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" They really couldn&amp;#039;t resist. Did anyone really believe they could? There are at least four justices on the Supreme Court who want to roll the law regarding the Commerce Clause back to approximately midway through the Taft Administration. (They&amp;#039;d like to roll back the national economy and the political order back that far as well, but that would be... injudicious. A fella can only do so much.) I have a feeling that, for the rest of them, the chance to be part of a career-defining case was too great to be overcome. I think Anthony Kennedy looks in the mirror every morning and says to himself, &amp;quot;Suck it, John Marshall. I&amp;#039;m the baddest ass in a robe evah!&amp;quot;, and then is amazed when the guy at the coffee shop doesn&amp;#039;t offer him a free muffin or a virgin in tribute to his transparent awesomeness. He must spend half the morning trying to open doors with a wave of his hand, and then walking into them. You know that kid in the VW commercial, dressed up like Darth Vader, whose parents start jacking around with him by using the remote starter on their car? Anthony Kennedy, every day at work. Guaranteed. Now we also see the ultimate product of the centrism after which so many of our important people lust in such an unseemly way. Cuddly compromises \u2014 and the go-along/get -long culture that sets Tom Brokaw to weeping warm, salty, nostalgic tears \u2014 in the judicial nominating processes brought us most of the justices who are currently sharpening their knives for the ritual disembowelment of 20th-century social policy. (Antonin Scalia was confirmed 98-0 by the Senate. Not one senator looked at his body of work and said, &amp;quot;Damn, this guy is Robert Bork bolognese. Screw this.&amp;quot; Nope, they all voted for him and then went out after work and had a drink together. &amp;quot;Ah,&amp;quot; as Mr. Dooley once put it, &amp;quot;thim was the days!&amp;quot;) John Roberts and Samuel Alito sailed through because the Republicans were threatening to blow up the Senate unless they got their way, and the Democrats followed Joe Lieberman into the Bipartisan Land of Rainbows and Unicorns. And, of course, once a Democratic president was elected, in the spirit of the compromise the Democrats struck with them, the Republicans adhered strictly to reasonable limits on the use of the filibuster, and I became the Tsar of all the Russias. Here, by the way, is some of what Roberts said in his confirmation hearings about the application of the Commerce clause down through the years: &amp;quot;Starting with McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall gave a very broad and expansive reading to the powers of the Federal Government and explained generally that if the ends be legitimate, then any means chosen to achieve them are within the power of the Federal Government, and cases interpreting that, throughout the years, have come down. Certainly, by the time Lopez was decided, many of us had learned in law school that it was just sort of a formality to say that interstate commerce was affected and that cases weren&amp;#039;t going to be thrown out that way. Lopez certainly breathed new life into the Commerce Clause. &amp;quot;I think it remains to be seen, in subsequent decisions, how rigorous a showing, and in many cases, it is just a showing. It&amp;#039;s not a question of an abstract fact, does this affect interstate commerce or not, but has this body, the Congress, demonstrated the impact on interstate commerce that drove them to legislate? That&amp;#039;s a very important factor. It wasn&amp;#039;t present in Lopez at all. I think the members of Congress had heard the same thing I had heard in law school, that this is unimportant \u2014 and they hadn&amp;#039;t gone through the process of establishing a record in that case.&amp;quot; Well, I&amp;#039;m certainly reassured. (Lopez was the 1995 case in which the Court ruled, 5-4, that the powers of Congress under the Commerce clause did not extend to the regulation of handguns in the District of Columbia.) (UPDATE: Because I am an idiot, I clearly mistook U.S. v. Lopez, a gun-control case from Texas in which the Supreme Court limited the use of the Commerce Clause, with U.S. v. Heller, which was the D.C. handgun case. Thanks to Matt Kownacki, in the comments, for catching this.) So we now have judges ruling on a health-care law that was as purely a product of the process as they were. Once it was decided that there would be no health-care reform without keeping the profits of the insurance industry intact \u2014 and I have no intention of rehashing the political necessity/political principle argument here \u2014 then the mandate became essential to any program that was designed, and the mandate was always going to be the breach in the law that its opponents would exploit. People in general hate it just because they hate mandated anything. Now, a half-a-loaf health-care compromise may be the vehicle that brings down almost a century of settled law on what Congress may or may not do under the Commerce Clause. Well done, all. And Anthony Kennedy looks out of the tall windows of his office, makes a magic sign, and is amazed when the traffic light on the corner turns red at his command. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a11681/supreme-court-health-care-2012-6560338/>