Thursday, June 28, 2012

SCOTUSblog on ObamaCare: The way to get news

At about a minute before 7:00 am, Pacific Time, I tuned into SCOTUSblog, which has long been my source for understanding in plain English what the highest court delivers in legalese.  The wonderful folks there did it, again.  Like with this plain speak at 7:32:
Amy Howe: In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding. 
Reports were that at one point, the live "readership" at SCOTUSblog exceeded half a million!  Who cares for CNN or MSNBC or Faux Noose or CBS or ABC or .... 

1 comment:

Ramesh said...

Why this fascination for obscure abbreviations like SCOTUS, POTUS .......

Great blog, but does it have to murder the beautiful language ???