Huh. A ruling that makes sense. I did *not* see that coming.

Thanks to Aaron for the pointer to this concise and frequently-updated blog entry on this morning's legal decision.

The short version, quite to my surprise, is that Chief Justice Roberts bought into essentially the same logic that I'd been thinking: call it what you will, the "individual mandate" is effectively a tax, and pretty obviously constitutional on that basis. I suspect that that is going to make for all sorts of entertaining politics in the coming months as Romney jumps up and down going, "Hah! See! Taxes!", but I agree with the reasoning, and appreciate the general call-a-spade-a-spade attitude.

Anyway, the article is fascinating, making the point that this is remarkably clever of Roberts politically: instead of the sort of knee-jerk reactionary rhetoric that we've been seeing from most conservatives, he's made the Court look a bit more reasonable and less partisan, while winning a much more important conservative victory by bounding the Commerce Clause a bit.

So overall, a good day for the spirit of compromise. The Administration wins what will probably be its most important political battle, but the conservatives force them to admit that it's a tax. The horrible health care mess takes at least a baby step towards rationality for the first time in decades, and I breathe a quiet sigh of relief. (No, I don't love the Obamacare model, but I think it's still a major improvement over what we've been dealing with heretofore. If we can't get a genuinely sensible single-payer model, at least we can make what we *do* have suck less.)

Cliche Bingo

Following on from my post last week about tired MBA cliches, serakit came up with Cliche Bingo. This is an innovation that needs to happen. (And I suspect somebody could make a pretty penny selling bingo sets online...)

... and just to make sure we remember that there are still plenty of wingnuts in Congress...

... I give you this pointer to the words of Senator Rand Paul. Just when Justice Roberts illustrates that there are some reasonable and sensible conservatives out there, Paul reminds us that there are plenty who don't have even a sixth-grade understanding of how this country works...