Meagan McArdle has a new blog and I thought this entry, which pushes back with great effectiveness on liberals who want to compare the high court's 'attack' on Obamacare to the court's stare down with FDR over his grand socialist schemes of the 30's, a treat to read [that's an off-putting phrase, treat to read - should be edited out but I suspect the writer lacks the skill or sense to do so].
It's interesting, should the seeming inevitable happen and Obamacare is struck down in part or whole this morning, it's interesting how liberal surprise now ripening into contempt at this turn of events reveals the way ideological extremes narrow the mind and cloud the natural reasonableness of common sense - remember Pelosi's screech of scorn at a reporter who dared ask a few years ago if the left feared a SCOTUS challenge to the royal writ of Obama - "are you serious?" she condescendingly declaimed, and then repeated the query just to drive home what a grave impertinence she thought the question to be - that's the great lesson here.
Of course court may uphold the mandate - but the point still stands regardless - liberals simply assumed there were no legitimate constitutional claims to be made against the ACA - the arrogance was telling.
addendum: the mandate is upheld - but as a tax. The right leaning constitutional scholars I read seem very surprised by this - not surprised that the law was upheld, but rather upheld on these terms. I assume Roberts, who joined the left for the decisive vote on this, wrote the opinion - should make for some interesting exegesis over the next few days. To my astoundingly untrained eye it seems this something of a win for opponents since the argument was that Obama tried to sugar coat the mandate by pretending it wasn't a tax, now they would have no choice but to call it what it is - also, since the ACA is in general unpopular, I'm guessing the Obama administration saw an advantage in running against an extremist high court rather than for a law most seem to dislike.
