Shitheads are deliberately trying to make things exhausting for you as a means of achieving power.

Time in any given territory passes at a speed proportionate to the mass of the head of state; demonstration via diaries dating from the Taft administration is left as an exercise for the reader.

Ten years ago today, somebody threw a shoe at W.

If your time isn't dilated by at least four centimeters, they send you home and tell you to wait.

Some times die late. Some times die early. Some times are never born at all.

I am visiting my very sick uncle, whom some of you know from academic circles. (Others of you know the other very sick uncle from academic circles. This is the sociologist, not the biologist.) It's got both dizzying heights of love and light and also the sadness and hardness that accompanies the realities of the decline of health and life. I'm here for three days. Time is certainly moving very slowly here at the hospital.

Thinking of you and your family, Heebie.

Sorry to hear about your uncle. It's great that you can be there with him.

It's not as bad as it sounds. I'm glad to be here.

I mean, his health is as bad as it sounds. But being here is not excruciating.

All the various beeps got to me.

And six years ago today...I still get weepy about it.

I just heard on the radio that someone made a bomb that on the new Sandy Hook school today. God damn!

that s/b threat

12 I'd have the NSA running that one down.

12: For real. So awful.

||
Someone explain this Texas circuit ACA ruling to me?
|>

District. Whatever.

Fucking fuckhead prompted by other fucking fuckheads to display his fucking fuckheadedness does so in a spectacularly fucking fuckheaded way.

As is the custom at this time.

16: I've decided not to worry too much, since I assume the vote count of the Supreme Court hasn't changed. (That is, Roberts was the swing vote in the Obamacare case; Kennedy and Scalia voted against. So even with the addition of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, Obamacare still has the votes to survive.) But the case goes next to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is...not a friendly place (despite being located in New Orleans). So it could get worse before it gets better.

I predict the outgoing lame-duck Republican Congress will seize the moment and pass universal healthcare, but only for heterosexual Christian families making $250,000 or more.

20 I just read the opinion. I can imagine Roberts feeling trapped by his prior opinion into having to go along with this thing. He essentially held that it was the tax that saves the statute, so what's he going to say when the tax gets repealed? Where the opinion was weakest, I think, was in the final short substantive section on severability. Did Congress intend in 2017 when it repealed the tax while pointedly leaving everything else in place -- which was the only basis under congressional rules for passing the tax repeal -- that the rest of the statute should remain in place? Clearly yes. Judge O'Conner reads the question more narrowly: did the 2017 Congress intend to make the individual mandate severable from the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions? They didn't say anything, he says, that would lead the that conclusion. Is the entire ACA therefore unconstitutional because McConnell is a lying shit? Well, the latter part of that question is clearly true, and even the Chief Justice knows it.

Standing of individual plaintiffs is also pretty weak. They claim to be injured by the individual mandate although they no longer face a penalty for failing to comply with it. I can imagine Roberts finding a way to say that the removal of an adverse consequence for a thing doesn't give you standing to challenge the thing. Judge O'Connor glosses over prudential standing with a footnote -- wasn't raised, and unlike regular art III standing it's waivable -- so maybe that's how Roberts saves the ACA. Fucking with standing always can find some votes on the right side of the SC.

It does seem to me, though, that this is a dagger to the heart of centrist Dem opposition to M4A.

https://balkin.blogspot.com/2018/12/there-is-no-mandate-oh-and-by-way-judge.html

Lederman doesn't think much of the opinion.

Had I persisted with the law, I would have so much more money, but also so much more agony akin to reading 22.

31: I can imagine Roberts feeling trapped by his prior opinion into having to go along with this thing.

Yep. The whole suit was pretty much designed to put him in that bind (so much of Sebelius was steaming hot garbage). Wingnut Calvinball, a multiple act ongoing play.