Thursday, December 5, 2013

Chris Matthews: Don’t worry, I’ll include some easier questions when I interview Obama

    Via the Washington Free Beacon, can we trust a guy who compared himself yesterday to a kid on Christmas Eve to ask tough, newsy questions of the president? The whole point of agreeing to a town hall carried by a liberal cable network, with an audience full of college kids, hosted by someone who cops to getting thrills up his leg at Obama’s oratory, is to let O pitch ObamaCare in the most favorable of media environments. He’s playing tee-ball here, by design. They might as well invite him to wear pajamas. Even the “hard” questions are more likely to be along the lines of “Were you disappointed on launch day that your team had failed you?” than “HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE KNOWN?” The fact that Matthews has actually allotted time for questions even he thinks will be easy — as well as a “fun” segment at the end — makes me want to watch in morbid curiosity to see how bad it can get. Will there be any tingles mid-program? What would that look like? Is America, as a society, prepared for it?
As for the audience, I’m betting that the disaffected millennials who want to recall Obama will be grossly underrepresented. One interesting tangent on that, though: How come young adults aged 25-29 are still more or less on O’s side whereas younger adults aged 18-24 have soured on him? Emma Roller has a theory:
Intuitively, you’d think younger millennials would be more supportive of Obama because his health law allows them to stay on their parents’ plan longer for free. Why is it the opposite? My working theory: older millennials are more supportive of the president is because they were around to vote for him in 2008, and so have a more visceral tie to his policies.
I asked IOP pollster-in-chief John Della Volpe if he thought my theory was plausible. He responded, “Not only is that plausible but I agree!” So it may not be so much that the 18-24 set likes Obama less; they just don’t risk their egos as much by not supporting him.
No doubt. Older millennials made the purchase psychologically on Hopenchange; it’d have to fall apart completely before they admit it’s a lemon. Younger millennials aren’t similarly invested. There may be another element, though. Some studies suggest that once a person’s political identity is formed in youth, it remains surprisingly steady for the rest of his or her life. Older millennials aren’t just kids who got suckered by Obama hype, they’re voters who, like most of the rest of America, soured on Bush and the GOP because of Dubya’s second term. Unlike most of the rest of America, though, that pro-Democrat/anti-Republican orientation is more apt to endure in their age group because it developed during a formative age for political awareness. They’re sticking with Obama not just for ego-protection, in other words, but because of bona fide partisan identification. Younger millennials are in a different position, having largely missed the Bush years and picked up politics in the Obama years of economic stagnation. They’re not firmly forged Democrats, unlike their slightly older brothers and sisters. That’s good news for the GOP, even if older millennials are now mostly a lost cause.
Anyway, set your DVRs. Exit question: What would constitute a “hard question” for Obama? Matthews seems to think asking him about NSA surveillance qualifies, which is understandable but … not really true, I think. You know what Obama’s going to say — it’s a delicate balance between freedom and security, no one’s more concerned about privacy than he is, he’s convinced that these programs save lives, etc etc. It’s not a hard question if you can guess the answer in advance. But then, that also goes for my hobbyhorse lately about O violating separation of powers. That’s not a hard subject to spin either: The executive branch has some discretion in how it enforces the law and he’s exercising that discretion in ObamaCare’s transitional period to make the program better for Americans. The art of the hard question is in the follow-up, not the initial ask. We’ll see how Tingles does tonight.

