Betting on whether the Supreme Court will declare "Obamacare" unconstitutional this year? At least some of the smart money is on "no."

The American Bar Assn. devoted all 40 pages of the latest Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases magazine to the high court's review of Obamacare, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (The court is scheduled to hear arguments about the law's constitutionality this month.) For this special issue, the editors of Preview polled "a select group of academics, journalists and lawyers who regularly follow and/or comment on the Supreme Court" to get their predictions on how the court would rule.

The result: 85% said the act would be upheld, mainly because they believed the court would find the requirement that all adult Americans obtain insurance coverage to be constitutional. A small faction -- 9% -- believed the court would hold that the challenge to the law was premature because the provisions being challenged won't go into effect until 2014. Most of those polled also said that if the court struck down the individual mandate, it would leave the rest of the act intact.

Granted, these are just educated guesses. The ABA didn't identify any of the experts it polled, so it's hard to know how much their own views of the healthcare law or the Constitution's commerce clause influenced their prognostications. We probably won't know the actual disposition of the appeal until the very end of the current Supreme Court term in late June or early July.

In the meantime, you can look at Preview -- the healthcare issue is free online -- and second-guess the unnamed court-watchers. The editors asked the experts to predict how each justice would vote on each of the four issues before the court. Here's how their answers broke down:

Most members of the group predicted a unanimous ruling that the challenge to the law was not premature, although 44% felt that Justice Sonia Sotomayor would dissent.

The group predicted a 6-3 decision to uphold the individual mandate, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal wing in support, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissenting. Kennedy was seen as the most likely to go the other way, with 47% predicting he would vote to hold the mandate unconstitutional.

(I'm no expert, but I suggested two years ago that Scalia would be sympathetic to the mandate, based on the concurring opinion he wrote in the case of Gonzalez vs. Raich.)

Asked whether the court would throw out the entire law if it ruled against the individual mandate, those polled predicted an 8-1 ruling in favor of letting the rest of the law remain in effect. Similarly, they expected an 8-1 split in favor of the law's expansion of Medicaid, which two dozen states have challenged as unconstitutional. The sole dissenter on both issues, the group projected, will be Thomas.

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Credit:  Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Not surprisingly, the Obama Justice Department is opposing a Texas law requiring voters to show photo ID, claiming that it disproportionately disenfranchises  Latino voters. It's the latest example of a familiar trope: Democrats oppose voter ID, calling it unnecessary and discriminatory; Republicans support it, arguing that impersonation at the polls is a real, if hard to quantify, problem.  Not so coincidentally, racial minorities tend to favor Democratic candidates.

Neither of the warring narratives is totally satisfactory. It's plausible that members of economically disadvantaged minority groups are less likely to have, say, a driver's license. But I felt my eyebrows elevating at the Justice Department's estimate that between 175,000 and 304,000 registered Latino Texas voters lack driver's licenses or other state-issued IDs. Really? On the other hand, Republicans' fears of fraud at polling places seem forced. They have a point, though, when they say that it's anomalous that you need a photo ID to board a plane but not to vote.

It's crazy that 175,000 (or 304,000?) Texans of whatever background don't have  government-issued photo IDs and might have difficulty buying a plane or train ticket.  They need to get IDs, and the government should help -- regardless of what happens on Election Day. Like it or not, in 21st century America your face is your fortune.

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Photo: U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder has been an outspoken critic of the Texas law. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo

What do you call it when someone who is suing to overturn the healthcare reform law files for bankruptcy, listing $4,500 in unpaid medical bills?

Karma? Fate? A lucky break for President Obama?

Really, you can't make this stuff up. Here's what The Times' David Savage wrote Thursday:

Mary Brown, a 56-year-old Florida woman who owned a small auto repair shop but had no health insurance, became the lead plaintiff challenging President Obama's healthcare law because she was passionate about the issue.

Brown "doesn't have insurance. She doesn't want to pay for it. And she doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it," said Karen Harned, a lawyer for the National Federation of Independent Business. Brown is a plaintiff in the federation's case, which the Supreme Court plans to hear later this month.

But court records reveal that Brown and her husband filed for bankruptcy last fall with $4,500 in unpaid medical bills.

Now, you might expect Brown to be a bit, well, chagrined at this turn of events.  But remember, as Savage wrote, she "was passionate about the issue."

And she apparently still is:

Brown, reached by telephone Thursday, said the medical bills were her husband's. "I always paid my bills, as well as my medical bills," she said angrily. "I never said medical insurance is not a necessity. It should be anyone's right to what kind of health insurance they have.

