The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hold oral arguments in two cases (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius) challenging the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurance plans cover contraception. But with the Court's precedents and the legislative history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) seemingly in the […]

Among the many disturbing arguments in John Roberts' Voting Rights Act (VRA) decision, the most pernicious may be his invention of the "equal sovereignty" doctrine. In his Shelby County majority opinion, the Chief Justice struck down the VRA's Section 4 formula for determining which jurisdictions must be subject to "preclearance" in part because the VRA […]

God, it is often said, works in mysterious ways. Just ask Mike Huckabee. After all, the Baptist minister turned Arkansas governor turned Fox News host responded to the Supreme Court's marriage equality decisions this week by lamenting, "Jesus wept." But back in 2008, Huckabee had a different reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 that […]

During his confirmation hearings in 2005, John Roberts made three promises to the American people. Less than a decade later, he's broken them all. For starters, the future Chief Justice proclaimed his fidelity to precedent, a commitment he shattered so quickly that a Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) lamented he and his colleagues had been "hoodwinked." […]

Until this week, Republican Congressman Steven Palazzo of Mississippi's Katrina ravaged 4th district was best known for his opposition to federal aid for New York and New Jersey in the wake of super storm Sandy. Now thanks to his partnership with Florida Senator and 2016 GOP White House hopeful Marco Rubio, Palazzo will be known […]

By all indications, conservatives on the United States Supreme Court are preparing give the Voting Rights Act (VRA) thumbs down. Echoing his question four years ago in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder, lifelong VRA foe turned Chief Justice John Roberts asked again on Wednesday whether people in the South are more racist than […]

As the Obama administration and Congress ponder their responses to the slaughter in Newtown, Connecticut, one of the central tensions in the American system of government is once again coming to the fore. That is, the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution's Bill of Rights are neither absolute nor in harmony with each other. For example, […]

In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, the greatest threat to enabling health insurance for 30 million uninsured Americans may come not from Republicans in Congress, but in the states. With the Court's ruling that the federal government cannot penalize states who refuse to accept the expansion of Medicaid, Republican […]

In February 2009, President Obama delivered what Steve Benen rightly described as the largest two-year tax cut in American history. Nevertheless, the New York Times asked in the run-up to the 2010 midterms, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" What happened, of course, was the Democrats' drubbing […]

Within days of the passage of President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010, Senate Minority Mitch McConnell declared, "I think [our] slogan will be 'repeal and replace', 'repeal and replace.'" But now that the Supreme Court has largely upheld the dreaded Obamacare, Republicans have yet to decide what to replace it with. While […]