1. Conservatives devastated that Chief Justice Roberts chose path of judicial restraint.

2. According to today’s statement, Mitt Romney supports virtually every provision of ‘Obamacare’ other than the mandate that he pioneered.

In case you missed it: my quick take on this morning’s news and why it matters.

John Roberts: “The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave, simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions.”

DeMint calls for unconstitutional state-based nullification to fight ‘Obamacare’.

Strangely appropriate because the doctrine of ‘nullification’ was originated and articulated by another Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun.

In case you missed it, both Fox and CNN jumped the gun this morning and reported the Court’s overturning health care reform. Watch.

You can read the opinion here.

As several of our readers noted, the ‘Scalia Freakout‘ ended up being the big tell about this morning’s ruling.

Adding to the chaotic swirl as the Supreme Court announced its decision, CNN beat everyone else to the punch by announcing that the mandate had been thrown out:

Via Brian Beutler: “The ruling ends a Quixotic conservative quest to vanquish Obama’s signature achievement by fiat. It also devastates the GOP’s long-standing appeal to voters that the law exists as a monument to liberal overreach, in defiance of accepted limits on federal power. That Roberts, a conservative emissary to the Court, voted to uphold is particularly devastating.”

I have some thoughts on the politics of this — mainly because the politics is what I have some expertise to speak about. But that will be my next post. Before I do that I wanted to state very clearly that the politics of the decision pales before its substance, a fact that I suspect will get little attention today. This decision will have a massive effect on the lives of literally millions of people. Mitt Romney may have joked yesterday that the White House was “not sleeping real well” last night. But a lot of people tonight and in the future will sleep a lot better for this result. Young people, people with pre-existing conditions and mainly people who through the chaos of the health care market simply find themselves with no coverage. Read More