They won't do the right thing and abort Borat's health care "reform." Instead, they'll probably decide that any form of public health insurance is unconstitutional.

Can't wait to see this case play out. A lot of narratives will be under stress.

Will Clarence Thomas recuse himself from judging this case, given that his wife openly rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars from Tea Party interests intent on overturning the ACA? Well of course not, because the man has no ethics, considers himself above the law, and is not accountable to anyone. Regardless of your attitude about the deeply-flawed ACA (personally I'm kinda hoping it gets overturned, if that will get us closer to single-payer), it's an outrage (to me) that Thomas will have any say on this legislation. If it were a liberal judge in a similar conflict-of-interest position, you can bet the corporate media would be falling all over itself crying "foul".

Obama and Congressional Democrats asked for this constitutional challenge by pushing the individual mandate rather than a public option or single payer health care system.

It should be interesting to see how the right wing slime on the Supreme Court will handle this.

If the partisan hacks on the SC strike down the mandate, the left should come back swinging with a ferocious counter-assault in favor of single payer. That may actually work out in the left's favor.

I doubt we'll get any more tea party "town hall" bullying; the TP is now basically dead in the water and exposed as the pro-corporate lobbying group it always was. The whole field will be ripe for the left to push for single payer.

Single payer or death. Seriously. Anything else is bull crap, horse crap and crap. Single payer or death.

Doesn't this present an interesting situation though? We on the left know Obama's basically a republican corporatist, and the mandate, aka corporate handout, is a perfect example. The Righties on the other hand call him an anti-business Socialist, which I guess is just how racist morons express their anger.

If the corporatist SCOTUS rules against the mandate, that'll satisfy the racists but also deliver a blow to corporate america. If SCOTUS rules in favor of the mandate, won't that too be a blow against the racist right who claim Obama's a socialist?

The only thing that is proved by Obama's inability to do the things his supporters thought he would be able to do when he became the president is that the president is not all powerful. Many people, including myself, in the USA and Canada were sucked in by this lie, especially after watching the antics of GWB. However, the president is not all powerful. All around him are preexisting political operatives who represent everything that Obama came to power to kick out. Obama is an outsider. His inability to do what he said he would do simply shows that one man does not rule the USA, even if he is the president. When people in the bureaucracy begin to show some backbone and support him when he is trying to stand up to the oligarchy then, and only then, will he be able to do the things he was sent to Washington to do.

A few minutes ago I heard Mr. Sharpton on MSMBC repeat a common mistake namely arguing that the Supreme Court Justices are not governed by the Code of Conduct of Federal Judges. This error always arises from the fact that the constitution has made the courts different. Rulings of Federal Courts can be challenged. Rulings of the Supreme Court cannot be challenged in any higher court. The buck stops there. However, the constitution does not make the judges who sit on the Supreme Court any different from judges who sit on Federal Courts. They are constitutionally exactly the same "animal". Limits on behavior and actions outside the court are not different. Supreme Court Justices are not inhabiting Mount Olympus while Federal Judges toil at its base where we live. That is complete nonsense. For that reason Judges Scalia and Thomas must excuse themselves from this case. It is alarming that a congressman, a former Supreme Court Justice of the State of Texas, who was on this program with Mr. Sharpton did not correct Mr. Sharpton.

Here is what Obama had to say about the Mandate when he was campaigning, contrasting his "plan" with Hillarys "plan":

"... Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t."

http://youtu.be/9R-z-fFnuh0

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-degeneres-why-he-opposed-individual-mandate-forcing-uninsured-buy-insurance

Most Republicans didn't dare call him out, because he ended up getting Democrats to support a Republican plan in the first place.

Is it too much to ask "reporters" to do their jobs these days? Yes it is.

Even though convention thought is that this is a "conservative" vs. "liberal" issue for the Sup Ct, but I think this is a corporation vs. people issue. The Supremes will do what they can to enrich the corporations that put them there, so my prediction is that that will uphold the law, including the law's individual mandate.

The individual mandate is the insurance industry's dream come true -- and they virtually wrote that wretched "health care" law. To hell with the fascist mandate!

The best thing that could happen is for the corrupt supreme court to declare this massive subsidy to private insurance monopolies to be unconstitutional because then it will continue to fail to the point where it could force more politicians to openly support a real universal single-payer health care system that would actually put people's health above profits and help reduce the deficit at the same time.

Insurance should be outlawed for having violated (long ago) it's own basic concept, a community of people getting together to spead un-expected costs among everyone. Nice ideal.

Oh, that is also the concept of government. Water, roads, and such. And healthcare? Why not. It doesn't prevent doctors from private practice - might even help their image, an image in which the word "care" once figured prominently. Doctors have become nothing but money-grabbers with a monopoly on a vital service. What do they care if they bankrupt us? It is their money against our livelihood. Of course they should get good compensation, it just should not get in the way of care for us. Can you really tell me why a broken bone can cost $10,000 in ER care and getting sent home (no hospital room) as happened a couple of decades ago with my brother. $10K? Set it, put on a cast, get crutches and go (a couple of hours).

So, instead of mandating health insurance, create a care service. It could not only provide care for the vast majority of us, but could combine that with educating doctors for free (with several years of service expected in turn [rather than paying student loans for more years]) while paying these new doctors a decent wage and serving as a funnel for those doctors who want to take that experience into other practice areas.

Mandating health insurance just costs us money we already don't have (why do you think so many are without insurance now and seldom go to health providers now?). It is not like the health insurance companies' current prices are really the result of making up for all those who don't buy insurance. Those same companies making that claim are also kicking people out of their policies who will actually cost them something in payouts, causing the "problem" they use as an excuse. This mandate is really a mandate to pay thieves. Al Capone missed his true calling.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. The 5 "conservative" neo-fascists on the court--Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas--will doubtless want to strike the mandate down and deal a crushing blow to Obama's campaign. After all, Romney will need all the help he can get, and this court has demonstrated its partisanship. On the other hand, Obamacare is, ironically enough, essentially a REPUBLICAN plan, based on Romney's own plan in Massachusetts.

So in a sense, either way they rule, the Republican wins: if they rule in favor of Obamacare, they affirm a Republican plan that will leave at least 30 million without healthcare; if they rule against it, they help the campaign of Mitt Romney to be the next leader of the "Free World"!--the United Corporate States of America.

Occupy America!

All this seems like a moot point to me. We need Single Payer. The Obama Care plan is so riddled with flaws, loop holes, injustices, and red tape it - along with insurance companies- should have been ditched a long time ago. It is wasting precious time, while people die. Damn it. Just get it done, or OCCUPY HOSPITALS will do it for you.