Amy Davidson explains in the New Yorker why the Hobby Lobby decision is such a bad ruling and how it is, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained, a minefield. The question is: What other companies can avoid what other laws based on what other religious beliefs? As Jeffrey Toobin writes in an accompanying piece, when they tell you the ruling is narrowly cast, don’t believe them. It’s the first part of a two-step process.
A look at the parties and the issues in the Hobby Lobby case, via the New York Times.
The takeaway from the court’s twin 5-4 rulings: How Chief Justice John Roberts has failed to deliver the promises he made when he was facing nomination. Via Salon.
Emma Green argues in the Atlantic that despite the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court is not waging a war on women.
Garrett Epps writes that in the Hobby Lobby case and the Harris versus Burwell public-unions case, the Supreme Court feels the pain of everybody except American workers.
This is not a Saturday Night live sketch: House Speaker John Boehner told President Obama that he would not bring the Senate immigration reform bill passed a year ago to the floor for a vote. The drawn-out pretend negotiations are dead. Obama announced in the Rose Garden that he plans to take executive-branch action to begin making changes. Boehner to the press after the announcement: “It is sad and disappointing that, faced with this challenge, President Obama won’t work with us, but is instead intent on going it alone.” Via the New York Times.
As the Times reporters put it:
“Mr. Obama’s Rose Garden appearance was a defiant end to a politically fraught effort, filled with near-death turns and promises of resuscitation, to reach a bipartisan deal in Congress to overhaul immigration laws. Polls show such a measure enjoys support from a lopsided majority of Americans. But while the Senate passed a bill a year ago with some Republican support, there was no urgency to follow suit in the House, where conservatives dominate and the Tea Party is ascendant. In announcing the action, Mr. Obama signaled that he is increasingly willing to act unilaterally to carry out elements of his agenda that are stalled on Capitol Hill, even as he faces Republican criticism for his use of executive power.”
