It stands.

I'm still not quite ready to believe that Justice Roberts joined the liberal wing in the majority. I would not have ascribed a 1% chance of that happening.

Excerpts follow from the SCOTUS(live-)blog.

SCOTUS holds that mandate violates the Commerce Clause, but is constitutional under legislative branch's power to levy and collect taxes.

In his opening statement in dissent, Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."  

Amy Howe: 

In Plain English... The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

I'll assemble various reactions later today.

Update: A fairly hilarious Twitter aggre-reaction. The first Tweet there is in response to CNN's initial webpage update, quickly pulled down, that said the ACA was rejected. And Republicans in Congress Tweeted that the law had been struck down, and then deleted them once they figured it out had it explained to them by a fifth-grader.

Update II: Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog:

Salvaging the idea that Congress did have the power to try to expand health care to virtually all Americans, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld the constitutionality of the crucial – and most controversial — feature of the Affordable Care Act. By a vote of 5-4, however, the Court did not sustain it as a command for Americans to buy insurance, but as a tax if they don’t. That is the way Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., was willing to vote for it, and his view prevailed. The other Justices split 4-4, with four wanting to uphold it as a mandate, and four opposed to it in any form. 

Update III: Fox News' losing efforts to declare ACA unconstitutional. Their only recourse now is to impeach... Chief Justice Roberts.

Update IV: "(T)he ‘Scalia Freakout’ ended up being the big tell about this morning’s ruling."

Update V: Mitt Romney just had his reaction televised, and you would have thought his dog had died. Well, maybe his dressage horse. Then again, maybe his wife. OK, his political fortune. Seriously, I've seen more joy expressed in eulogies.

Harold Cook has a sly take:

So to review: the Supreme Court concluded that health care reform is constitutional, including the individual mandate (although SCOTUS apparently characterized it as a tax). The Republicans will try to spin the hell out of the "tax" part, even though it's only a tax for those Americans who fail to do what is required under Mitt Romney's health care plan.

The individual mandate only exists because it was the mechanism Republicans said they liked, and the mechanism their own Presidential nominee said is essential. Then the Republicans immediately decided that their own plan was terrible, evil, and unconstitutional, because it happens to be signature legislation of a President they hate, and Republicans sued to have it overturned.

So remind me again - what aspect of affordable health care to Americans can Republicans take credit for? Zero. Less than zero. They even fought like hell against their own funding mechanism to ensure its failure. Fortunately, they have apparently failed.

Those 14 original Republican Attorneys General who sued to overturn the plan? They'll spend the rest of the day complaining, and rename "Obamacare" to "the Obamacare Tax," all without presenting a new idea of how they would have made health care affordable.

Vast and Spurious

Before the Republicans' big bad day kicks off, let's all take note of the fact that the Bureau of ATF agents allegedly involved in a Mexican gunwalking conspiracy told Fortune magazine that it didn't happen.

Never happened.

This "Fast and Furious" bullshit that conservatives have been screaming about for a couple of years turns out to be a fairy tale. A myth. An urban legend.

But they never let the facts get in the way of a lynching before. Why start now?

Has Fox News mentioned anything about it yet? As the Most Interesting Man in the World has said: "I don't always watch comedy masquerading as a news broadcast, but when I do... it's on Fox."

Just thought I'd help get this development out there before the political world explodes in a few hours over health care.

As we wait for tomorrow's decision on health care...

Here's a little light reading.

HOUSTON – Last year, Luis Duran drove almost 200 miles to San Antonio to have a colonoscopy because he didn't want to wait six months for an opening at a county clinic.

A few days later, the doctor in San Antonio – a friend of a friend who had performed the screening for free – called to break the news that Duran, 51, had advanced colon cancer and needed immediate surgery.

"I kind of broke down," recalled Duran, a machine operator whose employer had terminated his health policy.  "I said, 'Doctor, I don't have insurance, and I don't have much money, but I won't refuse to pay. Please help me.'"

They say everything is bigger in Texas, and the problem of the uninsured is no exception. The Houston metropolitan area has one of the highest rates of uninsured people in America, and a health safety net imploding under the demands of too many people and too few resources.  Almost one in three residents – more than a million people -- lack health insurance, and about 400 are turned away every day from the county hospital district's call center because they can't be accommodated at any of its 23 community or school-based centers.