"I believe that anyone has unforeseen things that happen to them that are beyond their control," Brown said. "Who says I don't have insurance right now?"

Who says? Well, Mary, your lawyer for one. Remember: She "doesn't have insurance. She doesn't want to pay for it. And she doesn't want the government to tell her she has to have it."

Oh yeah, that.  Those lawyers, always running their mouths.  

And for that matter, Mary, those aren't your husband's medical bills, at least not anymore.  Now that you've filed for bankruptcy, they are probably our medical bills, aren't they? 

Although it's not as though Brown is totally anti-government: The couple's Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition said her income was $275 a month in unemployment benefits.

So perhaps she intends to put that toward what she owes: "$2,140 to Bay Medical Center in Panama City, $610 to Bay Medical Physicians, $835 to an eye doctor in Alabama and $900 to a specialist in Mississippi."

Or maybe, as the story says, there's that other way out:

"This is a very common problem. We cover $30 million in charity and uncompensated care every  year," said Christa Hild, a spokeswoman for the hospital center. "If it's a bad debt, we have to absorb it."

Although when the hospital center says "we," it means "us"  -- as in you and I, the ones who do pay for health insurance.  We absorb it, in higher premium costs.

It's called the free market, or "there's no free lunch."  (It's also why a single-payer system such as Medicare would've been a better option than the law we've got, but that's another post.)

But it's also why the "individual mandate" requiring all Americans to purchase health insurance was put into the law.

Why that is so hard for Brown and millions of other citizens to understand is beyond me. 

This isn't Charles Dickens' London: We don't have debtors' prisons.  If Brown and her fellow travelers have their way and the healthcare law is ruled unconstitutional, many others will take the risk "of unforeseen things that happen to them that are beyond their control." 

And if they get sick, and have medical bills they can't pay, then they won't pay.  And neither will the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.

The rest of us will pay.

You see, Mary, the requirement that everyone buy health insurance isn't big bad government taking away your freedom.

It's just common sense.

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Photo: The U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear a challenge to the healthcare reform law. Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images

Wednesday was a bad day for liars at the Supreme Court. Even liberal justices seemed unsympathetic to a Pomona man who was prosecuted under a law known as the Stolen Valor Act for boasting at a public meeting that he had received the Medal of Honor. (That wasn't his only whopper. He also claimed to have played professional hockey and to have been injured while rescuing a U.S. diplomat during the Iran hostage crisis.)

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law. One judge drolly argued that if "false factual statements are unprotected, then the government can prosecute not only the man who tells tall tales of winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, but also the JDater who falsely claims he's Jewish or the dentist who assures you it won't hurt a bit. Phrases such as 'I'm working late tonight, hunny,' 'I got stuck in traffic'  and 'I didn't inhale' could all be made into crimes."

Members of the Supreme Court weren't about to salute that parade of horribles.  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked the U.S. solicitor general if the government also could punish people who lied about attaining a high school diploma, but Roberts didn't seem to find the idea all that objectionable. Even more revealing of Roberts' attitude was a question he posed to the lawyer for Xavier Alvarez, the Medal of Honor wannabe: "What is the 1st Amendment value in a lie, pure lie?" 

The lawyer fumbled at first but later re-framed the issue in what I think is a persuasive way: "Our founders believed that Congress as a general principle doesn't get to tell us what we as individuals can and cannot say."  Obviously there are exceptions: If Alvarez had lied about his military record to obtain money, he would have been  guilty of the eminently prosecutable crime of fraud. But in itself a  pathetic claim to military glory -- a claim easily debunked by a visit to the Internet -- isn't the sort of statement a free society should criminalize.

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Photo: Xavier Alvarez. Credit: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

America, it's time for a little presidential poker. Republicans and Democrats need to go "all in" on Rick Santorum vs. President Obama.

Yep, it's "put up or shut up" time for all you political Texas hold 'em folks out there.

Now, the Obama bet you probably understand. After all, he's the incumbent, and he's running unopposed in the Democratic Party.

But why Santorum? After all, he's not only anathema to Democrats, it's not clear whether most Republicans favor him over Mitt Romney (not to mention Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul).

For the good of the country, though, the GOP needs to run Santorum.

Wait, wait, hold the comments, angry or otherwise. I didn't say "Santorum would be good for the country."  If you're asking me personally, well, it's a secret ballot, but no, I wouldn't put my ink spot next to "Rick Santorum."

