Did John Roberts Make the Affordable Care Act Unconstitutional?

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills. – Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 7, Clause 1

On Thursday the Supreme Court rejected Florida’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the court and made the legal argument for the laws constitutionality. Roberts rejected the Obama administration’s two primary claims; that the individual mandate was constitutional under the commerce clause and/or constitutional under the necessary and proper clause of the US Constitution. Instead, Roberts ruled that the mandate should be regarded as a tax. This was an argument the Obama administration had hesitated to make for months.

The President said on camera numerous times that the mandate was not a tax increase (this was as much a political calculation as a constitutional argument – one does not overtly telegraph large tax increases to the masses).

Here in lies the contradiction I cannot understand.

A Fool’s Baseball Predictions

“It measures just 9 inches in circumference, weighs only about 5 ounces, and it is made of cork wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stiched by hand precisely 216 times.
It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher’s mound to home–and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2 3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game’s greatest heroes.
It is played everywhere. In parks and playground and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers fields. By small children and by old men. By raw amateurs and millionare professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game where the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.
At the games’s heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to father and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.
It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.”

Baseball is back.

Anyone who makes predictions about a complex system like the baseball season is a fool. We only talk about our predictions when they come true. Here are this fool’s predictions:

AL East                                  AL Central                       AL West
Yankees                                Tigers                                Angels
Red Soxs*                            Indians*                           Rangers
Blue Jays                              Royals                              Athletics
Rays                                      White Sox                        Mariners
Orioles                                  Twins

NL East                                 NL Central                    NL West
Phillies                                  Brewers                         Dodgers
Marlins                                 Cardinals*                     Diamondbacks*
Braves                                   Reds                               Giants
Nationals                             Cubs                                Rockies
Mets                                      Pirates                            Padres
Astros

*indicates a Wild Card team

AL MVP: Prince Fielder
AL Cy Young: C.J. Wilson

NL MVP: Matt Kemp
NL Cy Young: Cole Hamels

AL Champion: Tigers
NL Champion: Cardinals

World Series Champion: Tigers

Star Wars, a History by William Shakespeare in (Mostly) Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter

With assistance and full credit towards by friend Robert from the old Star Wars message boards

PROLOGUE

[Enter CHORUS.]

CHORUS
‘Tis long ago, we set our humble stage.
A galaxy far, far away doth rage
In civil war, where Rebel forces hath
Defeated Empire evil once in wrath;
And in their victory, they hath received
A battle station’s plans, now newly thieved.
The Death Star it be dubb’d, a fortress great
A planet whole could it eliminate.
Pursued by agents sinister, we see
The regal Princess Leia then doth flee
And then to courier the stolen plans
Aboard her starship, bound for other lands
She takes them. Only then, a freedom gone
May be restored, ere the task is done.

[Exit.]

ACT I.

Act I, Scene I.
The Rebel Blockade Runner.

[Enter ARTOO and THREEPIO.]

THREEPIO
The main reactor, shut down with a boom.
Destroyed for sure, this time we’ll be. We’re doom’d,
And if propose I may’st, escape this mess
Shall prove impossible for our Princess.
A blast! I hear it well; mayhaps a horde
Of troops Imperial hath come aboard.

[Exeunt ARTOO and THREEPIO. Enter DARTH VADER, holding a REBEL OFFICER by the throat, and several Stormtroopers. Enter an IMPERIAL OFFICER.]

IMPERIAL OFFICER
The plans, computers here hath fail’d to yield.

VADER [to REBEL OFFICER]
Transmissions stolen, thou art known to field.
Where may’st the intercepted plans be hid?

REBEL OFFICER
I know’st not of these plans, I duly bid.
A vessel consular this ship was built;
Of thiev’d designs thou claim’st, we bear no guilt.

VADER
And consular thou claim’st, yet I perceive
Not one Ambassador here with thy leave.

