Discussion:

Excuse me my good friend, but it’s “harebrained,” not “hairbrained.” Therefore your entire post will be erased. Signed, the Supreme Court.

And the GOP Cons and Baggerdumb’ respond: We don’t need no stinkin’ historic proof! Facts and truth are lie-burral’ conspiracies! IN_PEEEEEEACH!!!

Good article. Something some of us have been saying when the Republican nitwits in the split ruling came out.

That “we never envisioned” is not a very strong argument, since virtually all laws have unintended consequences. TPM is continuing to try very hard to cover for the Obama administration’s and Congressional Democratic leadership’s incompetence in editing and proofreading.

Historic proof? What, current proof wasn’t enough?

As Joe says, “This is a big fuckin’ deal!”

This evidence is probative but not dispositive of the statutory interpretation issue. It is inaccurate to suggest that it “proves” anything either way.

Why can’t they just ask the people who voted for the damn law? Unlike the writers of the Constitution, these people can be interviewed, or just fill in a questionnaire! Of course that would require about a $50 investment rather than millions of $$$ in ridiculous law suits.

Sadly, as has been mentioned by others, Congressional Intent doesn’t necessarily determine Judicial interpretation.

Also, as a minor quibble, ‘historic’ isn’t really the right word here. Yes, the tertiary definition in Webster is ‘known or established in the past’, but the far more common (and thus, primary AND secondary) usage puts the word as indicative of a well-known, oft-cited event of pivotal importance.

The better word is ‘historical’, ‘of, relating to, or having the character of history’.

This would not even be an issue at all if Republicans didn’t despise this President and hate and fear the ACA. If there was any sense of making this early, yet flawed system work for the country, this silly issue would never would have come up.

Everyone would be working instead to tweak and improve things for the common good. The sick fu**s who want to demolish anything Obama are like scorched earthers, trying to use their implanted activists judges as their own private Napalm.

BOOM! Red State just tore you a new one. Every leg of you argument has been torn apart and your weakness as a writer has been revealed to everyone.

BOOM! Your statement is full of holes a,d resembles one in particular.

PS You can quote me!
PPS Provide a link if you are discussing new asshole tears (I actually know 2 people who had this happen and it is no joke)
PPPS Oh, never mind

As I understand it the DC Circuit’s decision may come before the whole panel still, before it reaches the Supreme Court.

What happens if one of the original majority changes position in the final rendering.

One of the underlying procedural realities, it seems likely to this non-lawyer, is that at each stage the arguments become more refined and, hopefully (I would invite quibblers to not trip over the use of that last word which, while not grammatically pure, is, nevertheless, very much used in line with common usage at present, in the living, and therefore constantly evolving language we use in our attempts to communicate) more sophisticated arguments which might well sway perspectives of the judges. And yes, I know that’s potentially a two-edged sword, but it seems to me that the weight is significantly on the “Affirm ObamaCare” side of the ledger (mixed metaphor thrown in as a bone to the quibblers).

As the afore-implicated, or at least self-inferred quibbler, I say to you, sir… eh, I don’t see anything wrong with the use of ‘hopefully’ there. I mean ‘the arguments become […] hopefully more sophisticated arguments’ is a perfectly valid construction.

If I’d quibble with anything, it’s the mixed metaphor of a two-edged sword being weighted to one side of the ledge or the other. Though of course, it’s certainly possible that the sword has a book for its quillons. Perhaps the sword is that of Conan the Librarian, eh?

(As an addendum - the far more important matter is: you’re a presumably unpaid commenter, not a professional journalist with a professional editor.)

In the future when Republicans are all gone and long forgotten, boy will all the people that lived to see the day be sorry.

-Tuffy the (long dead) Clown

What does the fact that he is already on Medicare or with employer-paid healthcare, have to do with his comment?

The problem is the ACA is a poorly written law and I can assure you that if this challenge ends up going nowhere, those who oppose the ACA already have additional challenges lined up.

This is what happens when you have to pass a law in order to see what is in it.

It is hard to guess what the court will end up doing. Obviously Congress intended on everyone who was eligible to receive subsidies regardless which exchange they signed up through. However, Congress also never intended the penalty to be a “tax” either, but the Court created it as such in order to save the law the first go around.

The article states the facts but leaves out one fact. All of the CBO reports may not have considered the option where some states did not create their own exchanges, but this actually happened because the supreme court decided that a state could not be mandated to create an exchange even though the Feds were paying 100 percent of the cost because after 5 years the state would have to begin to carry some of that cost to cover its poor people. Even if the feds still covered 95% of the cost. Suddenly a large number of states decided not to expand Medicaid for their poor.

Damn, I always lose on technicalities!