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A pretty well-balanced piece from Mike Rappaport:

First, the easiest way to pursue a Bleeding Heart Libertarian approach is to identify and seek to eliminate interferences in the market that operate to harm the poor.   There are many regulations that prevent the provision of services that would benefit the poor as well as other regulations that prevent the poor from being employed.  Many regulations do great harm to the poor by raising prices for goods and services that they could otherwise purchase at cheaper prices, such as regulations involving health care, health insurance, the environment, and zoning, to name just a few.  Other regulations also harm the poor by making it more difficult for them to enter a large number of trades from hair styling to driving taxis.  In addition, there are ineffective public schools in poor neighborhoods that the poor are largely forced to attend, which could otherwise be avoided through the use of vouchers.

Second, there are serious problems created by the social insurance programs that justify their elimination.  These programs, from retirement pensions, to medical care, to unemployment insurance, operate in the main not to benefit the poor, but to transfer funds to the politically powerful, such as the elderly or organized labor.  When one considers just how much is paid by lower income people in payroll taxes for these programs the harm is quite significant.

Via Freakonomics, Felix Salmon proposes just that!

[S]houldn’t the NYT, which can always use a bit of extra revenue, take advantage of the fact that its stories can move markets so much? Not directly: I’m not suggesting that the New York Times Company should start buying out-of-the-money put options on Mexican corporates in advance of its own stories. But how much would hedge funds pay to be able to see the NYT’s big investigative stories during the trading day prior to the appearance of the story? It’s entirely normal, and perfectly ethical, for news organizations, including Reuters, to give faster access to the best-paying customers.

When the Justices aren’t buying your argument, throw the (surprisingly ineffective) SG under the SCOTUS Bus. I wonder who the last SG was to botch so many big cases.

The case recycles last month’s leading Supreme Court advocates in the health care cases, with Paul Clement returning for his role as the Reasonable States-Rights Guy, and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli reprising his role of Sober Gentleman Advocate From Another Era, which at this moment in Roberts Court history feels like a guy who brings a butter dish to a gunfight.

Dahlia Lithwick and Barry Friedman write that it would be improper for the Justices to consider current polling–that overwhelmingly suggests that the mandate is unpopular and unconstitutional (not sure what the relationship between those conclusions is, but I’ll leave that for another time):

The problem with the zeitgeist theory as applied to health care is that there’s all the difference in the world between a zeitgeist many years in the making affecting a string of Supreme Court decisions and the notion that instant polling can reasonably predict or decide one particular case. To the contrary, history suggests that a court trying to catch and ride that zeitgeist wave can easily get knocked over by it, particularly when—as here—there is no room to correct course. In 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court boldly struck down the death penalty throughout the country. According to popular opinion at the time, it didn’t seem like a bad guess. Polls showed support for capital punishment at an all-time low, there were rampant concerns about racism in executions, and several states had either explicitly or de facto abolished the death penalty. Unfortunately for the court, its anti-death penalty decision rapidly became the piñata at the public backlash party. In no time flat, some 35 states and the federal government re-established death penalty laws. When the justices confronted those new laws in the 1976 decision in Gregg v. Georgia, they backpedaled fast. They’ve been backpedaling ever since.

What academics (but not always the popular media) understand is that the zeitgeist usually settles in after a Supreme Court decision, not before it.  If Furman seems like ancient history, consider something surely on the justices’ minds today. They could not have anticipated the strength of the negative public reaction to the Citizens United decision on campaign finance reform. Unfortunately for them, they got the memo only after that decision, too. . .  .

Here’s the risk for the court:  The public may not like the mandate, but when it becomes apparent the choice was mandate or rejection for pre-existing condition (or any other provision of the law the public adores), Johnny and Janie may be really angry at whoever took their health care away. Think about Citizens United again. Who knew the public was so enamored of McCain-Feingold? The answer is no one—until the court showed what life without campaign finance regulations would look like.

It’s hard to predict, of course. But that’s the reason for caution in claiming polls are going to point the way out of this debate.  To hear some in the media tell it, you’d think the justices not only are, but should be, reading the polls to decide this case. That’s the very antithesis of constitutionalism:  reading the latest poll to understand our most long-standing and bindingcommitments.  The justices should keep their day job, and leave the poll numbers to the pollsters.

Today the Senate reauthorizedthe Violence Against Women, but not after another front in the so-called “War on Women.” One of the difficulties of naming any law after a victim is that opposing it becomes the same thing as opposing the victim. Opposing the Violence Against Women Act means that you are in favor of Violence Against Women. It gets so emotional! Al Franken started to cry on the Senate Floor. I mean, this headline from Think Progress, with an ominous-looking picture of Chuck Grassley, says it all–“GOP Tries To Water Down Violence Against Women Act, Expresses Willingness To Tolerate Some Domestic Abuse.” And we are reminded that “All 31 votes against Violence Against Women Act came from Republican men.”

But, this massive law had a lot of provisions that does not deal with violence against women (though I am not judging the value of these other provisions). For example, Eugene Volokh looks at one provision that would outlaw anonymous online speech that is “intended to harass” the person being criticized–it is not limited to women, or violence.

Of course, now the debate moves on to the House of Representatives, or as Think Progress dubs it, “The politicization of domestic violence isn’t over yet, though– the bill now moves onto the House of Representatives, where it’s already been emotionally debated.”

When a law is named after a victim, there can be no meaningful debate over its validity–even when the law is expanded to do more stuff than protect the victim in question.