Presto Agitato

On Interpretation

[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover. — Justice Sutherland, Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co. (1925)

On Fiat

Chief Justice Roberts, in is dissent re: Obergefell v. Hodges:

Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. ... The majority’s driving themes are that marriage is desirable and petitioners desire it.

And, most important, the court's majority desires it.  Since when did Supreme Court of the United States become a superlegislature?

But Roberts has little room to complain: Stripped of its prodigies of hidden-wire gymnastics, his majority opinion in King v. Burwell, this past week's Obamacare case, basically came down to the observation that a straightforward reading of the law would lead to unintended consequences – indeed, consequences quite contrary to Congress's intent.  ‘Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them.’  True enough, but there is no other plausible interpretation of the text than that the subsidies were intended only for users of the state-created exchange, Roberts's ‘jiggery-pokery’ notwithstanding (indeed, the law is explicit about the meaning of ‘State’, to wit: ‘each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia’), so the Supreme Court could only properly bounce the ball back to Congress and maybe call them dumbasses.  His further insistence that Congress didn't clearly mean to penalize the citizens of states that didn't create their own ‘exchanges’ is belied by his own previous ruling in NFIB v. Sibelius that it was unconstitutional for Congress to penalize states who refused to cooperate with the ACA's (Obamacare's) Medicaid-expansion provisions.  Congress's punitive intent was certainly clear then, but now, in the same law, where the language is equally clear, and in the face of bald confessions by one of the chief architects of the bill, we are unsure whether Congress really meant it?

A Liar and a Nut

In a week full of craziness, Rachel Dolezal, the faux-black former head of the NAACP's Spokane, Wash. office, somehow has competition for the title of Nutter of the Week.  Some people are even vying for the title by defending her, apparently unable to tell the difference between cultural ‘misappropriation’ and blackfaced lies.  But Montel Williams is having none of it:

While she was living as white, Dolezal sued Howard University for discrimination based on the fact she was a white pregnant woman.  Then while she was living as black, she reported numerous hate crimes which law enforcement believes may have been fabricated.  She’s been flip-flopping her race and fabricating bias in every identity she chooses.  And yet instead of asking ‘Have you been dishonest?’, Today preferred to focus on, ‘What race are you today?’  That’s like Wells Fargo asking a bank robber, ‘Are you withdrawing or depositing?’

Dave Chapelle's description of the situation as ‘ridiculous’ is on-point, but the fact that people are defending her despite the blackface and the lies goes well beyond ridiculous.

The Currency of the American Left

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, Jack Lew presiding, has decided to replace Alexander Hamilton's portrait on the ten dollar bill with that of a woman-to-be-named-later.  People wonder why the Obama administration would target Hamilton, of all people, but the answer is obvious: Because they'd never heard of him before.  (But they did hear rumors that he once owned a handgun, and we can't have that!)

Maybe it would help to point that Hamilton was a poor, illegitimate immigrant child, so he counts as an oppressed minority.

Bernie Takes Issue

They Call Him What?

Via e-mail.

Flag Day

Quote of the Day: A Note on Humility

Nature does not reveal all her secrets at once.  We imagine we are initiated in her mysteries: we are, as yet, but hanging around her outer courts. — Seneca