Supreme Court upholds Obamacare individual mandate as a tax

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court's swing vote, dissented, reading from the bench that he and three conservative justices believe "the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
Twenty six states sued over the law, arguing that the individual mandate, which requires people to buy health insurance or face a fine starting in 2014, was unconstitutional. Opponents cast the individual mandate as the government forcing Americans to enter a market and buy a product against their will, while the government countered that the law was actually only regulating a market that everyone is already in, since almost everyone will seek health care at some point in his or her life.
Before oral arguments in March, polls of Supreme Court experts and scholars showed that most believed the mandate would be upheld as an exercise of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce. But after justices seemed deeply skeptical of the mandate in oral arguments in March, the consensus flipped, with most experts guessing the court would strike down the law.
House Republicans have vowed to repeal the entire law, though it's unlikely the Democratic-controlled Senate would let that happen, and this decision will most likely slow momentum for that move.
In a victory for President Barack Obama, the Supreme Court decided to uphold his signature health care law's individual insurance mandate in a 5-4 decision, upending speculation after hostile-seeming oral arguments in March that the justices would overturn the law. The mandate has been upheld as a tax, according to SCOTUSblog, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberal wing of the court. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog says Roberts' vote "saved' the Affordable Care Act.

Though the sweeping, 1,000-page plus law passed more than two years ago, much of it will not go into effect until 2014. That's when states will have to set up their own health insurance exchanges, Medicaid will be expanded by 16 million low-income people, and Americans will have to buy health insurance (for many, with a government subsidy) or pay a penalty of 1 percent of their income to the IRS. Employers who have more than 50 employees and don't offer insurance will also begin to face a penalty. Insurers will no longer be able to turn away people with preexisting conditions, or charge people higher premiums based on their gender or health.
Only about 6 percent of the population will actually be required to buy health insurance or face a tax under the mandate, since most people already have coverage or will get it through Medicare, according to the Urban Institute.
Many of the more popular provisions of the law have already gone into effect, including a regulation saying insurers have to let children stay on their parents' plans until they are 26 years old, which 2.5 million Americans have already taken advantage of. Insurers can also no longer turn away children with preexisting conditions, and sick uninsured people can buy coverage in high-risk pools set up by the government.
Despite this intentional front-loading of consumer friendly, popular provisions of the law, the American public is pretty evenly split on the law's benefit. Slightly more people wanted the Supreme Court to strike down the law than uphold it in a recent poll.

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Beckham left out of Britain Olympics squad

LONDON (Reuters) - David Beckham has been omitted from Britain's Olympic soccer squad in a blow for the former England captain's dreams of crowning his career in style.

The Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder had been widely expected to win selection as one of the three over-age players in Stuart Pearce's Under-23 squad for the London Games in July and August.
"Naturally I am very disappointed, but there will be no bigger supporter of the team than me," Beckham, 37, said in quotes relayed by his spokesman on Thursday.
British media reports said Manchester United's long-serving Welsh winger Ryan Giggs, Wales striker Craig Bellamy and Manchester City right back Micah Richards, who missed out on England's Euro 2012 campaign, had been chosen.
An official explanation for coach Pearce's decision has yet to be issued by the Football Association (FA).
The FA will hand a final team list to the British Olympic Association (BOA) early next week.
"As with every sport, player selection is the responsibility of the National Governing Body, the coaches and performance personnel," a BOA statement said.
"With respect to men's football, the BOA has not yet received from The FA the list of players who are being nominated for Team GB, so we cannot confirm who is, and is not, under consideration for the side. We are expecting the list no later than the early part of next week."
Beckham, who has played for Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan in a glittering career, was watched by Pearce during a recent match for the Galaxy and was included in his initial 35-man squad.
Beckham told reporters last month: "I don't want to be picked on a shirt sale or a stadium filler. I want to be picked because of what I can bring to the team."
Beckham was England's most capped outfield player with 115 appearances but has not played for the national team since 2009.
The world famous trend-setter now misses the chance to captain an England side at World Cup, European Championship and Olympic level.
OLYMPIC AMBASSADOR
LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe said he would now discuss a "Games time role" with the globally recognized sports figure who played a role in London winning the Olympics.
Beckham has been used extensively in the buildup to the event and helped to bring back the flame from Greece.
"David has been an extraordinary supporter, probably our number one supporter, of the Games from the very beginning and is keen to continue his enthusiastic support right to the end," said Coe.
"He really gets this. He is from East London and knows how important the Games and sport are to young people.
"He is a great role model and we are lucky to have such an advocate. I will be talking to him about a Games time role."
As a result of the decision to leave Beckham out of the Team GB football squad, odds have been slashed for him to light the Olympic cauldron. British bookmakers Ladbrokes quoted odds of 5/1.
Critics, who believe football has an uneasy place in the Games because of the vast sums of money professionals earn, have said they would be uncomfortable with the Olympics becoming a "David Beckham show".
The Olympic soccer tournament, originally designed for amateurs but now the only Games event to have an age limit, is not so highly regarded in Europe where the World Cup and European Championship are seen as the elite tests.
Olympic football is popular among South American players, however.
Hosts Britain, taking part in their first Olympic soccer finals since 1960, will kick off their bid for gold against Senegal at Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium on July 26.
The Welsh Football Association, along with the Scots and Northern Irish, have been concerned that the inclusion of their players in a rare British squad for the Games could affect their soccer independence but football's world governing body FIFA has tried to allay their fears.

