Obamacare and the Supreme Court

The personal mandate clause of Obamacare is up before the Supreme Court beginning today. A good article on the Democrat Party's other dealings with the Court. From Roll Call:

Supreme Court Ruffles Democrats� Feathers
When the Supreme Court begins to deliberate President Barack Obama�s signature health care law Monday, it will serve as a bitter reminder to Democrats of the blows leveled at their causes by the conservative Roberts court.

Though the outcome of the high-profile case reviewing the constitutionality of the health care law�s marquee feature, the individual mandate, is unknown, plenty of other decisions have given Democrats pause or even rallied them to battle with the court in ways rarely seen before.

Perhaps no moment encapsulated the tension between the Democratic agenda and the court�s decisions more than the first nationally televised spat between a sitting president and a sitting Supreme Court justice.

�With all due deference to separation of powers ... the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections,� Obama said in his 2010 State of the Union address of the controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee�s ruling in front of a joint Congress, a national audience � and most of the Supreme Court.

�Not true,� a stunned Justice Samuel Alito could be seen mouthing to the president on camera.

Cooking up a big bowl of popcorn and sitting back to watch this one. It will be interesting to see if Justices Kagan and Sotomayor recuse themselves as both of them worked on components of Obamacare before being appointed to their Supreme Court positions.