And now, the moment we've all been waiting for – and, no, I'm not talking about the midnight raid on New York's Zuccotti Park.
After a year of legal Chutes and Ladders, the U.S. Supreme Court this week finally agreed to hear arguments next year in the melting pot of cases challenging the constitutionally of the Obama administration's landmark legislation.
Of course, it'd be more honest to simply say the court will hear arguments and (possibly) rule specifically on the law's individual mandate, the lynchpin of the gargantuan law. It's assumed by almost everyone at this point (whether rightly or wrongly) that this would naturally void the entire legislation, but I'm not so sure about that. Despite the law's lack of a severability clause, no one's even entertained the notion that the court might throw out the mandate and leave the rest intact – a doomsday worst case-scenario that would make life a hell of a lot worse than it is today. Something to consider since I'm pretty sure earlier courts have backed cases in which such clauses have been presumed.
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But it's the almost-unprecedented five-and-a-half hour window the court set aside for arguments that, aside from a frightening ex-wife flashback, made me wonder what the court was up to. There's the naïve, "Oh, they just wanna get it right" reaction, but my cynical side can't help but wonder if they've already decided and just want it to look otherwise. What can I say? I still think the NBA owners knew they weren't going to have a season at all this year.
I'm not one for idle prognostications – although I'm somehow cleaning house in fantasy football this year despite drafting Peyton Manning and Matt Cassell – I will go out on a limb and say there's no way they'll throw this thing out. They'll uphold on a 5-4 decision, with Scalia casting the deciding vote and this will transition to one of the biggest issues of the general election cycle.
But either way, I'm not sure it will matter much in the long run. A new Gallup Poll just found out 47 percent of Americans now favor repeal of PPACA with an historic low of 42 percent supporting the law. The wheels of justice might grind slowly, but the gears of public opinion are spinning just fine.
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