Live by judges, die by judges
News:

"The fact is that the legislative record provides little indication one way or the other of congressional intent, but the statutory text does. (It) plainly makes subsidies available only on exchanges established by states. And in the absence of any contrary indications, that text is conclusive evidence of Congress’s intent," wrote the two judges in the majority, Thomas Griffith and Arthur Randolph, both appointed by Republican presidents.

"To hold otherwise would be to say that enacted legislation, on its own, does not command our respect — an utterly untenable proposition," their opinion said.

The panel's dissenting judge Harry Edwards, appointed by Democratic president Jimmy Carter, said the majority's judgment "defies the will of Congress and the permissible interpretations of the agencies to whom Congress has delegated the authority to interpret and enforce the terms of the ACA."

Let's see if we can untangle this. Romneycare is an R law, partly written by R Heritage Foundation and implemented by R Romney, and rebranded as a D law by D Obama for unknown idiotic reasons.

In this "decision", Satan with a red dress on disapproves of the R law rebranded as a D law, while Satan with a blue dress on approves of the R law rebranded as a D law.

Yes, makes perfect sense if you're 100 light years beyond insane, or if you're a DC alien.



In pure practical terms, I'm happy to see every obstacle placed in the path of this Wall Street monstrosity. Anything that makes life difficult for these thieves who are stealing half my income and giving nothing in return is good. Anything that creates a headache for Wall Street and DC is good. Anything that drops the share price of the evil monopolistic corporations who wrote this to create a windfall for themselves is good.

In more abstract terms, pretending for a moment that it might be possible in some mysterious alternate universe to treat any of this shit as remotely resembling law or logic:

When I write code, whether it's C or Python or JS, I don't assume that a bizarre collection of black-robed weirdnesses will magically fix it. Instead, I have to make sure that the code works in Firefox and IE and Chrome and all the other places where it might run. If it looks wrong in IE, I have to find a way to make it work properly in IE.

Legislators should do the same. If their laws do not run properly on some of the exchanges that were intended by the law, it's up to the legislators to rewrite the law so it does run properly in all the situations where it's supposed to run.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WOULD EVEN FUCKING WANT TO TRUST YOUR PRODUCT TO A BIZARRE COLLECTION OF BLACK-ROBED ALIEN WEIRDNESSES.
  ¶ 9:41 AM