Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the mandate has been struck down. The control room asks whether they can ‘go with’ it, and after a pause, he says yes.SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein • Looking back at what caused the mistaken reporting of the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision, in a minute-by-minute breakdown. In case you need something very epic to read, here you go — Goldstein’s post, which he claims is his first effort at “real journalism,” is 7,000 freaking words long. Or, you know, longer than the usual article we link. (ht Dave Weigel)
Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.The “money quote” from the individual mandate section of the health care decision, according to SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. wasn’t the only one who choked during the Supreme Court’s health care hearings this past March: Max Mallory remembers ruefully the toll exacted on SCOTUSblog’s servers by Web readers hungry for updates.
“We went from receiving 40,000, 50,000 hits to receiving a million hits in a couple of days,” he said by telephone. “Our servers were overwhelmed. We never went down for an entire day but service slowed so much.”
This morning, the Supreme Court is expected to issue one of its most anticipated opinions since Bush v. Gore, on four points concerning the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Mallory is SCOTUSblog’s deputy manager and the guy responsible for making sure it’s able to handle what promises to be an epic traffic spike.
Yesterday, the blog tweeted this: ”Here we go. 4 more web servers. 5 bloggers. 2 tech teams. $25k for 20 mins. #SCOTUS #ACA #teamlyle” Hope it stays up.
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