Those seeking care at the public hospital's ER, meanwhile, arrive with blankets and coolers full of sandwiches and drinks in anticipation of waits that may go 24 hours or longer.

"If the Affordable Care Act is overturned, the rest of the country should take a good look at the situation in Texas, because this is what happens when you keep Medicaid enrollment as low as possible and don't undertake insurance reforms," said Elena M. Marks, a health policy scholar at Rice University's James Baker Institute for Public Policy and a former city health official.

No, they are NOT all Ill Eagles.

With its fiscally conservative philosophy and cash-strapped state budget, Texas does not offer Medicaid coverage to childless adults unless they are pregnant, disabled or elderly. Parents of children covered by welfare are eligible for the state-federal health program only if they make no more than $188 a month for a family of three.

At the same time, the proportion of Texas workers with employer-sponsored insurance is almost 10 percentage points lower than the national average of 61 percent, in part because of the state’s high concentration of jobs in the agricultural and service sectors, which often lack benefits.

"They're hourly wage earners, nannies, [people] working in lawn care services or dry cleaning or real estate, or people working two part-time jobs and neither will pay for health care," he said. "Many are small business owners who are well-educated and well-dressed."

Any Republicans you know think this is a problem? And if they do, can any of them acknowledge that something needs to be done about the problem without blaming undocumented people for the problem?

Update: "We need to accept the principle that sometimes the poor will die just because they are poor."

Grady wants a border wall; Sadler parts company with platform

Oh, the joy of conservatism in the Texas Democratic Party.

Two underfunded US Senate candidates battling for the Democratic Party's nomination squared off Tuesday in hopes of escaping the shadows of their GOP opponents and capturing a statewide victory for the first time since 1994.

A brief pause before continuing: in this post-Citizens United environment, with all of the public support for reversing the flow of money into our politics, does it disillusion anyone else that "underfunded" is still written about in the corporate media as a bad thing?

Former state Rep. Paul Sad­ler and retired educator Grady Yarbrough, who said they have spent a combined $165,000 campaigning, agreed on many of the issues including same-sex marriage, Social Security benefits and foreign policy. They split on border security and decriminalizing marijuana.

Yes. They. Did. And not just with each other, but with the majority of Texas Democrats (and possibly the entire nation).

Both applauded the court's decision to repeal parts of Arizona's immigration law. Each also said the court should have struck down the entire bill, including the provision that requires residents to provide citizenship papers to police when questioned.

The candidates differed on border security, though they agreed it is a top priority for Texans. Yarbrough said the state and federal administration should assist the Mexican government in mitigating the violence on the border. He said the United States should use "whatever method is at our disposal" to secure the border including, "I hate to refer to this, but the Berlin Wall was pretty effective."

Yes it was, Grady. At keeping people in, for a few decades at least, as long as the East German guards were crack shots with a rifle. With this remark, Yarbrough places himself to the RIGHT of Rick Perry when it comes to immigration.

Let's see how many Republican votes that gets him. Please turn on your sarcasmeter, adjust the setting to 'high', and re-read yesterday's endorsement of Yarbrough. I still mean it as much today as I did yesterday.

The candidates were divided on an issue that appears on the state Democratic Party's platform, decriminalizing and regulating marijuana.

Yarbrough supports the notion, citing medicinal use and discrimination to low-income citizens.

"There are things in everybody's platform they wish weren't there, and this is one of them," said Sadler. "The people of this country are not ready for that."

That statement is laughably and abjectly false, Mr. Sadler. And we don't have time to stand around and wait while you catch up on your reading, either. You also apparently missed my post last month on the Libertarians, who have nominated a pro-pot judge from California as vice-president.

Say whatever else you like about these two men, the truth is that neither Sadler nor Yarbrough can be mistaken for 'liberal'.

If either managed to find himself in the Capitol's upper chamber next January being sworn in, the one thing you could count on is that the spirits of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson would be alive and well despite their physical absence. Joe Manchin ain't got nothin' on them.

I will remind Texas progressives -- those that haven't already given up on voting altogether -- that they will have an excellent option on November's ballot. Sending a message to the TDP by voting Green in this race tells the party that they can no longer take your vote for granted.

It's the only way things will ever begin to change in Texas for the better.

Update: TexTrib has more and video of the debate.