The wise general does not always march forth and capture a city, even one of great strategic importance, if he knows his forces are unlikely to hold it against the inevitable counterattack. He may be better off taking only the territory he has a good chance of holding on to.
P.S. And see this Sun-Tzu-citing Will Wilkinson analysis.
“Government is just another word for the things we do together, like setting up staged drug buys at a concert venue, then arresting the venue’s owner, imprisoning him, and taking his property from him because he didn’t do enough to stop the staged drug buys.” [Radley Balko]
“For those of us who oppose the Affordable Care Act as a policy matter, this is a bad day,” [Georgetown law professor Randy] Barnett said. “For those of us in this fight to preserve the limits of constitutional government, this is not a bad day.” [Ezra Klein; more from Prof. Barnett at Daily Beast] Similarly, at more length: Sean Trende, RCP via Tom Smith, Right Coast. Contrasting views: Ilya Shapiro, Philadelphia Inquirer (“an unfortunate convergence of two unholy strains of constitutional jurisprudence: liberal activism and conservative pacifism”); Ramesh Ponnuru (“The resulting law may be a better one than Congress wrote. It is not, however, the law that Congress wrote.”).
And here is a podcast from the Cato Institute with colleagues Roger Pilon, Ilya Shapiro, Trevor Burrus, Michael Cannon, and Michael Tanner:
And a video interview with Trevor Burrus here. Don’t forget, if you didn’t check in on it at the time, yesterday’s periodically updated Twitter-scroll post with (at last count) 43 tweets and dozens of links to relevant posts and resources.
Wow. Now even fortune cookies have warnings. @WalterOlson @Overlawyered twitter.com/Turkewitz/stat…
— Eric Turkewitz (@Turkewitz) June 26, 2012
For the real reaction and analysis, you should check with my expert Cato colleagues here and here and (Ilya Shapiro) here. Here are a few additional things I had to say on Twitter, in reverse chronological order (with occasional, but not continuous, updating):
Yet more “cheer up, conservatives” readings, these from @NRO: [Garnett] [Whelan]
Roberts, Kennedy “delivered victory to the right in the one [battle] that mattered” [Scocca via Moller]
James Fallows: Constitution means whatever 19 of 21 con law profs say it means [Bernstein]
RT @davidfrum Randy Barnett’s Win
Why didn’t style-stickler Scalia clean up “majority status” scraps? Daring @David_M_Wagner theory: there wasn’t time
RT @Sam_Schulman look forward to Variorum Edition. RT @jpodhoretz: @Sam_Schulman @walterolson It’s a palimpsest! ?#dissent
Why’d the dissent need to include a big discussion of severability? Another fossil record of former majority-opinion status?
RT @PunditReview Great news, @walterolson will join us Sunday evening at 7:30 on WRKO to discuss the Obamacare ruling. #awesome #mapoli [Update: podcast here]
RT @Popehat Masterful rebuke to a comment troll MT @walterolson Bitch you in MY HOUSE NOW!
Balkinization blog entitled to victory lap for identifying path to today’s ruling;
Hee hee. “Romney website: ‘Mitt will nominate judges in the mold of CJ Roberts’” [@Jamie_Weinstein]
Commenter: Nyaah nyaah, you @overlawyered types say you’re anti-litigation but favored suit vs. ObamaCare. My response;
RT @robinmarty: It’s good that ACA is upheld, since there are some folk at CNN who will need insurance not tied to their employers soon…
“It now falls to Congress…” My colleague Roger Pilon on today’s ruling [Real Clear Politics]
What gets lost in today’s “tax but not a tax” ruling: political accountability [@mfcannon] [Bader]
Here’s a 6/20 prediction from @jtlevy calling it closer than anyone I’ve seen (via Virginia Postrel)
Stop beating on Roberts, he’s living up to “conservative minimalist” billing [Adler] [Ted Frank]
Randy Barnett: Cheer up, both federalism and enumerated powers doctrine did well today [SCOTUSblog]
Roberts avoided confrontation w/prevailing academic gestalt of feds’ Commerce Clause power [@lsolum]
More on “tax power yes, commerce power no” [Epstein] [@ishapiro] [Kerr]
Did Roberts chop down the broccoli stalk, or could it grow back as “tax”? [Somin] [@ProfBainbridge]
Evidence that Scalia’s Obamacare dissent drafted as majority opinion before a Roberts switch [Solum]
Cheer up: at least Roberts chopped down the broccoli stalk & bolstered states against feds [John Steele Gordon]
A tax, yet a non-tax: why court didn’t invoke Anti-Injunction Act to toss challenge [Tejinder Singh, @SCOTUSblog]
RT @TCBurrus Another Justice Roberts is now the new switch in time that saved nine. #SCOTUS #healthcare
RT @JasonKuznicki Americans: Pay this tax or buy a private company’s product. Corporatism at its worst, cheered on by the left. #aca
Roger Pilon: Ruling only a bump in road [@CatoInstitute] Legal battle’s just begun [Adler/Cannon]
RT @CatoInstitute Unhappy with today’s #SCOTUS decision on #ObamaCare? Watch this video on how states can refuse to go along with it
Per Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog, Roberts reasoning on Commerce Clause is super-narrow, won’t help the libertarian side much in future cases.
