Based on today’s Supreme Court oral arguments it appears that the Defense of Marriage (DOMA) Act may soon be history. While the oral arguments are not always a reliable indicator of the justices’ opinions, professional court watchers overwhelmingly feel the odds are very good that the Court will strike down the law. SCOTUSblog put the [...]

The Supreme Court has now published the audio and transcripts of this morning’s Hollingsworth v. Perry oral arguments. The case is about California’s 2008 Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriage in the state. You can find them here. The two main questions of the case are whether or not the petitioners lacked standing and whether banning same-sex [...]

Since everyone is talking about the Supreme Court today it is worth highlighting another one of the many structural problems with our Constitution. The practice of lifetime appointments to any position of power is truly insane. I understand the logic behind it. Our justices are supposed to be removed from regular politicians and our court [...]

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on same-sex marriage today; but regardless how they rule, the simple fact is marriage equality is inevitable. The trend in support clearly has been heading in the right direct for the past decade. From Pew Research: Even more important than the trend line is the demographic breakdown of the [...]

If Proposition 8 were put back on the ballot today in California it would be defeated easily. A new Field Poll finds that there has been a significant shift in public opinion about same-sex marriage over the past four years. The poll found California voters now support marriage equality by a two-to-one margin. Field Poll [...]

Something remarkable happened yesterday. Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) decided to endorse using the Affordable Care Act to expand Medicaid in his state. Though he did this only after getting the administration to provide a major concession regarding how the program would be run. This is an important policy development because it means roughly a [...]

The one upside to the Supreme Court making the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act optional is that it has stopped the Obama administration from trying to cut it. Senior economic adviser Gene Sperling confirmed that the administration sees taking Medicaid completely of the table as necessary to make Obamacare function; but since President [...]

Ultimately it is the Supreme Court who decides the legality of unilateral ways to avoid the debt limit, be it with a platinum coin, invoking the 14th Amendment, or moral obligation coupons. But the only way the Supreme Court could end up ruling on one of these actions is if President Obama actually uses one to avoid the looming crisis, then someone with standing sued him, and the Court decided to take the case.

The Supreme Court’s decision to make the Medicaid expansion option may have indirectly protected the program from cuts during the current fiscal cliff negotiations.

Even after the Supreme Court ruled that the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act must be truly optional for the states, the Medicaid expansion provision in general remains very popular. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll 67 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of the provision in the Affordable Care Act [...]