I admire the tenacity of republicans

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

No. Where did you say that?

Terr pointed that out, and I told him that I was aware of that, the rest of the context and my previous replies (and I read what Richard Parker typed too) shows that I was indeed aware that what would happen in DC was not going to be the end, still a moot point though as I told you that I’m not betting with you.

[Richard_Parker]

@Bricker

I agree. People within the Fourth Circuit have a cognizable right to subsidies; people within the DC Circuit do not.

It’s not people within each geographic boundary, I don’t think. It’s the people who were the subject of each actual suit. In the case of the D.C. Circuit, that is a whole bunch of states.

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

The Supreme Court looks at the law without any particular deference to the decisions of lower courts.

So what are you predicting the Supreme Court will do?

That Roberts would look like a fool if he votes to gut the law that he approved recently. And he would also look foolish when all the lower courts (by then) will be against the ones in favor of the technicality.

The SC will vote 5-4 in favor of the intention of the law. Although I do think that considering how the landscape will look with the ones in favor of the technologically being empty handed by then it is likely that the SC would decide to not hear the issue.

[elucidator]

Obama Judge Trolls Obamacare Opponents With Cheeky Pizza Analogy

An interesting take from a judge in the latest ruling, by way of our good friends at Talking Points Memo…

…Judge Andre M. Davis, confirmed by the Senate in 2009 by a vote of 72-16, sought to take down the challengers’ claims with an amusing pizza analogy.

Here’s the excerpt from his opinion in the 3-0 ruling for the law:

…In fact, Appellants’ reading is not literal; it’s cramped. No case stands for the proposition that literal readings should take place in a vacuum, acontextually, and untethered from other parts of the operative text; indeed, the case law indicates the opposite. … So does common sense: If I ask for pizza from Pizza Hut for lunch but clarify that I would be fine with a pizza from Domino’s, and I then specify that I want ham and pepperoni on my pizza from Pizza Hut, my friend who returns from Domino’s with a ham and pepperoni pizza has still complied with a literal construction of my lunch order. That is this case: Congress specified that Exchanges should be established and run by the states, but the contingency provision permits federal officials to act in place of the state when it fails to establish an Exchange…

“Acontextually”? OK. that’s a real word. But it shouldn’t be…

[kaylasdad99]

@Bricker

Correct.

But notice I’m not offering bets on the proposition of the court not granting en banc review?

If you ever get tired of the username Bricker, you could petition to change it to Bookie.

[Bricker]

@Buck_Godot

However it does seem that your “objective” criteria as to whether or not you are right is whether or not someone is willing to bet against you.

Nope. My objective criteria is what the court rules the law is.

The problem with this is that you assume that equal money means equal stakes. Given some of your other posts regarding your frequent trips to the Opera etc. It is clear that you are relatively well off. Probably much more so than most of the rest of the Doper community. $100 is presumably chosen as an amount you might notice or regret missing, but not something that will have any real effect on your finances. For many here at the dope that is not the case, and so refusing to accept your bet for them might be mere financial prudence. If Soros came in and said he would bet you $50,000 that you were wrong about this case, would you take him up on it? If not, would the fact that you were unwilling to do so mean that you really didn’t believe your convictions?

No, i wouldn’t risk $50K on this. But I have accepted $2 bets. I have never once said that a failure to bet $100 means anything. But a failure to bet ANYTHING means something.

You really need to realize that not every pit thread needs to come down to a discussion of legal technicalities. Sometimes they are about justice in the abstract. Imagine that this was a Ugandan message board and the several gay Ugandans posted how horrible and unjust it was that the could be arrested and condemned to death. Would it really help to come in a post that the law had been legitimately passed by the legislature and that in all likelihood that it would be upheld by the Ugandan Supreme court? Chastising him for daring to declaring that such a law was wrong, and further offering a the OP poster $100 bet that the police would in fact come to take him away to the gallows?

That is how you are coming off to those like Gigobuster in the thread who are seriously worried about losing their healthcare over a minor oversight in the wording of the law.

Then GIGOBuster should confine his remarks to an admission that there is an oversight in the law and then segue into his worries, instead of a belligerent announcement that the challengers are wrong and doomed to fail in their challenge, shouldn’t he?

Sure, there’s a non-legal component to this. But you (or your ideological brethern) were not satisfied with that. They had to imply – or outright say – that the legal issues were meaningless and meritless. They couldn’t admit that the statute had a fatal flaw. No, no – it had to be mean Republicans in their unceasing efforts to kill the program, and not a colossal fuckup in planning that every state would start an exchange only to discover only sixteen states did.

