Today's court ruling gutting the essential tax credits offered under Obamacare relies on a literal reading of one provision of the Affordable Care Act. It seems almost certain that the provision in question suffered from a drafting error.

As we reported earlier this year, those who were in the room as the bill was being written say it was never anyone's intention to limit the tax credits to state-run exchanges. In fact there's no compelling rationale for why Congress would have sought to treat the two exchanges differently for tax purposes. The provision was just drafted poorly.

In ordinary circumstances, Congress would just fix the error. But these are not ordinary times.

You can read the DC Circuit's devastating Obamacare ruling here.

Just a quick note for those who may be confused about how those Obamacare tax credits actually worked -- and a glimpse at why this is such a big deal.

The way it worked, in short, is this:

Federal appeals court invalidates tax credit for insurance purchased on federal Obamacare exchanges.

To catch you up, at issue was whether the federal government could provide tax credits to people who purchased insurance on the exchanges set up by the federal government. Remember that as originally conceived Obamacare allowed each state to create its own exchange. This was a concession to conservatives and to states, a way to build consensus for the legislation. But as opposition to Obamacare became a Republican rallying cry and a litmus test for conservative credentials, many red states opted not to create their own exchanges. In fact a majority of states opted to rely on the federal exchanges instead.

Bloomberg (emphasis added): "Hillary Clinton has earned at least $12 million in 16 months since leaving the State Department, a windfall at odds with her party’s call to shrink the gap between the rich and the poor."

Malaysian airliner reportedly shot down over the Ukraine.

(When I saw the first report of a Malaysia jetliner going down in eastern Ukraine, I thought, this cannot be a coincidence. And of course, it's not. Good lord. - jm.)

Indiana just made it okay for statewide elected officials to use state resources for campaign purposes -- with one exceedingly small caveat.

Great little vignette from Jonathan Chait tracing the slow, utterly unself-conscious retreat on Obamacare by a leading libertarian critic.

No, the temperature on Mars is not "exactly as it is here" on Earth:

Ed Kilgore: Conservatives want African-Americans to change before they are deemed worthy of outreach.