Five Angry Men

Well, today your hearty blogger is moderately depressed as he hears reports of the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court.  Previous to this week supporters were pretty optimistic, as already some Republican-appointed lower court judges had ruled in favor of the ACA.  And then of course there's the actual legal issue, which was never raised in any way when this was done at the state level in Massachusetts and which was never mentioned as an issue when Republicans were inventing the idea of the Individual Mandate in the 1990s. 

But listening to the questioning of the judges, along with the startlingly incompetent Obama-appointed lawyer arguing for the government, commentators I'm reading are saying that it doesn't look good for the Individual Mandate to pass.

It seems hope is pinned on John Roberts, who is very conservative but who also reportedly values solid decisions with splits other than 5-4.  Certainly one could worry about the perceived legitimacy of the court as a neutral arbiter after Bush vs. Gore.  This is the highest profile case since then, and if it's decided by everyone voting strictly along party lines, people are going to call into question whether the court is really any different from the Congress- just reverse-engineering their legal opinions with partisan-colored glasses.

I'm not optimistic.  Not because of the legal merits of the case- I think it's a slam dunk constitutionally- but because I fear that SCOTUS has become nothing more than a repository for partisan hacks.  Depressing.

UPDATE: Put well here by Jon Chait.