Michael Breyer, the Assembly candidate who will duel Phil Ting to represent the segment of San Francisco where people have lawns -- and mow them -- made an announcement today.

The candidate let it be known that this morning's Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare was to his liking. In this, he was not unique; a cavalcade of local politicos sent out triumphal press statements regarding today's announcement. Breyer, however, was the only one who could have titled his release "My Dad Done Good. My Dad Done Real Good."

Sadly, the son of Justice Stephen Breyer didn't do this.

The five-paragraph release is instead titled "Breyer Applauds US Supreme Court for Upholding the Affordable Care Act." And you'd have to read to the end of it to learn that the candidate is "the great-grandson of a San Francisco Supervisor, grandson of the first lawyer for the San Francisco School Board and the son of a Supreme Court Justice." Huh. Seems relevant.


http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2012/06/michael_breyer_agrees_with_his.php#more

All year I listened with glee while my six-year son's kindergarten teacher and after-school instructor told me how wonderful and attentive he was during class. They described him as bright, responsible, excellent in math, ready to help others and always making sure the classroom was clean. What child are they talking about? Every day this summer, I give him a little bit of homework to do to keep his brain active and prepare him for the 1st grade. He goofs off. He argues. He acts like no one gave him any instruction for the past 9 months and he flat-out tells me I am not his teacher. When I told a few days ago that I am responsible for his safety (he was angry I did not let him run across the street with his friends), he said "you're not one of the summer camp volunteers." WTF? Did we actually have twins? Is there a kid who goes home with me and another who goes somewhere else? What do i do?

All year I listened with glee while my six-year son's kindergarten teacher and after-school instructor told me how wonderful and attentive he was during class. They described him as bright, responsible, excellent in math, ready to help others and always making sure the classroom was clean. What child are they talking about? Every day this summer, I give him a little bit of homework to do to keep his brain active and prepare him for the 1st grade. He goofs off. He argues. He acts like no one gave him any instruction for the past 9 months and he flat-out tells me I am not his teacher. When I told a few days ago that I am responsible for his safety (he was angry I did not let him run across the street with his friends), he said "you're not one of the summer camp volunteers." WTF? Did we actually have twins? Is there a kid who goes home with me and another who goes somewhere else? What do i do?

The veteran Democratic congressman might be the winner in New York’s 13th District, but no one really knows.

It’s a bizarre situation that just keeps getting weirder, a strange case of missing precincts, questionable ballots and utter confusion over who’s to blame for the mess and when the race might be settled.

What’s known is this: As of Friday evening, 32 precincts – six percent of all votes cast – had yet to be accounted for. And another 2,447 affidavit ballots and 667 absentee votes hadn’t been counted yet either. According to the city Board of Elections, Rangel’s lead over second-place finisher state Sen. Adriano Espaillat stood at 1,032 votes, with enough outstanding ballots to alter the outcome.

Naturally, the courts are now involved. On Friday, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by the Espaillat campaign, asking it to examine the squirrelly vote-counting process. A hearing is scheduled for Monday.



http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/78044.html

After nearly two weeks on the job, three Chinese astronauts, including Liu Yang, the country’s first female in space, returned to Earth on Friday, capping off China’s longest and most complex space mission, the Associated Press reported.

The highlight of Shenzhou-9’s mission was the three-person crew’s successful docking with the Tiangong-1 orbiting module, a move the AFP characterized as “essential to the process of building a space station.” Tiangong-1 is the foundation for China’s future space station, slated to be ready by 2020.

“Tiangong is our home in space. It’s warm and cozy,” Liu Yang said, shortly after landing. “We are proud of our motherland.”




http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/chinas-first-female-astronaut-returns-from-space/2012/06/29/gJQAEJHfBW_blog.html

A U.S. Anti-Doping Agency review panel recommended moving ahead with doping charges against seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong will be offered the opportunity for a public hearing before a three-person arbitration panel.

Armstrong has said the agency has no evidence to support its accusations and that he could be stripped of his titles. The U.S. Attorney in February ended a criminal investigation into doping allegations against him without pressing charges.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/anti-doping-panel-recommends-charges-against-lance-armstrong.html

The Supreme Court's historic ruling brought sighs of relief to California health officials. In the past months of uncertainty, they’d been bracing for a possible repeal of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act, while at the same time facing looming deadlines for implementing several major provisions of the health reform law.

"This ruling makes it possible for us to complete the work that we’ve started and be ready in January 2014 to begin providing health security to nearly 6 million Californians who are uninsured," said Diana Dooley, secretary of the California Health and Human Services (CHHS) agency, which operates Medi-Cal and a number of other health programs. "We’ve had many starts and stops, and we are now in the full-go mode."

California was first in the nation to begin the complex and expensive process of creating a health care exchange program required and funded by the federal health reform law. The idea is to provide a state-run marketplace that offers a smorgasbord of private health insurance plans to small businesses and to Californians who don’t have employee-sponsored insurance. Low-income residents will get subsidies to help them buy insurance.

"We look forward to making the purchase of insurance through California’s exchange as easy as buying a book on Amazon and shoes on Zappos," said Peter Lee, executive director of the exchange. Lee says by October 2013, Californians will be able to compare and choose plans based on costs and benefits. "And we’re going to be moving full speed ahead to build this marketplace, to make it easier for all Californians to get access to affordable insurance," he said.


http://www.scpr.org/news/2012/06/28/33020/us-supreme-court-ruling-moves-california-forward-p/

When oral arguments ended for the HCR hearing at the Supreme Court and things looked bleak for Obama, a CNN pundit said, "There's no substitute for victory." What he meant was there is no way the president could spin such a huge loss into a positive if the ACA was struck down. Now that Obama won, they are all looking for ways to say that it is a net plus for Romney. Why don't they just come out, be honest and say they want a new president?

Scalia’s dissent, at least on first quick perusal, reads like it was originally written as a majority opinion http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2012/06/evidence-that-the-votes-shifted-after-conference-initial-vote-to-declare-mandate-unconstitutional.html (in particular, he consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg’s opinion as “The Dissent”). Back in May, there were rumors floating around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place, and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate. Did Roberts originally vote to invalidate the mandate on commerce clause grounds, and to invalidate the Medicaid expansion, and then decide later to accept the tax argument and essentially rewrite the Medicaid expansion (which, as I noted, citing Jonathan Cohn, was the sleeper issue in this case) to preserve it? If so, was he responding to the heat from President Obama and others, preemptively threatening to delegitimize the Court if it invalidated the ACA? The dissent, along with the surprising way that Roberts chose to uphold both the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, will inevitably feed the rumor mill.



http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/28/was-scalias-dissent-originally-a-majority-opinion/

They upheld the ACA, said the First Amendment allows one to lie about military honors and struck down mandatory life for minors. I'm now hopeful that Roberts could be our deciding vote to strke down DOMA and Prop 8.