Place the blame where it belongs: Pelosi was desperate to pass something, even in the fog of controversy, and she explicitly said that we’d have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy.

But since blaming the Democrats for anything is anathema, you have to blame me for being right about it. “Oh, it’s so terrible that Bricker insists on being right, when his rightness represents human tragedy!”

[Bricker]

@GIGObuster

That Roberts would look like a fool if he votes to gut the law that he approved recently. And he would also look foolish when all the lower courts (by then) will be against the ones in favor of the technicality.

The SC will vote 5-4 in favor of the intention of the law. Although I do think that considering how the landscape will look with the ones in favor of the technologically being empty handed by then it is likely that the SC would decide to not hear the issue.

And that, you’d say, is a confident prediction?

So that if the Supreme Court rules against the government, it could be fairly said that your confident prediction was wrong?

@GIGObuster

Terr pointed that out, and I told him that I was aware of that, the rest of the context and my previous replies (and I read what Richard Parker typed too) shows that I was indeed aware that what would happen in DC was not going to be the end, still a moot point though as I told you that I’m not betting with you.

Can you quote the words you used to show you were talking about the Supreme Court?

[ElvisL1ves]

@Bricker

Pelosi was desperate to pass something, even in the fog of controversy, and she explicitly said that we’d have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy.

if by controversy, you mean Republican lies.

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

Sure, there’s a non-legal component to this. But you (or your ideological brethern) were not satisfied with that. They had to imply – or outright say – that the legal issues were meaningless and meritless. They couldn’t admit that the statute had a fatal flaw. No, no – it had to be mean Republicans in their unceasing efforts to kill the program, and not a colossal fuckup in planning that every state would start an exchange only to discover only sixteen states did.

The fact that several courts voted in favor of the intention and it is very likely that the DC judgement will be overturned shows that you are really deluded by continuing to say that we have no grounds to say it it meritless, so far we know that then it is mostly politics why few judges decided to ignore the intent. And it is likely that the DC will in the end review and decide in favor of the intent.
I do then take that back my former declaration made a long time ago that I would had wished that I had you in my team if I ever got into a legal issue, it is clear that partisanship clouds your opinion and makes you not only a failure in following context, a failure in being a competent human, but also a failure at looking at what most courts are declaring about the merits of this challenge.

[Bricker]

@GIGObuster

The fact that several courts voted in favor of the intention and it is very likely that the DC judgement will be overturned shows that you are really deluded by continuing to say that we have no grounds to say it it meritless, so far we know that then it is mostly politics why few judges decided to ignore the intent. And it is likely that the DC will in the end review and decide in favor of the intent.

And that, you’d say, is a confident prediction?

So that if the Supreme Court rules against the government, it could be fairly said that your confident prediction was wrong?

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

And that, you’d say, is a confident prediction?

So that if the Supreme Court rules against the government, it could be fairly said that your confident prediction was wrong?

You are also an incompetent at looking at what positions people have, even those that they repeat in writing.

[adaher]

@Bricker

And I see a 5-4 decision along the lines of this one: the ACA unambiguously restricts the section 36B subsidy to insurance purchased on Exchanges “established by the State,” with the word ‘State’ clearly defined as one of the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, and so the IRS regulation is vacated. The four justices that like to write their own laws will dissent; the five that believe their job is to read the laws Congress wrote and apply them as written will be in the majority.

I just don’t see it. Roberts cares about the political viability of the court. If he wasn’t willing to overturn the mandate he won’t overturn the subsidies.

I think what is more likely is a 5-4 decision upholding the subsidies, but with dark warnings from a Roberts decision that the court will hold Congress to the text of the laws they write, so stop being lazy and read the bills you vote on.

The administration is not arguing that there has been a drafting error, so Roberts can hang his hat on their argument, while saying that if it WAS a drafting error and if there are drafting errors in the future on bills that don’t give millions of people health insurance, that Congress will have to lay in whatever bed they stupidly made for themselves.

[Bone]

So the group arguing one side of the position claims that the other are Nazis, but has no problem accusing other people of being less than human. You know who else thought others were less than human?

[adaher]

I notice they also don’t consider law to be all that important. They think that one man should just decide what the health care law is, which again, makes on wonder why they needed to draft 2000 pages if they just wanted the President to do whatever he thought was best.

Couldn’t they have just passed an enabling act, or would that have been too transparent about their intentions?

[Bricker]

@adaher

I just don’t see it. Roberts cares about the political viability of the court. If he wasn’t willing to overturn the mandate he won’t overturn the subsidies.

