Their analysis of Citizens United hasn't been the most useful, except for their fundraising purposes. They're well-meaning, I know, but here comes another email appeal any moment now.

I agree. There's no good legal case for overturning the health care bill, but that doesn't mean the corporatist activist Roberts court won't do it.

People who talk about "judicial activism" need to realize that it's become an empty term. Everyone throws it around when they dislike a court ruling. Let's recall that some of the most promising steps in progressive history have been made by judicial activism.

And, once again: OF COURSE they are going to challenge this. Just let them do it and let the Court set a precedent early.

Hopefully, the little showdown at SotU won't come back to haunt Obama...

Um... You know the Supreme Court does have a history of knocking down unconstitutional bills (especially huge ones like this).

In 1935 & 1936 the court gutted FDR's New Deal by invalidating the Railroad Retirement Act of 1934, gutting the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and then ruling the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 unconstitutional.

Just at the face value, it would be extraordinary for The Court to find it constitutional for the government to mandate that citizens must contract with private companies for anything (including insurance), and its going to be hard to argue that your using interstate commerce powers to regulate a service that can't be sold cross state lines...

So all hope is not yet lost... remember we have three equal branches of government.

@6 do you remember what happened after that? FDR threatened to add more justices to the Supreme court (which is totally legal) and the Court backed off, and signed off on all subsequent New Deal legislation.

Equal?

Not according to the Citizens who are Corporations that the activist "Justices" just declared foreign wealth funds in China and Dubai now control our elections ...

@7 ftw - let's DO IT! I say add 10 more LIBERAL justices and TAKE BACK AMERICA!

He doesn't need to add more justices. There is nothing in the constitution that says he can't "shorten" the bench. Retire Alito, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy and Thomas.

@10 hmmm. Maybe we could send them to Mars with Rush.

@7

Threatened?... Surely you mean tried and failed don’t you?

Roosevelt pitched his plan to pack the court to Congress and the public, upon which respected editorialist William Allen White concluded that "Because he is adroit and not forthright, he arouses irritating suspicions, probably needlessly, about his ultimate intentions as the leader of his party and the head of government.” The public and the Congress shared that opinion and when the Democrat controlled Senate opened debate on the proposal as part of a judicial reform measure, it voted 70-20 to send the judicial reform measure back to committee, where all the court packing language was stripped from it. The Senate passed the revised legislation which Roosevelt reluctantly signed into law.

While Owen J. Roberts, the youngest jurist, did eventually begin to vote Roosevelt's way in close decisions, giving FDR 5-4 wins rather than losses by the same margin it was really the older members retiring that enabled the president to appoint a "Roosevelt court.”

Ultimately FDR’s court-packing scheme robbed him of much of the political capital he had won in two landslide elections, requiring him to proceed less radically in his “war on poverty”.

I can only assume that Obama will try to pack the court next…

@7&10

While the Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, the President certainly does NOT get to determine its size. Article III authorizes the CONGRESS to fix the number of justices.

Basic civics guys...

@6:
" its going to be hard to argue that your using interstate commerce powers to regulate a service that can't be sold cross state lines..."

Um, that's the exact clause that was used to attack medical marijuana in CA even though it couldn't be sold cross state lines. You need to go read some SCotUS case history. Start with Filburn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._…
which said that a farmer couldn't grow wheat in violation of quota for his own consumption because it affected interstate prices that they were trying to regulate, because that farmer wasn't buying wheat elsewhere.

then read Gonzalez vs Raich:
http://www.chrisconrad.com/expert.witnes…
which says that since the federal government is trying to regulate interstate marijuana commerce (by banning it) then anything that causes fluctuations in price of marijuana in other states is subject to federal oversight. Using your own means you don't buy it elsewhere, which affects the price of that good elsewhere.

So I'm pretty sure the interstate commerce clause is gonna stand here, too.

@14

Your probably right...

@14

But are you?... all the examples you cited reference products that could be "transported" across state lines, so that availability & demand (and price) in one state effects availability & demand (and price) in another. Health insurance can not be sold (transported) across state lines, so the price of insurance in one state does not effect the price in another... Changes to the supply or demand for insurance (and therefore the price of insurance) in Hawaii (with the lowest health insurance cost) does not effect the cost of insurance in Massachustes (with one of the highest...)

My Necklaces to Protect against Socialism can be safely transported across state lines.

They also protect against Tigers.

@YGBKA I clearly meant Roosevelt in his capacity as head of the party that was in charge of congress at the time. And its frankly irrelevant that FDR didn't succeed in packing the court since they practically shit themselves and reversed very recent precedent in doing so.