Stumble of the Week

Mitt Romney. John Roberts persuaded the Supreme Court’s “liberal bloc” to uphold Romneycare, limit the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause, and put a “strict constructionist” stamp on the decision . . . and Romney is still complaining. What does it take to satisfy the man? Standing in front of a sign that read “Repeal and Replace,” he pledged to repeal the act on his first day in office. And replace? Surprisingly, he was a bit vague on those details. Roberts is being compared to a lot of things this morning, but no one has yet mentioned John Marshall, the Chief Justice who established the doctrine of judicial review in a case that appeared to hand a significant victory to his arch-rival, Thomas Jefferson, but actually protected the prerogative of the court. Broccoli. The futures market collapsed when it became clear that we were not going to be forced either to buy or eat it, even though it is good for us. Only Antonin Scalia and Rush Limbaugh continued to insist that the ruling could be so construed.

CNN famously got it wrong, announcing that the individual mandate had been overturned (which it actually had under the commerce clause). Meanwhile, the rest of the world appeared to stand still yesterday, as the American media ignored it for Obamacare. Of course, the rest of the world has never understood how its richest country can provide such lousy health coverage at so great a cost. Yesterday was an important first step toward fixing that.