You seem to be asking yourself what the desired political outcome is – or what Roberts’ desired political outcome is – and then assuming that’s how he’ll rule.

How about the idea that Roberts ruled on what the law is?

I am (obviously) not a fan of the ACA. I think it’s a crapfest of crappy crap.

But from the beginning, when the challenges to the individual mandate arose, I said I believed the individual mandate was constitutional. Why? Did I also care about the political viability of the court?

No: I was answering the legal question. The individual mandate was a crappy crapfest of crap, but that has nothing to do with whether it’s constitutional. And I defended the mandate’s constitutionality on these boards.

You, and liberals on the other side, seem to feel that all this legal talk is just a smoke screen to let judges rule the way they want things to come out. That should not be the way it works.

Roberts correctly ruled the individual mandate was constitutional. He now will rule that the subsidies are unauthorized, because they are. That’s the language Congress passed, and the courts should not be a super=legislature that fixes Congress’ mistakes.

[Bricker]

@GIGObuster

You are also an incompetent at looking at what positions people have, even those that they repeat in writing.

You have not, and still are not, answering this basic question.

@GIGOBuster

The fact that several courts voted in favor of the intention and it is very likely that the DC judgement will be overturned shows that you are really deluded by continuing to say that we have no grounds to say it it meritless, so far we know that then it is mostly politics why few judges decided to ignore the intent. And it is likely that the DC will in the end review and decide in favor of the intent.

And that, you’d say, is a confident prediction?

So that if the Supreme Court rules against the government, it could be fairly said that your confident prediction was wrong?

[iiandyiiii]

@Bricker

You seem to be asking yourself what the desired political outcome is – or what Roberts’ desired political outcome is – and then assuming that’s how he’ll rule.

How about the idea that Roberts ruled on what the law is?

Oh Bricker, you’re so, so naive.

Isn’t he just the cutest thing, folks?

[GIGObuster]

@Bricker

You have not, and still are not, answering this basic question.

And that, you’d say, is a confident prediction?

So that if the Supreme Court rules against the government, it could be fairly said that your confident prediction was wrong?

I therefore apologize for assuming that you were smart enough to look at the context and find out what one is thinking, I also apologize for not realizing all the help you needed, so with that out of the way I helpfully and with condescension I make notice that I think that that is a confident prediction. And that acknowledging that you are an incompetent at being human does not negate that I can be wrong if the SC votes against it, I do agree then that your human incompetency is not changed and that then during the next elections the Republicans in any states that do not set exchanges will be put in the defensive explaining why it is so good to be so inhuman and wondering why other states will be better off.

[Bricker]

If your view is correct, why bother with this garbage?

[indent]The Chief Justice delivered the opinion of the court, joined by Justices Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy:

The IRS rule is struck, because we hate the idea of Obamacare.

Justice Kagan dissents, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg:

The majority decision is flawed, because Obamacare is a good idea. But not as good as single-payer.

[/quote]

They’d certainly free up some time in their day. Think how many cases they could accept!

[adaher]

@Bricker

You seem to be asking yourself what the desired political outcome is – or what Roberts’ desired political outcome is – and then assuming that’s how he’ll rule.

How about the idea that Roberts ruled on what the law is?

Sure, that’s what I’d like Roberts to do, and I think that’s what he usually does, but I think on ACA he made a political decision: he had a way to have it both ways. Establish that the mandate was illegal under the commerce clause, which is a very useful outcome for conservatives going forward, but uphold it as a tax. If he was squeamish on the mandate, I can’t see him overturning the subsidies.

But from the beginning, when the challenges to the individual mandate arose, I said I believed the individual mandate was constitutional. Why? Did I also care about the political viability of the court?

Did you believe it was constitutional under the commerce clause?

You, and liberals on the other side, seem to feel that all this legal talk is just a smoke screen to let judges rule the way they want things to come out. That should not be the way it works.

It shouldn’t but ACA is such a partisan issue that it’s like Bush v. Gore. Judges are pretty consistently ruling base on whether they were appointed by a Democrat or a Republican. There have been some exceptions, like the Medicaid expansion, where the justices ruled 7-2 that states could not be cut off from Medicaid funding for declining to expand. But mostly we’ve seen judges rule predictably based on their partisan leanings.

Roberts correctly ruled the individual mandate was constitutional. He now will rule that the subsidies are unauthorized, because they are. That’s the language Congress passed, and the courts should not be a super=legislature that fixes Congress’ mistakes.

I think your argument is compelling and I hope you’re right.