From the right: ObamaCare Judge Fumbled the Law
ObamaCare was a bad law, “yet we cannot applaud Judge Reed O’Connor’s decision” striking it down, argue the editors of National Review, because he did so on poorly reasoned legal grounds. “His ruling holds that the individual mandate can no longer be constitutionally justified as a tax,” now that Congress has set the “tax” that enforced it at zero. But, the editors note, there is “no longer any individual mandate.” And “the deliberate decision by Congress to eliminate the tax without eliminating the rest of Obamacare,” proves “Congress in 2017 no longer considered it essential to the law,” contra Judge O’Connor. The decision, then, is likely to be overturned on appeal. Meanwhile, the GOP has a new excuse to “continue not working on health care.”
Culture critic: How Politics Killed Comedy
“We are a hot mess in this country when it comes to doing anything together, including laughter,” writes Salena Zito at The Washington Examiner. The reason is that “we are finding fewer and fewer common touchstones that stitch us together.” It wasn’t always thus. In the aftermath of the Depression, Hollywood “understood when Americans were down on their luck, we needed something to pull us all together.” But now any joke is sure to set off PC landmines. Comedians such as Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld have both “said they avoid college-campus bookings because young people can’t take a joke.” That’s an ominous sign, says Zito: “When a comedian stops going to where the young and the traditionally open-minded are, we’ve got a deeper problem than just unfunny movies circulating theaters.”
Religion desk: Orthodox Leader Protests Too Much
“It takes a special kind of chutzpah for the Patriarch of Moscow to complain that his bishops and clergy are being subjected to pressure, intimidation and even ‘persecution’ ” in Ukraine, says John Allen at Crux. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the pro-Kremlin Russian Orthodox Church, made that complaint in a recent letter to various religious leaders, including Pope Francis, amid a push by Ukrainian believers to win recognition for a new Orthodox church that is independent from Moscow. “In reality,” notes Allen, “no one’s ever used the tools of the state to impose religious obedience in Ukraine more brutally or thoroughly than the Russians.” Under the Soviets, Kirill’s church imposed itself on Ukrainians “down the barrel of a gun.” That history makes it “difficult to take the Russians seriously today when they posture as victims.”
Cyber watch: Iran’s Forgotten Attacks
Liberals have spent recent months worrying about cyber-attacks against the US, notes Commentary’s Abe Greenwald, who asks: “Why, then, isn’t there more outrage about Iran’s recent attempt at hacking?” The attack, by a hacking collective known as Charming Kitten, targeted a number of US officials. Liberal media all but ignored the incident, though “experts have convincingly tied Charming Kitten to Iran.” By contrast, the same media treated “memes depicting Jesus Christ and Satan arm wrestling over the fate of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign” as a “sophisticated stealth campaign to undermine our democracy.” Greenwald concludes: “It would be nice if our foreign-policy priorities had more to do with long-standing threats and less to do with discrete bursts of partisan activism.”
Albany vet: Pay-Hike Drama Will Last Months
“The lawsuits have begun, the Capitol is full of seething legislators, and it’s clear this won’t resolve for months,” The Albany Times Union’s Richard Brodsky writes of the brouhaha surrounding the New York State Compensation Committee. And the “root cause” of the crisis “is the cynicism of the committee members, the governor and the Legislature.” They chose to evade the normal “constitutional process for pay decisions,” the legislators because they didn’t want to take political responsibility and Gov. Cuomo because he “saw an opportunity to enhance his power and control of the Legislature by continuing to condition a pay raise on things he wants.” The result: “We are going to be stuck with this mess,” including various lawsuits, “for the foreseeable future — unless the Legislature declares its emancipation and comes back to town and votes a clean pay raise.”
—Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari