Seriously, Mysterious Stranger Whose First Eleven Posts Just Happen To Be In Politics, just stay down.

I gave you three cases to read.

Lochner v. NY
Gonzalez v. Raich - bonus points, extreme conservative hypocrisy!
United States v. Lopez

Since I know you'll never read them, I'll spoil things for you: there are really good arguments for IM, arguments advanced by the same justices who will vote with the majority in striking it down!

Stop confusing people who think that no Supreme Court decisions have been handed down since 1803.

Scalia voting to strike down the mandate after his opinion in Raich will be amazing. Can't wait to see how he hand-waves that one away.

The Supreme Court issued a ruling today on a different case.

The ACA case isn't getting a decision today. But, I don't see a schedule anywhere saying on what day the Court will announce its ruling.

I haven't read Lochner, but I've actually read the other two. Raich is great, and is exactly the sort of judicial activism that the right usually loves to shout about. Scalia's opinion where he just asserts that growing medical marijuana for sale in state is enough to qualify as "interstate commerce" is laughable on its face, and is completely at odds with basically everything else he's ever written on the subject. He has openly mocked other justices for arguing the exact same interpretation of "interstate commerce" in other opinions on other subjects. That opinion is probably the clearest indication that Scalia is basically full of **** with his judicial restraint and strict constructionism crap.

And you can easily find similar hypocritical opinions by almost all the other justices. Anthony Kennedy has made of career of it, Stephen Breyer sees distinctions concerning government funding for religious displays that literally no one understands, etc.

So, yeah. SCOTUS is a political body, and it's time we all accept and learn to deal with that.

Offhand, I don't see an obvious connection to Raich. There should be no question as to whether or not Obamacare is interstate commerce, which was the crux of the matter in Scalia's Raich opinion. What am I missing?

He'll hide behind the meaningless distinction between forcing you to buy something and taxing you to buy it for you. It's intellectually dishonest, and super-lame, but it's all he's got.

Riverman's original thread on Obamacare and SCOTUS contains some pretty good discussion (relatively anyway) of the legal arguments.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41...court-1183827/

Several people have posted links to some legal eagle's opinion on Raich which (they say) gives Scalia carte blanche to completely ignore Raich wrt interstate commerce. I would have to look but a board search on "Raich" would probably yield a link to that article.

ETA: NM found it

http://www.volokh.com/2012/03/09/und...nion-in-raich/

Lots of anti-UHC people clinging to this from what I've seen.

It is indeed intellectually dishonest, but no moreso than the administration's argument that it isn't a tax when trying to sell the bill and then them turning around and saying that it is (functionally) when trying to save it from the SCOTUS righties.

And I say that as a supporter of UHC (though not necessarily this law).

Thanks for this link. This was substantially over my non-lawyer head, though. But I'll just assume that you're right and that I'm just missing something.

Not if five justices disagree with you.

80% to be struck down on Intrade.

i think ginsburg appeared publicly and like disgustedly said the court was 'sharply divided' on ACA, gg individual mandate