Clint Eastwood – "Scraps of Hope"

The following piece was originally published in the September/October 1992 Film Comment under the title "Scraps of Hope." I don’t find much to add to it, particularly (and obviously) since Clint Eastwood hasn’t made a Western since Unforgiven and the piece occupies itself exclusively with that form. That’s not to say he’s been finished making great films. A Perfect World and The Bridges of Madison County, especially, were major films by any measure. And True Crime does have an aromatic resemblance to El Dorado.
     First as an actor, then as an actor-producer and actor-director, Clint Eastwood has helped extend and re-imagine the Western with startling persistence and consistency throughout his career. His gunfighter heroes are distinct from the detectives who comprise the other key facet of his iconography. "Dirty Harry" Callahan and his ilk belong to institutions that no longer live up to their responsibilities; they are perpetually at war, trying to figure out how far one can go in fulfilling one’s responsibilities without betraying them in the process. Eastwood’s gunmen – in his work as an actor-director, at least – enjoy no such organized backing. His Westerners are loners, outcasts, and outlaws who have to forge some coherent ethical code in a world dominated by hypocritical adherence to money, power, and force, and defined by an implacable landscape. Unforgiven is the harsh, brilliant, culmination, indeed consummation, of themes, motifs, characterizations, and critical attitudes that have evolved in Clint Eastwood’s Westerns for more than 30 years.
     In the mid Fifties, Eastwood had been slowly and unspectacularly working his way toward featured player status in a handful of films (including three Westerns: The First Traveling Saleslady, Star in the Dust, Ambush at Cimarron Pass) and had made guest appearances on TV's Wagon Train and Maverick. His first career breakthrough came with his casting as Rowdy Yates, the second lead on CBS-TV's Rawhide series. Though his stint on Rawhide ran seven years, from January 1959 to January 1966, it has been treated as a career footnote – merely the means of giving him enough visibility to attract the attention of Sergio Leone after the Italian director had failed to land bigger names for A Fistful of Dollars. Yet the very fact that Eastwood achieved his lasting fame with ferocious subversions of Western conventions lends a special significance to the seven years he spent playing by the rules.
     Besides, Western stars have always tended to establish their physical images early in their careers and hew to them forever after, as physical reflections of moral character. It was in Rawhide that Eastwood adopted the flat-crowned, wide-brimmed hat that would remain his trademark. Although he claims to have chosen that particular style for the disappointingly mundane reason that he needed something to shade his sun-sensitive eyes, the hat had an immediate and sustained impact on his screen character as well. The brim didn't just protect Eastwood's eyes from the sun, it hid them from the audience. Rowdy Yates, young and affable and even somewhat naive, became, as a result, also something of an unknown quantity, guarded in his glances and in his attitude.
     Eastwood explains that the idea behind Rawhide was to make a television series out of Red River, with the cattle drives from Texas to Abilene providing the structural spine for each week's episode. Moreover, just as Eric Fleming's trail boss Gil Favor was a kind of paterfamilias like Red River's Thomas Dunson, Rowdy Yates's semi-rebellious ramrod echoed Matthew Garth, Dunson's adopted son – or, perhaps more to the point, Cherry Valance, the young gunfighter who became Garth's friend and somewhat sinister double.
     Like Garth and Valance, Rowdy is proud of his quick draw; like Valance specifically, he has a temper as quick as his hand, and carries a strong air of menace. And whereas Matthew Garth had, through his adopted father's patrimony, a vested interest in the cattle he herded to market and in the land where they were bred, Yates, like Valance, is a hired hand without ties to the land.