Exploding-cigar ad hominem argument of the day: RT @MaxKennerly Has John Roberts gone even a minute in his life without health insurance?
The clouded crystal ball: “Why Chief Justice Roberts Won’t Side with the Liberals on Obamacare” [on @NRO yesterday]
@sethmnookin I’m not convinced achievements are as big a motivator as “stop our evil opponents” outrage, which Roberts undercut (for Dems).
Can’t say I’m surprised at ACA. With rare exceptions, the Court behaves as a small-c conservative institution.
Republican outlook for November just got big boost. So maybe Jeff Toobin’s right to claim Roberts looks after GOP interests.
RT @@NYDNHammond Robertscare
RT @Hudsonette: haha RT @delrayser: CONVENE THE DEATH PANELS!
Tom Goldstein of @SCOTUSBlog predicts Court will uphold ACA
“Liberals shouldn’t defend FDR’s attacks on the Court” [Megan McArdle]
“All indications are Dems planning all out assault on the court if it overturns PPACA” Don’t, says @toddeberly
RT @macrmccoy I love Web 2.0. RT @ABAJournal: Obama Will Learn Fate of Health Care Law Through SCOTUSblog, Media
“Judicial activism!” placards all made up. Now the only question is which side to hand them to come 10 a.m. [Alt]
Randy Barnett thanks those who made the SCOTUS ObamaCare challenge possible [@VolokhC]
RT @santaclaralaw #healthcarereform? Randy Barnett interview with Politico: You can find it here. #sculaw
A little while back, Mayor Bloomberg’s crew in New York City floated a trial balloon about restricting liquor sales, pursuant to the now-familiar “public health” rationale. After meeting with instant public outrage in that entertainment-intensive city, the idea was quickly scrapped. Perhaps it is sheer coincidence that scholars at the mayorally endowed Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University are now helping to promote proposed measures in Baltimore cracking down on liquor stores, which Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has now endorsed. One initiative would close approximately 100 of the city’s liquor stores; another would ban stores with a substantial liquor business (20 percent or more of sales) from selling any item to minors, such as milk or batteries. Among stores targeted by the city for uncompensated closure is one that was voted “Best Wine Store” by City Paper readers a few years ago: “Health and planning officials are targeting stores that they say are in mostly poor neighborhoods and are a public health nuisance because they have been linked to violent crimes. … But at least four of the five stores in north Baltimore are longtime businesses, whose owners say they are in relatively crime-free communities and get along with their residential neighbors,” notes the Sun. More advocacy for the bans here (columnist Dan Rodricks suggests owners transform some of the shuttered stores into “bakeries or small restaurants”) and here (“Park Heights Renaissance” group).
Maryland blogger Tom Coale (HoCoRising) responds:
As I’ve said many times before, these laws that appear facially valid and high-minded almost always end up with unintended consequences. In this case, I can certainly foresee a 15 year old being prohibited from buying his family food while his two parents are at work, and having no where else to make this small part of their family unit work. There are some exemptions to address this, but I can’t see this Council considering every circumstance across Baltimore. If you don’t want kids at liquor stores, work on building the business community and rehabilitating neighborhoods.
Following up on our Monday posts: in an Ars Technica column, prominent Internet-law expert blogger and lawprof Eric Goldman considers the Massachusetts’ federal judge’s ruling “a bad ruling. Really terrible.” And it’s at odds, he says, with a long series of earlier decisions that had rejected the idea of websites as a “public accommodation” for purposes of the ADA.
In response, lawprof and prominent ADA advocate Sam Bagenstos says precedent in the First Circuit (which covers Massachusetts) is relatively favorable to the public-accommodation theory. And, he says, the federal government’s lawyers have long been committed to the position that the Web is a public accommodation subject to the ADA — which falls into the ever-popular category of “reassurances that leave me less reassured than ever.”
Learn to eat lionfish, advised officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in a recent publicity campaign: not only is it tasty, but you’ll be combating an exotic-species invasion that is endangering reefs. Oops! “Of 194 fish tested, 42 percent showed detectable levels of ciguatoxin and 26 percent were above the FDA’s illness threshold of 0.1 parts per billion.” [MSNBC] Ciguatoxin, common in reef predators, is a naturally occurring toxin that can cause neurological disorientation and a variety of other nasty effects.
Gotta watch out for the suspect’s face, let your guard down and all of a sudden he’s using it to go after your knuckles [Scott Greenfield]