Your Supreme Court Health Care Liveblog of the Century

The Supreme Court will announce at 10 a.m. whether America is allowed to have health care ever again. Haven't we gotten spoiled, America? We don't need health care. What we need is more personal liberty to destroy ourselves and not pay for it. We needmore of that.Let's see what the naked Scalia monster god decides today. Our bet is... uphold 6-3! No... strike down mandate 5-4? Strike down everything 9-0, there we go. Now let's liveblog a few hours of the teevee, and Twitter.

9: 46 -- The cable news channels have all the latest "legal chatter," and it goes WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK WANK.

9: 52 -- Our liveblog will mostly be straight copy-pasted from SCOTUSblog's liveblog. (We will have wacky pictures though? Ehh...) Anyway one of the dudes over there says, he says, "The Court will start at 10am, but we don't expect to get the Healthcare decision until around 10: 15. That is because it is likely that the Court will announce its decision in two other pending cases before it gets to Health Care." Fifteen more minutes of waiting is bullshit; going back to bed.

9: 55 -- Some people have said that if the Court overturns the whole law, then it would be partially Democrats' fault for not ever explaining it well enough. Got that? It would be Democrats' fault if Antonin Scalia & co. decided to go insane and break 70 years of precedent.

10: 00 -- Wolf Blitzer: "The fate of health care reform, the health care law that the president signed in 2010... will be determined. In a few minutes, the entire world will know." Show some tit already, Wolf.

10: 03 -- Ha whoa, the Supreme Court justaffirmed a Ninth Circuit ruling. (Gay). They threw out the Stolen Valor Act, a funny thing about wearing someone else's military medals.

10: 08 -- CNN's initial report from inside the Court: MANDATE GOES DOWN.

10: 10 -- Ben Smith's twatter: "Wait: AP and CNN just reported opposite outcomes." Oh come on.

10: 11 -- SCOTUSblog: "#SCOTUS upholds #ACA individual mandate." CNN still hasn't corrected itself. Or SCOTUSblog hasn't. This is awful, reporters.

10: 12 -- "NBC's Pete Williams: Supreme Court upholds health care law." 

10: 13 -- Ha ha ha, CNN completely fucked it up.

10: 14 -- Tom at SCOTUSblog: "The bottom line: the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read."

Entire. Law. Upheld. PARTY TIME!

10: 18 -- Johnny Roberts Saved Health Care. We still dislike you, John Roberts!

10: 26 -- Where were you, when CNN got the biggest story of the year wrong?

10: 29 -- So apparently Justice Kennedy went full wingnut and is reading his wingnut dissent now. Liberal John Roberts is now having gay sex with blahs. Really, though,full wingnut: the dissent would have struck down the whole law.

10: 33 -- This is the executive director of the DNC (and former White House political director):

10: 44 -- So now the reaction is just... OBAMA LIED! "Obama lied to the American people. Again. He said it wasn't a tax. Obama lies; freedom dies," says Alaska moron Sarah Palin. 

10: 47 -- This is the Fox News Supreme Court correspondent. God is peeing on the media! It really is a perfect day.

10: 51 -- Crowds outside the Abortionplex are reportedly at a record high. Free abortion never felt so good!

10: 55 -- Fox News also reported it wrong at first, as their viewers demand.

11: 04 -- There are THE MURMURS in the comments about the old argument that if the law had been struck down, it might have made it easier to bring about single-payer. I think this has always been a pretty terrible argument, SO THERE.

11: 13 --To recap,for students who showed up LATE: The PPACA is upheld, 5-4, with Roberts joining the libtard justices. The four dissenters would have thrown out the whole law. The mandate was upheldnot on Commerce Clause grounds-- yikes! -- but on the grounds that it was a tax. (Which the Obama administration argued it wasn't, even though it was.) As for the Medicaid expansion, Roberts wrote:

Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding.

So the feddy gov can't take away pre-expansion dollars as a penalty for not accepting the expansion. Since the feddy gov is paying for the whole expansion for five or six years, though, and will pay for 90% of it indefinitely afterwards, it's a pretty good deal for states! But some states will still probably reject it, because of right-wing politics. (UPDATE: Wonkette's own "COMICS MAN" Josh Fruhlinger is going to write a whole post about Medicaid now!)

11: 25 -- SPIKING THE FOOTBALL WATCH. David Denby will not be pleased with this reference to a dead guy:

11: 27 -- I'm going to the liquor store. Liveblog break!

11: 41 -- Ahhhhhhh, delicious morning beer, you are Wonkette's only friend. Everyone have a beer right now! We'll have a roundup of comical winger reactions later. (Michele Bachmann is freaking out on CNN right now, in the background. Or is it a muppet in Michele Bachmann clothes? CNN is not trustworthy.) So far this is my favorite, from American Enterprise Institute blogger James "Jimmy P" Pethokoukis.

Everyone chant, DESTROY, DESTROY, DESTROY!

11: 53 -- Mitt Romney is talking now. He says he still simply does not care for Obamacare, the law he invented.

11: 55 -- Here is Obama, reading the news on his CNN iPad app this morning:

11: 59 -- The AP has BREAKING TWITTER NEWS:  "BREAKING: Romney says he will act to 'repeal Obamacare.'" Tell the whole neighborhood -- game changer? -- health care... -- stat.

12: 08 -- Michele Bachmann has emailed your Wonkette, demanding funds in the third paragraph:

Dear Jism,

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Those were words my mother drilled into me as a child growing up. After the events of this morning, this has never been more true: to get rid of Obamacare, we're going to have to fight.

I'm asking you to pledge your support for full repeal of Obamacare in the United States Congress by making special gift to my campaign of $100, $75, $50 or $25 dollars today.

12: 11 -- Josh "The Great Hitler of Baltimore" Fruhlinger has weighed in on Medicaid:  Is it still as free as abortion?

12: 20 -- So about that "John Roberts not buying the law on Commerce Clause grounds" thing -- isn't that maybe a horrible precedent that will destroy the world (like taxes do)? SCOTUSblog Lyle and SCOTUSblog Tom have an Internet debate:

Lyle: The rejection of the Commerce Clause and Nec. and Proper Clause should be understood as a major blow to Congress's authority to pass social welfare laws. Using the tax code -- especially in the current political environment -- to promote social welfare is going to be a very chancy proposition.

Tom: I dissent from Lyle's view that the Commerce Clause ruling is a major blow to social welfare legislation. I think that piece of the decision will be read pretty narrowly.

The Wonkette Legal Desk will side with Tom, because Lyle's take makes us sad.

12: 27 -- "Government-regulated health care makes me so mad that I'm moving to Canada" is the new "Get your government hands off my Medicare."

12: 47 -- Your Wonkette Liveblogger isgoing to lunch.Thanks for reading the Liveblog of the Century. Here are some tweets that Fox- and CNN-watching members of Congress deleted.