Doug Mataconis cautions against believing either party's spin:
[T]he Supreme Court will be making audio and transcripts of each days hearings available approximately two hours after each hearing is concluded, so we’re likely to get near instant analysis of each days hearings along with much speculation about what the tenor the proceedings might mean for the outcome of the case. One of my first pieces of advice would be to not be quick to judge how a case will turn out by what questions are asked during the hearings, or which side the “experts” on cable television proclaim the winner or loser of a particular days arguments. For one thing, past Supreme Court oral arguments have made it clear that you can’t always tell how a case is going to turn out based on the questions that get asked during a hearing or a perception as to which side seems to be “doing better.”
Joey Fishkin makes a distinction between the popular debate and the legal debate:
Outside the courts, one huge argument is if the government can make you buy insurance, can it make you eat broccoli? This argument seems to have a lot of rhetorical bite. But the most straightforward response is the question in the title of this post. Can your state government make you eat broccoli? If the answer is no, as it surely is, then there must be some reason, other than limits on federal power, why that is so. The most likely reason is that states force-feeding us vegetables would violate fundamental liberty interests protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. In other words, the “broccoli argument” does its rhetorical work by turning a question of Congressional power into a question of individual liberty. And that, in microcosm, is what the entire public debate about the health care law is about, and why that public debate differs so much from the debate at the Court.
The Dish 