I was going to title this post “Oh, Dear,” but I already used that title today. So I had to settle for ASSoL.  Which is better, actually.

I scooped everyone! ____ ADDENDUM: I would note that Ruth Bader Ginsburg will turn 83 on March 15 and that, while clearly still mentally very sharp, does not appear to be in good physical health.  There’s been a lot of speculation that if the Dem nominee, very likely now Hillary Clinton, wins the general election, and […]

Dan Crawford emailed me shortly after the news broke about Justice Scalia’s death, asking whether I have any random thoughts about it.  Here’s what I wrote back: I posted a comment to Bill’s post on the announcement, saying that I think everyone should take a deep breath before saying much of anything.  It’s absolutely huge, […]

The chief justice said almost nothing. — Supreme Court Appears Sharply Split in Case on Health Law, Adam Liptak, New York Times Okay, so how well did my predictions from three days ago hold up at the argument yesterday* in King v. Burwell? Well, I got the outcome right, but not the particulars of how it will […]

I have known for the last five weeks—since January 27, to be exact—that the Supreme Court will uphold the Administration’s interpretation of the federal-subsidies provisions in the ACA when it issues its decision in the infamous King v. Burwell case whose argument date at the Court is Wednesday.  I also have known since then that […]

The big news story of the last 24 hours, of course, is the Senate Intelligence Committee’s sickening torture report.  But you might also have heard about Wyo. Rep. Cynthia Lummis’s dramatic statement yesterday as a member of Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s Jonathan Gruber/Marilyn Tavenner Obamacare hearing. The purpose of the hearing […]

This speaks for itself.  I’m sure that Kennedy, Roberts and Alito call this ‘freedom’.  I won’t guess at what Sotomayor and Kagan call it.  But what Breyer calls it, or should, is conflict of interest.  Back when Breyer was lead counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee, he helped draft the Federal Sentencing Guidelines—a really appalling […]

I haven’t read the opinions, concurrence, or dissents in either Hobby Lobby or Harris v. Quinn, so these comments are based on news summaries and quick commentaries by others.  But the biggest surprise in Hobby Lobby, I think, is the express approval, in the opinion and in Kennedy’s concurrence, of HHS’s on-the-fly setup devised in […]

(Correction appended.) (Clarence Thomas in his separate concurrence]* adds that in his view the First Amendment religion clauses don’t apply to the states in the first place. And it only probably bars the establishment of a national church—leaving open the question for another day. — Let Us Pray:The Supreme Court gives its blessing for prayer […]

At Crooks and Liars, Parker Higgins focuses on comments made by Chief Justice John Roberts during the oral argument in the cellphone privacy cases, in which the Chief Justice expressed skepticism that many law-abiding people carry more than one cellphone.  Higgins suggests that if the Justices “fail to recognize where their assumptions about society and technology […]