Happy Hobby Lobby Day! As the birth control mandate is argued before the supreme court, take a minute to read our explainer on the cases, what the bigger (and worrisome) implications of the decision could be — including that it could open the floodgates to more anti-gay legislation — and how Justice Scalia will have to reckon with his past on religious liberty.
Ed Kilgore wonders if Rand Paul can actually become the mainstream candidate for 2016 he wants to be when his past is so deeply intertwined with the Paul Revolution.
Daniel Strauss looks at North Carolina, where Republicans might be bungling a serious Senate seat pickup opportunity: “With a little more than a month before the Senate primary, the GOP still lacks a de facto nominee.”
Democratic candidate Bruce Braley, who has been favored to win the seat vacated by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), was caught on video at a fundraiser warning that Chuck Grassley, “a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school” could be Senate Judiciary chair. Is this his undoing? Or just a blip in the road?
Update 4:32 p.m.: Braley’s already apologized for the remark.
A South Carolina college has hired the state’s lieutenant governor, who has little educational experience but deep neo-Confederate ties, as its new president.
With Hobby Lobby’s arguments against the birth control mandate before the Supreme Court today, it seems like as good of a day as any to re-read Ed Kilgore’s great take on how the religious liberty campaign is backfiring.
This morning Elena Kagan cited Antonin Scalia’s own arguments in front of him to argue against overturning the Obamacare birth control mandate.