Month: April 2012

Don't expect America to follow Canada's lead:

Dollar bill supporters — especially those who sell the paper to the government on which the bills are printed — will look at a successful penny elimination as a precursor to the elimination of the $1 greenback. Keeping the penny, therefore, will be part of their strategy to convince Americans that there should be no change in their change.

Eric Wen sticks up for the much-reviled coin:

A 2001 economic analysis by Penn State’s Raymond Lombra found that a post-penny economy—in which we round to the nearest nickel—would probably hurt the poor disproportionately. In theory, rounding would balance itself out over time—with some transactions rounding up and others rounding down. Lombra’s simulations, however, which were based on the price book of a major retail chain, found that between 60 and 93 percent of transactions would round up, costing consumers nearly $600 million a year. Because the poor tend to use cash more often, they would shoulder most of that burden. 

"The Jesus that Sullivan has created — “calm, loving, accepting,” and, of course, “homeless” — is what happens when “Occupy Wall Street” becomes mistaken for Catholicism. Worse, Sullivan’s “Etch A Sketch” Jesus accounts for his remarkable conclusion that “the cross was not the point” of Jesus’ life. Sullivan’s article reads like a public confession. It is not the Catholic Church that is obsessing about people’s sex lives, as he alleges. No, it is people like him. He wants a Catholic Church without Catholicism. And I want cotton candy without cavities," – Bill Donohue's statement about my essay, "Christianity In Crisis."

As for his argument that I dismiss the cross as central to Christianity, here's what I actually wrote:

[Jefferson] believed that stripped of the doctrines of the Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles, the message of Jesus was the deepest miracle. And that it was radically simple. It was explained in stories, parables, and metaphors—not theological doctrines of immense complexity. It was proven by his willingness to submit himself to an unjustified execution. The cross itself was not the point; nor was the intense physical suffering he endured. The point was how he conducted himself through it all—calm, loving, accepting, radically surrendering even the basic control of his own body and telling us that this was what it means to truly transcend our world and be with God.

I'm beginning to wonder whether president Obama's statement earlier today reflected some inside information that the case has already been decided by vote against the mandate, and that the campaign against the Supreme Court and the intransigent House and the filibustered Senate is about to begin in a major roll of the dice for Obama. And yes, many were surprised by last week's hearing. Before oral arguments, Ilya Somin, who's against Obamacare's individual mandate, bet that the Supreme Court would rule against him. But he wasn't slack-jawed by the three days of scrutiny, unlike some liberal legal analysts:

[T]here is a big difference between predicting that the mandate would be upheld and claiming that the anti-mandate lawsuits were silly and frivolous – which is what many liberal commentators were saying, as late as the eve of the oral argument. A suit with a 35% chance of winning may deserve to lose. But it’s not frivolous.

Even if such a viewpoint was defensible when the lawsuits began two years ago, it clearly was not after four lower court decisions had struck down the mandate and the overwhelming majority of conservative and libertarian constitutional law scholars came out against it. If nothing else, liberal commentators could have learned from the lower court decisions upholding the mandate. Without exception, these rulings included long and detailed discussions of the relevant precedent. And most admitted that the case presented novel issues that had not been squarely addressed in previous Supreme Court decisions. These were not the kinds of opinions you typically see in cases that are easily resolved through straightforward application of established precedent.

A meme is arisen:

More here.

Oaksterdam was raided this morning by the usual battery:

Agents with the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service's criminal investigation division are searching the school at the corner of 16th Street and Broadway, in the heart of the city's widely recognized downtown cannabis-oriented district, authorities said. Federal investigators were seen entering the school with power saws and a sledgehammer. The school has been cordoned off by yellow caution tape.

Yes, that does strike me as the last straw. Photos of the scene here. Several state legislators are fighting back rhetorically.

Damien Hirst knows how to work a gift shop.

It's on now:

"I think [the individual mandate] is important and I think the American people understand, and I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to insure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care," said president Obama …  Overturning the law would be "an unprecedented, extraordinary step" since it was passed by a majority of members in the House and Senate," he said. "I just remind conservative commentators that for years we’ve heard that the biggest problem is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That a group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step."

Too aggressive? A harbinger of a campaign theme if the Court strikes the law down? Or a necessary self-defense? After Citizens United, I'd lean to the latter.

A victory like that in the Senate actually means a defeat, thanks to the GOP's ferocious constant abuse of the filibuster. Fallows reflects on what has become of our democracy.

From this morning's Today Show:

"I appreciate NBC’s boldness in having me on," said Palin, adding, "Doesn’t it kind of reflect that diversity of opinion that I hear that you all espouse?…"

"Or desperation," said Meredith Vieria …

Andrew Koppelman pushes back against the idea that the Court could get away cleanly after overturning the mandate:

A decision invalidating the mandate would paint Obama into a corner, forcing him to make the Supreme Court a big issue in his reelection campaign. Bush v. Gore didn’t make the Court look good, but it didn’t lead to millions of dollars worth of television ads trying to persuade the American public that the Republicans on the Court are a bunch of despicable political hacks. Look what millions of dollars in negative ads have done to Mitt Romney’s poll numbers. Does the Court really want to subject itself to that?

Jon Walker thinks this sort of consideration would render a single-payer system safe – no matter how much the justices hate it as policy:

The Supreme Court has very little inherent democratic legitimacy. It’s legitimacy comes from it acting sparely and mostly with restraint. If the Court really did try something so blatant, it would run the real risk of being told by the President in Jacksonian style, "Roberts has made his decision, now let him enforce it." A true raw power showdown would not end well for the Court, and they should know that.