Jay Cost argues that Roberts was playing a long game in the tradition of John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, leveraging a decision in favor of the current administration in order to advance the long-term interests of the opposition party.  That would be more strikingly clever if John Marshall's political party, the embattled Federalists, hadn't been a dead letter inside of fifteen years after Marbury v. Madison.  Their shattered remnants eventually were absorbed by one of the Monroe-era factions of the other, dominant party, and most of their policy goals were left drying on the rack for decades afterwards.

In the long run, we are all dead.

(Sean Trende, whom Jay Cost used to work with, gets deeper into the history of Marbury v. Madison here. 

We had a storm blow through last night about quarter to three.  Glad I woke up, because I had my windows open upstairs, and the floors would have gotten (more) soaked.  Not only could I walk in the dark by the lightning flashes, I suspect I could have read by it, the strikes were so rapid and sustained.  Limbs were down all over town, but the cleanup crews were going gangbusters, and no roads were blocked on my way in to work.

It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

Boy, Chief Justice Roberts really doesn't care about poor people, you know?  If they want to vote to burn down their own houses, he'll let 'em.  It's refreshingly anti-paternalistic, but also... kind of castle-in-the-sky.  Congress has become increasingly incapable of hacking through the tangled thickets of rank, over-grown legal code.  People had kind of hoped that the Court would help matters by cutting the Gordian Knot.  But the Chief Justice doesn't fancy himself an Alexander the Great, to take sword in hand and destroy the puzzle for us.

Anybody have a set of tweezers?

So, like everyone else with a political interest, I'm waiting on the expected Obamacare rulings today.  It's due sometime after 10 AM Eastern.  SCOTUSblog usually runs a live-chat during these sessions, I was hanging out there last Thursday and Monday for the last two of these sessions.

So, I went to the doctor the other day.  Relatively good news - nothing seriously wrong with me, I just have to change my diet.  No more eating like a college kid.  Sigh.  I've gotten fat again.

Update: Well, crap .   Looks like it was mostly sustained, 5-4.  They called BS on the "it's not a tax" thing.  But that was always happy horses**t, and everybody knew it. Only thing we got out of it was a talking point for the elections.  Between that and getting rid of the ACA monster, I would have preferred they killed the monster instead.  Politicians come and go, but the evil they do lives on after them.  This probably means that the ratchet has snapped into place, we'll never be rid of this remora.