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Politico has the report.

I’ve commended Karlan, who has said that she was not willing to trim her sails for a Washington appointment, so she could perhaps sail through Senate Confirmation. She didn’t compromise at all.

Now, the President has appointed her to an important position, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights, that doesn’t require Senate Confirmation.

Dare I say that Karlan is extremely overqualified for a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. She is really in the ballpark for a Circuit Judge, or at least, an Assistant Attorney General. But, again, this position does not require confirmation.

I’m sure she will do very well in this position.

“Unravel.” What a good name for a book about Obamacare!

Read the entire editorial, titled “Obama Repeals ObamaCare.”

Pulling the thread of the individual mandate also means that the whole scheme could unravel. Waiving ObamaCare rules for some citizens and continuing to squeeze the individual economic liberties of others by forcing them to buy what the White House now concedes is an unaffordable product is untenable. Mr. Obama is inviting a blanket hardship amnesty for everyone, which is what Republicans should demand.

The new political risk that the rules are liable to change at any moment will also be cycled into 2015 premiums. Expect another price spike late next summer. With ObamaCare looking like a loss-making book of business, a public declaration of penance by the insurance industry for helping to sell ObamaCare is long overdue.

The only political explanation for relaxing enforcement of the individual mandate—even at the risk of destabilizing ObamaCare in the long term—is that the White House is panicked that the whole entitlement is endangered. The insurance terminations and rollout fiasco could leave more people uninsured in 2014 than in 2013. ObamaCare’s unpopularity with the public could cost Democrats the Senate in 2014, and a GOP Congress in 2015 could compel the White House to reopen the law and make major changes.

Republicans ought to prepare for that eventuality with insurance reforms beyond the “repeal” slogan, but they can also take some vindication in Thursday’s reversal. Mr. Obama’s actions are as damning about ObamaCare as anything Senator Ted Cruz has said, and they implicitly confirm that the law is quarter-baked and harmful. Mr. Obama is doing through executive fiat what Republicans shut down the government to get him to do.

…

“The basic structure of that law is working, despite all the problems,” Mr. Obama added. His make-it-up-as-he-goes improvisation will continue, because the law is failing.

I doubt Scalia is amused that he was right about this one.

The Constitution’s protection of the individual rights of gay and lesbian citizens is equally dispositive whether this protection requires a court to respect a state law, as in Windsor, or strike down a state law, as the Plaintiffs ask the court to do here. In his dissenting opinion, the Honorable Antonin Scalia recognized that this result was the logical outcome of the Court’s ruling in Windsor:

In my opinion, however, the view that this Court will take of state prohibition of same-sex marriage is indicated beyond mistaking by today’s opinion. As I have said, the real rationale of today’s opinion . . . is that DOMA is motivated by “bare . . . desire to harm” couples in same-sex marriages. How easy it is, indeed how inevitable, to reach the same conclusion with regard to state laws denying same- sex couples marital status.

133 S. Ct. at 2709 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The court agrees with Justice Scalia’s interpretation of Windsor and finds that the important federalism concerns at issue here are nevertheless insufficient to save a state-law prohibition that denies the Plaintiffs their rights to due process and equal protection under the law. 

In any event, the theory of heightened scrutiny that the Plaintiffs advocate is not necessary to the court’s determination of Amendment 3’s constitutionality. The court has already held that Amendment 3 burdens the Plaintiffs’ fundamental right to marriage and is therefore subject to strict scrutiny. And, as discussed below, the court finds that Amendment 3 bears no rational relationship to any legitimate state interests and therefore fails rational basis review. It may be that some laws neither burden a fundamental right nor target a suspect class, but nevertheless impose a discrimination of such unusual character that a court must review a challenge to such a law with careful consideration. But the court’s analysis here does not hinge on that type of heightened review. The court therefore proceeds to apply the well-settled rational basis test to Amendment 3.

…

The Plaintiffs have presented a number of compelling arguments demonstrating that the court should be more skeptical of Amendment 3 than of typical legislation. The law differentiates on the basis of sex and closely resembles the type of law containing discrimination of an unusual character that the Supreme Court struck down in Romer and Windsor. But even without applying heightened scrutiny to Amendment 3, the court finds that the law discriminates on the basis of sexual identity without a rational reason to do so. Because Amendment 3 fails even rational basis review, the court finds that Utah’s prohibition on same-sex marriage violates the Plaintiffs’ right to equal protection under the law.

Remember when Chief Judge Kozinski objected in a class action case involving the Nissan Leaf, even though the case was before a district judge in the Los Angeles? Well, according to a report from Alison Frankel ($), Judge O’Connell has recused.

In Thursday’s order, O’Connell laid out the problem: “(Kozinski), although appearing in his personal capacity, serves as the Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals,” she wrote. “In his professional capacity, the objector sits on panels that decide appeals from this court, makes decisions regarding sitting by designation on the court of appeals, and reviews complaints of judicial misconduct involving district judges within the circuit.” That relationship, she said, might lead to doubts about her impartiality. “For example, if the court were to disapprove the settlement, a reasonable person might question whether the court’s actions were a result of the objector’s participation in the lawsuit,” O’Connell wrote. “If the court were to approve the final settlement, a reasonable person might question whether the court was favoring the other side.” As a result, she said, the canons of judicial conduct required her recusal.

O’Connell is actually the second judge to step aside from the Nissan case after Kozinski surfaced as an objector. U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson, who oversaw the LEAF case through preliminary approval of the settlement, recused himself last month, citing his “social relationship” with objectors and previous discussions with Kozinski about the battery in his LEAF.

Surely not every judge in the 9th Circuit has spoken with Judge Kozinski about his electric car, so Pregerson’s grounds for recusal didn’t seem like a big problem. But every judge in the circuit could cite the same concerns as O’Connell, a former California state court judge and assistant U.S. attorney, who has been on the bench for less than a year. Is there any judge in the 9th Circuit, in other words, who can hear this case?

Judge Kozinski declined my invitation to comment on the recusal. Class counsel Jordan Lurie and Nissan counsel Paul Cauley didn’t get back to me.

Perhaps the President’s “Mission Accomplished” line will be this:

The basic structure of that law is working, despite all the problems.

This reminds me of John McCain’s, “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” line in 2008.