Archive for June, 2012

Reëlection Watch: June 30, 2012

13
10 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

This is the first edi­tion of Reëlec­tion Watch after the Supreme Court deci­sion on Oba­macare. It’s too early to see any sig­nif­i­cant effects, though. And, being the last day of June, it’s the last day in which I use the broad­est ranges for tossups. In elec­toral vote land, a cou­ple of states changed columns in the past two weeks.

So, how are things going for the Pres­i­dent lately? Let’s dive in. (more…)

Open Mic June 29

48
10 months ago
by Logarchism.com in
Official 2005 photo of Chief Justice John G. R...

“You’ll remem­ber me now!”

An enor­mous week! The Supreme Court declared that it can­not be a crime in any state to look His­panic and not carry papers to show that you were born in the United States. Nor is it a crime to falsely claim that you received a valor medal. The Court also ruled the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act’s indi­vid­ual man­date to be con­sti­tu­tional, thanks to an unex­pected vote by Chief Jus­tice John Roberts (and a cor­re­spond­ingly unex­pected dis­sent by Jus­tice Anthony Kennedy). The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, for the first time in Amer­i­can his­tory, voted to hold a sit­ting Cab­i­net mem­ber in con­tempt of Con­gress. Much of Col­orado is ablaze, in some of the worst wild­fires in many years. Debby did Tampa. Ann Curry left the Today show. Spider-​​Man got a reboot. And Spain will meet Italy in the Euro Cup final on Sun­day, after Italy thanked Ger­many yes­ter­day for its finan­cial bailout by defeat­ing the two-​​ton Teu­tons two-​​one.

What would you like to talk about? Any of these things catch your fancy? Any­thing else? Grab a key­board, and let’s talk.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Threading the Needle

500
10 months ago
by Michael Weiss in ,

Ever since the Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, “Oba­macare”) indi­vid­ual man­date, pun­dits have been pre­dict­ing that the man­date is dead. The remain­ing ques­tion would then be: will the Supreme Court find the law sev­er­able, that is, can the man­date be ruled uncon­sti­tu­tional but the rest of the law stands? Or does the whole thing go down because of an unac­cept­able mandate?

The Supreme Court finally answered today. By a five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Breyer, Gins­burg, Kagan, and Sotomayor dis­sent­ing), the indi­vid­ual man­date was tech­ni­cally struck down as a vio­la­tion of the Com­merce Clause, but by a dif­fer­ent five-​​to-​​four vote (Jus­tices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas dis­sent­ing) the fine for being unin­sured was not. In that regard, the Court threaded the nee­dle, object­ing to the “ille­gal­ity” of being unin­sured, while leav­ing the rel­e­vant penalty in the Act unchanged.

This deci­sion is cer­tainly a huge win for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion at first blush. But it may prove to be less of a win for Obama himself.

(more…)

Supreme Court to Rule on PPACA Today

10
10 months ago
by Monotreme in

The Supreme Court is sched­uled to read its last deci­sions of the 2011–2012 term today, start­ing at 10:00 am EDT. That means that some­time this morn­ing, the world will finally have an answer on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act (PPACA, or “Obamacare”).

If you want to read the three arti­cles we wrote pre­view­ing the oral argu­ments of late March, they are here, here and here.

If you want to par­tic­i­pate in the live­blog at SCO­TUS­blog, use this link. Amy Howe of SCO­TUS­blog has an excel­lent run­down of the argu­ments “in Plain Eng­lish”.

Shortly after the deci­sion is announced, we will post up an arti­cle out­lin­ing the key points in the deci­sion. Any com­ments made here will be trans­ferred to the new arti­cle, so if you want to start an argu­ment now, or lay down a marker on the antic­i­pated out­come, do that here.

Update 10:13 am: It looks like the PPACA was upheld in its entirety, by a 5–4 vote (Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas dis­sent­ing), with some lim­i­ta­tions on Med­ic­aid fund­ing to states. Michael is work­ing on the full arti­cle that will replace this one. Stay tuned.

Related arti­cles

The State of Disunion

11
10 months ago
by dcpetterson in

The Big Deci­sion isn’t until tomor­row, but the Supreme Court has had a busy and pro­duc­tive ses­sion, with a plethora of cases that will have sig­nif­i­cant impact in the com­ing years.

One of the cases I pre­viewed, Knox v. Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tional Union, will affect the abil­ity of unions to involve them­selves in the demo­c­ra­tic process in Amer­ica. If cor­po­ra­tions are peo­ple, because peo­ple own cor­po­ra­tions and get div­i­dends from them, then surely unions are peo­ple, since the point of unions is to rep­re­sent the inter­ests of their mem­bers. That being the case, if cor­po­ra­tions can pro­vide unlim­ited fund­ing for cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions, under the assump­tion that they rep­re­sent the inter­ests of their share­hold­ers, it seems rea­son­able for unions to do so as well. Or does it? (more…)

Illegal ≠ Criminal

95
10 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Not crim­i­nals, says the Supreme Court

Yes­ter­day, the Supreme Court issued an opin­ion in Ari­zona v. United States, regard­ing the legal­ity of Arizona’s SB1070 immi­gra­tion law. The gist of the opin­ion is twofold. First, immi­gra­tion law is the juris­dic­tion of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, not the state gov­ern­ments. Sec­ond, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment does not con­sider being in the coun­try ille­gally to be crim­i­nal activ­ity. (more…)

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