In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn’t comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.

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…or so says my Sun Media colleague Lorrie Goldstein:

“Obviously my QMI colleague Warren Kinsella, the Prince Loki of Liberalism, intuitively understands this, which is why he’s been pushing a Trudeau candidacy.

Based on the Abacus poll of 1,008 adults from June 20-23, it’s not hard to see why.”

Nice. Thanks, Lorrie. You and Bono are the Jabba the Hut and Snidely Whiplash of Conservatism, respectively, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Goldstein – who, like all Rightist Sun pundits, is completely obsessed with my good looks, superior intellect and much larger paycheque, and can’t stop writing about me – got it right on my abs, however. This is what they look like, girls. Washboard city. Swear.

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Like this. Also, who follows him.

Life is funny.

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Great Summer poppiness. Bit of Stealers Wheel riffage at start, which is never bad.

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The best thing about this story is that it’s in the Caledon Citizen. Take that, Parliamentary Press Gallery!

Okay, Reformatory and Dipper commenters, start posting dozens of over-the-top remarks about how Justin doesn’t worry you at all, not at all, and how you are simply genuinely worried for Grits who favour Justin. Go!

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Here.

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From the Swedish mop tops’ latest waxing.  Saw ’em last night, for about the hundredth time.  They’re still the best live performers in rock’n’roll.  Why they aren’t bigger than the Stones is beyond me.

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…received via email, this morn. There’s a link, too, wherein one thing explains the other.

I guess.

Deborah Coyne @DebCoyne is now following you (@kinsellawarren).

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Radio Canada International’s shortwave service was, quite literally, Canada’s voice to the world for nearly seventy years – through wars, through triumphs and disasters, through it all. It has literally been part of our history. When I was an election observer in Bosnia in 1996, billeted with a Serbian family, I was glued to my tiny shortwave radio at nights. I’d listen to the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the news from back home, and I was pretty grateful that RCI existed.

You may not know it, because so many of you are in Canada or Internet-dependent, but RCI went off the shortwave airwaves this week. Last night, my sons and I actually pulled over to the side of the road to listen to RCI’s Marc Montgomery say goodbye.  Even for my youngest son, it was emotional.

Why should you care? Does it matter? It matters. Billion-dollar fighter jets and super jails, before a pittance for a radio station that subtly promoted democracy, and decency, around the world. In small but undeniable ways, the Conservatives are chipping away at the notion of what Canada was, and what it is. It is thoughtless, it is ideological, it is done without any appreciation of our history or our shared culture: the Harper regime are denuding us of the things that make us uniquely Canadian. To ourselves, and to the world.

I urge you to watch this man saying goodbye to RCI. By the very end of it, I suspect some of you will be left feeling as I did – namely, hating the guts of some of the bastards in this “government,” and determined to do something about it.

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