It seems that all the mind-readers on the Supreme Court beat are sure the Affordable Care Act is just a few months away from being deemed "unconstitutional." Who am I, pulling my gray 8-to-5s while they get to hang out and "watch history be made," to disagree? But maybe, just maybe, they'll all be wrong. At the start, there were four votes for the Act, plus maybe Scalia, plus maybe Roberts, plus maybe Kennedy. Now we're pretty sure it's four votes for it, plus maybe Roberts, plus maybe Kennedy. So Scalia is lost. So what? It was a mistake to suppose that on a contentious issue his legal opinion might diverge from the talking points of the Republican party. "What next, will the government soon tell us we must buy broccoli?" Puh-leeze. If you don't pay for broccoli, you don't get any. Medical care, which everyone will need and receive at some unknown time unless they are perfectly healthy and then suddenly one day DOA, is different. All this "freedom" that the yahoos squeal about is, essentially, the freedom to be a freeloader.
Which reminds me of one of the many ugly moments in the many Republican presidential debates. Wolf Blitzer asked one of the nutballs about a hypothetical healthy 30-year-old, by rational choice uninsured, who suddenly suffers a medical calamity that requires emergency surgery. Should he just receive no treatment and be left to die? "Yeah!" shouted several members of the audience in unison.
So you can't say these freedom-lovers are all in favor of freeloading. Some prefer corpses.
Anyway, it's down to old balls-and-strikes Roberts, plus Kennedy. At the Supreme Court, that's one more wispy hook than usual on which free-falling sanity might perchance snag.
