be a partial antidote for the way people felt, not only after Bush versus Gore, but Citizens United, and other cases where the Court has reached further than it needed to to grab onto issues that were the middle of the political battle and then often not to act in a particularly judicious way. I think Justice Scalia in particular ought to consider the harm to the Court as an institution when he indulges his famous wit in order to stab the President.
Jansing: There are a lot of people who have written that they are concerned about the perception of the Court. In terms of its popularity it is down in the 40s, the most recent polls have shown that the American people have concerns about the Supreme Court being split much the way that America is divided politically. Are their concerns justified?
Tribe: I think justified to some extent. The Court, in a nation like ours where political and legal issues are mixed up and often intertwined, is often criticized. The people on the losing end often say that it was just politics but I think it's the Court's responsibility to act like a Court, to not reach out to issues not presented by the case, to not make comments about a recent press conference the President holds just to make a political point. When that happens it is not simply a matter of the law being politically charged but a matter of the Court being politically unwise.
It's critical that we not lose faith in our institution, bad enough when people, only 9%, one wonders who they are, have faith in Congress but when people lose faith even in Judges who are honestly trying to do a good job, then I think that endangers the institutional stability of the country.
Jansing: As someone who knows Justice Roberts , do you think he has, as has been reported, great concerns about the Court being viewed as too politicized, and his job to somehow right it?
Tribe: Well, I think he is certainly committed to the idea that the Court should-recognized as an institution that, as he put it during his confirmation hearings, is a kind of neutral umpire. There is no such thing as total neutrality when it comes to politically charged issues like abortion and the structure of political campaigns, but at least it's important for the judges not to basically take off their -- take off their robes and allow themselves to simply shoot off at the mouth, as some of them have begun doing. And I think that the Chief Justice is likely to be concerned about the place of the Court in history and is not likely to want the Court to continue to be as deeply and politically divide. That doesn't mean he will depart from his quite conservative philosophy. You can be deeply conservative and believe the Affordable Care Act is completely consistent with the United States Constitution, and I think that is most likely to come out on Thursday.