Kentucky Father Arrested After Son Left in Hot Car

A Kentucky father has been arrested for allegedly leaving his 2-year-old son inside a hot car parked outside his office.
Kenneth Robinson, 31, told police he got distracted Monday and drove straight to work instead of dropping off the boy at daycare. The toddler was strapped in the backseat as the temperature hit 100 degrees in the car in London, Ky. One of Robinson's co-workers noticed the boy more than two hours later and made a frantic call to police.
"I need an ambulance at Patton-Chestnut and Binder ASAP. A child was left in the car," the co-worker said. "Is he breathing? Is he breathing? Yes, he's breathing."
Witnesses say the boy was alert in the backseat, but his face was red before being rushed to the hospital. Robinson told police it was a terrible mistake.
This is not an uncommon story during the hot summer months. A Massachusetts woman was charged last week with reckless endangerment for leaving her 5-month-old niece in the car for hours. The baby survived.
Thirty-three children died of hypothermia in the United States last year after being left in a vehicle; six have already died this year. Half of the children were forgotten in the vehicle by a caregiver.
Brenda Slaby of Ohio left her 2-year-old daughter baking in a car for eight hours in 2008. The temperature reached 140 degrees in the car and killed the little girl.
"I know I can't blame myself because I know I didn't consciously do this. I know that," Slaby said.
Robinson's story didn't end in tragedy and he pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday. Robinson faces a felony charge of wanton endangerment and is due back in court Tuesday for a preliminary hearing.
Technology is available to parents to make sure they never leave a child behind. There's a free app called "Baby Reminder," which allows parents to set alerts that you're driving with your child.
Then, there are more basic reminders such as always looking around your car before locking the doors, or use memory triggers like keeping a teddy bear in the front seat when your child is in the backseat.

Whitney Houston

Well, this is just sad, tragic, horrible. Celebrity life can’t be easy and for some it’s fatal. They found Whitney Houston in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton, according to this story (comprehensive, but it relies rather a great deal on the phrase “it has been claimed.” Is that what you call an attribution?). One story said a hairdresser, a stylist and two bodyguards were in the room with her, and another story said she was traveling with a large entourage. It doesn’t sound like anyone was really looking out for her, though. The L.A. Times said she was acting erratically:
“The visibly bloated singer displayed erratic behavior throughout the afternoon -- flailing her hands frenetically as she spoke to Brandy and Monica, skipping around the ballroom in a child-like fashion and wandering aimlessly about the lobby. It was mentioned by a Grammy staffer that security personnel received calls of the singer doing handstands by the pool.”
Someone could argue that we are too celebrity-focused and shouldn’t focus on the death of just one (very famous) person when, for example, people are being slaughtered in Syria. But that’s not how we’re built. People like Whitney Houston aren’t strangers to us. This is like Michael Jackson all over again. The two biggest pop stars of the 1980s — right? — are gone. Very sad.
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Another sad story, but one I am eager to read: Katherine Boo’s new book, “Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.” Great piece here in TNR about it. It’s an unflinching look at extreme poverty in India. Kate is an old friend — she used to be here at the Post, and won a Pulitzer as an investigative reporter. She’s a special journalist, unusually empathetic, completely fearless, and deft at the keyboard. Janet Maslin says of this book that a comparison to Dickens is not unwarranted.
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The one thriving part of the newspaper industry is Stories About The Washington Post. Here’s the latest.
Oh, and here’s a really sad (but hilarious) (but mostly sad) story about (mostly bad) writing on the web, by Michael Kinsley.