So no healthcare decision today. According to SCOTUS Blog, they weren’t too far from having 100,000 people on their live coverage site today. They have planned for Thursday and realize that they could reach 250,000.
While we wait, I thought there were parts of this NYT article that gave a preview of how little thought many in Congress and the White House gave to the idea of any kind of legal challenge:
In passing the law two years ago, Democrats entertained little doubt that it was constitutional. The White House held a conference call to tell reporters that any legal challenge, as one Obama aide put it, “will eventually fail and shouldn’t be given too much credence in the press.â€
Congress held no hearing on the plan’s constitutionality until nearly a year after it was signed into law. Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, scoffed when a reporter asked what part of the Constitution empowered Congress to force Americans to buy health insurance. “Are you serious?†she asked with disdain. “Are you serious?â€
…
The first lawsuits were filed the day Mr. Obama signed the plan in March 2010. By the end of January 2011, judges in Florida and Virginia had ruled it unconstitutional. Only then did the Senate and the House hold hearings on its constitutionality, and the administration grew worried.
Yes, Pelosi, we are serious. We’re going to take Obamacare and shove it so far that your proctologist will be hard pressed to extricate it. Then he can read the bill to find out what’s in it (the same as what’s on it from that anatomical trip).
Since there is no severability clause in it, the SCOTUS had better nix the whole thing or they will lose all credibility.