Supreme Irony

If you parse President Obama's comments regarding the Supreme Court and the ACA, they're hardly as egregious as the RWS™ would have us believe. Still, it'd have been better to have stayed out of it, even if all he said, basically, was that he was confident (I'm not) they'd uphold the law.

But if his decision to address them more or less directly was imprudent, the reaction to it from the right is, well, re-fucking-diculous. At the time of the arguments in court, I commented (as have others -- nothing I say is unique, even if it's first, which it generally isn't) on the blatantly political tone of Scalia's questions. Abandoning any pretense of judicial impartiality, he sounded like a right-wing talking point in black robes. Suddenly the party that's decried "judicial activism" for decades, that's listened, of late, to a potential leader call for the arrest of judges with whom he disagrees and has remained silent -- suddenly that party thinks judicial activism is the greatest thing since sliced Reagan.

Democrats, of course, aren't above criticism; they've done pretty much a one-eigthy on the subject themselves. But at least "their" judges, as in Roe v. Wade, tried to fit a constitutional argument into their positions. Scalia, and Roberts, and Alito, seemed to be arguing the wisdom of the health care law, and its politics. Which is decidedly not their job. The Constitution doesn't say laws must be smart.

If he'd listened to liberals and included a public option in the law, Barack Obama wouldn't be in this position now. Nobody, other than every Republican just a few years ago, likes the idea of mandates (Newt still does). But it is what it is; and now an undisguisedly politicized Supreme Court will decide, likely by a 5-4 vote as usual, whose preferred meanings get applied to the words of the Constitution. Humpties vs Dumpties.

In the meantime, the party that until only very recently has viewed the federal judiciary as literal criminals is rising to its defense, now that they think it might activate in their general direction.

What a politically fucked-up country we've become. And though there's blame to go around, I'd say it falls mostly on teabaggRs, RWS™, and Republicans' concept of governance, ever since Newt Gingrich became Speaker.

By a lot more than 5-4.