[VADER chokes the REBEL OFFICER, who crumples to the floor, dead.]

Commander, tear this ship apart until
The plans return, dictated by our will.
If passengers be found, then I demand
Thou bring’st them forth – alive, save for my hand.

[Exeunt all. Enter ARTOO and PRINCESS LEIA. LEIA adjusts something on ARTOO’s computer face. Enter THREEPIO.]

In Memory of Dan Wheldon

Doctor Galen Clavio sums it up about as well as anyone could.

Dario Franchitti had one of the most honest moments in the history of sports yesterday when he talked about Wheldon’s death. You can hear him in this video here around the 4:30 mark.

These kind of sport tragedies always make me think of A.E. Housman’s poem “To An Athlete Dying Young.” This poem may perhaps be best remembered as being read by Jim McKay in the aftermath of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Arab terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The clip use to be on YouTube, but I can’t find it anymore. It’s a moving tribute.

Here’s Housman’s poem in full:

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

Like Wheldon, Housman was English. His words are a fitting tribute to his deceased countryman.

The Sports Curse You Don’t Know About

Everyone knows about the Madden curse and the SI curse, but there’s another sports curse out there that’s just as powerful – the Super Bowl host city curse.

• Super Bowl XL was held in Dallas. The Cowboys start 1-7. Starting QB Tony Romo breaks his collarbone and coach Wade Phillips is fired mid-season.
• Super Bowl XIII was held in Tampa. The Buccaneers start 9-3, but collapse late in the season as they lose their last four games and miss the playoffs. Head Coach Jon Gruden is fired.
• Super Bowl XLII was held in Arizona. Cardinal QB’s Matt Leinart and Kurt Warner both get injured during the season.
• Super Bowl XLI was held in Miami. The Dolphins go 6-10. Major off-season acquisition, QB Daunte Culpepper, gets injured after just four games and coach Nick Saban bolts for Alabama after the season.
• Super Bowl XL is held in Detroit. The Lions go 5-11. Steve Mariucci is fired mid-season. QB Joey Harrington gets hurt – twice.
• Super Bowl XXXIX is held in Jacksonville. A late-season David Garrad injury derails the Jags playoff chances.
• Super Bowl XXXVIII was held in Houston. The Texans went 5-11. QB David Carr gets hurt, as does his back-up, Tony Banks. QB Dave Ragone is called upon to start 2 games for the Texans.
• Super Bowl XXXVII was held in San Diego. The Charges start 8-4 but lose their last four games to finish out of the playoffs.
• Super Bowl XXXVI was held in New Orleans. The Siants start 7-5 but lose their last four games to miss the playoffs. They get outscored 51-160 in those last four games.

Only one team in the last ten years, has qualified for the playoffs in the same season their city hosted the Super Bowl – the 2008 Miami Dolphins.

Fans of  the Saints, Giants and Jets, host cities of the next two Super Bowls, best be ready for disappointment.

Sports is Not Just About Sports

The comments on this article from ESPN are disgusting, surprising, revealing and embarrassing.

Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts reveals he’s gay

This is news people.  Too many people seem to think that sports is just what happens between the lines.  Well the very fact that it gives you emotional ups and downs proves that it’s more.

This story is not replacing something else.  You don’t have to read it. You don’t have to comment on it.  You don’t even have to agree with it.  It seems that people enjoy complaining about things they don’t have to complain about.  Also I’m tired of everyone trying to be the snarkiest person in the room.  Leave it alone sometimes, you don’t have to turn everything into a wisecrack.

This is why anonymous commenting should not be allowed on the internet.  I’ve recently evolved to that position, having opposed it for a very long time.  If you are afraid of saying something racist, homophobic, derogatory or stupid, then don’t say it.

I wonder what the comments would have been in 1946, for an article titled “Brooklyn Dodgers sign first black player?”

Smart Suff Goes Here

Hopefully it will not be full of gramer errors, and mispellings.