Threat, no threat
Ezra Klein writes in Vox that The New York Times blows a major hole through the Obamacare case soon to be decided by the Supreme Court. The case, writes Klein, rests on two concepts. In one, the case makes some sense, but doesn’t pose any real threat to Obamacare. In another, it poses a real threat to Obamacare, but doesn’t, as the Times points out, make any sense at all.
Nothing new
Megan McCardle reads the same Times piece and, writing in Bloomberg View, says it doesn’t say anything new and that, in any case, if you read the law, you see that the Supreme Court should decide against Obamacare, because that’s how the law reads.
Primary source
Or you could just read the Times piece itself, in which Robert Pear interviews the people who actually wrote the law, and decide for yourself.
Angel of death
Meet Ernie Chambers, the Nebraska legislator who brought down the state’s death penalty. On his 36th try. Via The Guardian.
Trickle down
The arguments against immigration reform usually start these days with a case to secure the border and then comes, maybe, reform – if not amnesty. There’s one problem with the argument: The flow of illegal immigrants across the Mexican border is at its lowest point in two decades. Via The Washington Post.
Foul ball
The big news in the sports world is that the United States, rarely a player in world soccer, has brought a huge case against FIFA, the ruling body. There are at least two questions, other than how the world’s largest sport can be so crooked: Why is the United States bringing the case? And why does the sport’s leader remain basically unscathed? Via The New York Times.
Heads up
The soccer scandal doesn’t begin or end with rampant corruption, however. There is also a terrible human toll. Via The Washington Post.
Left turn
The conventional wisdom is that the ever-widening political gap in America is a result of the Republican Party going ever further to the right. Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, argues that it’s actually the Democrats who have moved further to the left. Via The New York Times.
Chaos theory
John Nash’s game theory: The triumph and the failure in trying to impose some order on the chaos that is life. Via The New Yorker.
Photo credit: LaDawna Howard, Creative Commons, Flickr.
