It’s the biggest case of the year, as the Supreme Court will hear arguments about Hobby Lobby’s attempt to use a religious exemption to avoid including birth control in its health insurance plans. The ruling will directly affect Obamacare and could affect far more. The question asked by attorney Walter Dellinger in the Washington Post is whether the justices will be bold enough this time to actually discuss birth control devices and their impact on women. It’s not a trivial question. When the Court decided 49 years ago, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the Constitution protected married women’s right to birth control, the justices were too embarrassed to discuss various methods of contraception. Of course, there were no women on the court then.
Three ways the court could rule. Via the National Journal.
ICYMI: A wave of federal appeals court rulings, beginning with the 10th circuit here in Denver next month, will force the Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage. Via the New York Times.
Denver is used to being on various top 10 lists, most of them ready for the Chamber of Commerce to send out with a press release. Not this one. Richard Florida writes in the Atlantic that Denver is ranked eighth among big cities in its segregation of the poor.
Remember when Clinton and Kemp and some Democrats and some Republicans had similar ideas on how to approach the issue of poverty? That was all so 1990s. Via the National Journal.
Nate Silver is back. In his @fivethirtyeight blog, he says Republicans have a slight edge in taking control of the Senate in November, meaning a pickup of six seats. In Colorado, Silver rates Udall’s chance of re-election at 60 percent and calls Gardner a “decent candidate rather than a great one.”
For those Coloradans disappointed with the modest gun laws passed by the legislature last year: You might want to think about moving to Georgia, where basically all things gun are now permitted. Via New York Times.
As Russia takes hold of Crimea, this is what the West doesn’t either understand or care about — Russia’s historical interests in Ukraine and the risks Russia will take to maintain them. Via the New York Times.