Drones

Political Cartoons by Glenn Foden

Obamacare Lawsuits Mount as Notre Dame Joins Scrum of Opponents

Hours after the University of Notre Dame filed a religious challenge to the U.S. health-care overhaul in Indiana federal court, a judge in Washington heard arguments in a lawsuit assailing tax provisions of the statute.
The cases underscore the persistent and diverse nature of legal attacks on the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act even as the Obama administration struggles to fix bugs in HealthCare.gov, the online marketplace for health insurance created by the measure.
Obamacare litigation continues partly because questions about its legitimacy as a piece partisan legislation are unresolved, said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and an opponent of the act. The statute passed Congress without Republican support in either the House or Senate.
Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll
It doesn’t matter what motivates the plaintiffs bringing those challenges as long as “their legal arguments are sound, because that’s what the courts are looking at,” Shapiro said.
The suit in Washington, in which a federal judge yesterday heard arguments for an immediate verdict, was brought by seven individuals and businesses from six states. At least three similar complaints have been filed in Oklahoma, Virginia and Indiana. All challenge some of the federal government’s authority to offer tax credits to subsidize health insurance for poor people under Obamacare.
Catholic Teaching
The complaint Notre Dame filed yesterday, alleging that the law’s requirement health plans cover birth control violates Roman Catholic teaching, is a re-filing of a lawsuit dismissed in December on procedural grounds.
The Notre Dame case is among 86 lawsuits attacking Obamacare on religious grounds, according to Erin Mersino, trial counsel at the Thomas More Law Center, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, a Christian-based public interest law firm.
Forty-one of the cases involve primarily Catholic nonprofit groups such as Notre Dame and take issue with the birth control mandate, Mersino said. The other 46 were brought by for-profit entities whose owners argue the contraception provision violates their religious freedom, she said.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 26 agreed to hear two cases from the for-profit group involving the craft store chain Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. They, too, claim an exemption from covering employees’ birth control on religious grounds.
First Look
The dispute will be the court’s first look at President Barack Obama’s biggest legislative accomplishment since a majority of the justices upheld the core of the law in 2012.
The court on Dec. 2 declined to hear an appeal by Liberty University, a Virginia school founded by the late evangelical preacher and activist Jerry Falwell, which lost a lower-court case arguing the law’s employer mandate exceeded Congress’s power over interstate commerce.
The suits by nonprofit religious groups are less advanced in the courts because the Obama administration delayed the birth control mandate for a year as it sought an accommodation with them.
While the religious cases have drawn attention because of their number and high-profile plaintiffs such as Notre Dame and the Archdiocese of Washington, they don’t threaten the viability of Obamacare, according to Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and a consumer representative to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

“They’re challenges to one particular part of one particular regulation,” Jost said. “They’re very important cases, but I don’t think they mean much for the Affordable Care Act.”
The tax cases, involving federal subsidies to people shopping for insurance on government-run marketplaces, or exchanges, present a “significant challenge” to the law because, if successful, they could prevent millions of people from buying coverage, Jost said.
Plaintiffs in those suits argue the language of the health- care legislation allows subsidies only for people using state- run exchanges, not the federal government’s.
Thirty-three states, including Ohio, Texas and Florida, declined to set up exchanges.
“No legitimate method of statutory construction would interpret the phrase ‘established by the state’ in the ACA’s subsidy provisions to mean ‘‘established by the state or federal government,’’ according to a brief filed by plaintiffs in the case argued yesterday in Washington.
Congressional Intent
That argument will probably fail because courts look on laws as a whole, not narrow slices of language, and ‘‘it’s clear Congress meant for the federal exchanges to be treated the same as the states’ exchanges,” Jost said.
Shapiro, of the Cato Institute, said the tax credit cases could “have legs.”
“There’s a very strong technical argument that the challengers are bringing,” Shapiro said. “It’s not some sort of glitch or scriveners’ error. Congress wanted to incentivize states to create these exchanges.”
At least one other case challenges the Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it violates the Constitution’s origination clause, which requires revenue-raising measures to originate in the House, not the Senate.
Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington in June rejected that argument as made by Matt Sissel, an Iowa man, concluding the challenged bill originated in the House even if it was completely rewritten by the Senate.
The cases are Notre Dame University v. Sebelius, 3:13- cv-01276, U.S. District Court, North District of Indiana (South Bend), and Halbig v. Sebelius, 13-cv-00623, U.S District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

CartoonsTrashyDemsRinos