But I'm also sick and tired of the partisan divide. It's time to call everyone's bluff.

Conservatives maintain that Obama and the Democrats are destroying the country; that we need to return to Christian values, to exceptionalism, to less government, less regulation, less spending and less taxation.

Sure, Romney touts all that too.  But he just wants the Republican nomination. With that secured, he'll pivot to the center, and pretty soon you'll never know he said half the stuff he did to get the GOP nod. With an Obama-Romney clash, should Romney lose, plenty of Republicans would complain that he wasn't a true-enough conservative.

Santorum, on the other hand, is nothing if not a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He might pivot to the center too, but he's so far right that he can't even see the center at this point. With an Obama-Santorum battle, we'd be able to settle the liberal vs. conservative debate that's stifling government. 

And here's where the "all in" part happens.

If Santorum wins, liberals should acknowledge that the country is on the wrong path. America doesn't want gay marriage, or legal abortion, or government healthcare, or environmental protections. It wants to slash the size of government and reduce or eliminate entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. It wants religion back in public life; it wants the government out of schools. It wants to spend big on defense; it wants to back Israel no matter what. 

However, if Obama wins, all those conservative Republicans would have to acknowledge that they were wrong. That they're not America's voice. That America is OK with gay marriage and a woman's right to choose; it wants affordable healthcare for all, and a safety net that includes Medicare and Social Security.  It agrees with the separation of church and state and believes that while generating good-paying jobs is important, so is protecting the environment. It doesn't want a 1% and a 99% but a 100% that favors social and economic justice for all.

So after election day, that's it. Someone rakes in all the chips. 

If it's Santorum, then Republicans in Congress, the tea partyers and the Rush Limbaugh/Glenn Beck/Sean Hannity crowd can crow all the way to the inauguration and beyond.

But if it's Obama, those same folks need to face reality. They need to stop the scorched-earth warfare and let him lead.

And we can go back to the old days, when elections mattered.

Did someone say "deal"?

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What do you call a 10-year-old boy in Afghanistan? Apparently, a suicide bomber.

The Times reported Tuesday that two 10-year-olds who had been arrested for trying to carry out suicide attacks, then released last year, had been rearrested -- for trying to carry out suicide bombings.

Provincial spokesman Zalmay Ayubi said the boys each had a vest full of explosives when they were detained along with three adults suspected of being militants, and that they told intelligence officers they had been recruited for suicide missions.

A statement from provincial officials quoted one of the boys, named Azizullah, as saying the pair had undergone training at a madrasa, or religious school, in Pakistan. The mullahs there told the boys they would be unharmed when they set off their bombs, Azizullah reportedly said.

News of the boys' arrest came the same week that Muslim militant Umar Patek appeared in court in Indonesia to answer charges related to deadly bombings a decade ago in Bali that killed 202 people in a nightclub. Oddly enough -- or perhaps not -- he was captured last year in Abbottabad, the Pakistani town where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

But unlike the 202 people killed in the bombings, Patek gets a lawyer. And surprise, he downplayed his client's role: "His involvement in the Bali bombing ... [was] not as big as is being described. We will challenge that in a defense plea next week."

Also this week, a radical Islamic preacher, Abu Qatada, who had been under detention in Britain for most of the last 6 1/2 years, was released from jail Monday.

British officials consider him extremely dangerous, saying he encourages suicide attacks and terrorism, and they want him sent back to Jordan to face terrorism charges.

But Abu Qatada also is being given the benefit of the doubt in some legal circles. Last month the European Court of Human Rights blocked his deportation, saying he could face conviction on the basis of evidence obtained by torture.

And what do these cases have in common?  

They show the difficulty -- perhaps even the futility -- of trying to fight terrorism within the judicial system.

When religious leaders find it acceptable to use children as bombs, it says something terrible about the values of our enemies.

And although it's a tribute to modern society that we remain committed to legal rules, those same legal rules can be -- are being -- manipulated by those committed to our destruction.

It would be nice if there were an easy answer.  Perhaps the madrasas that are training children to be terrorists should be shut down?

Not likely.  As the recent controversy in the U.S. over health insurance coverage for contraceptives shows, government interference in religious freedom is a tough sell everywhere.

No, we're stuck. We must stick to our legal system. We must allow freedom of religion.

And we must fight our enemies and safeguard our soldiers and our nation.

But it would be nice if we could keep 10-year-olds out of the fight.

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Photo: Taliban fighters walk with their weapons after joining the Afghan government forces during a ceremony in Herat province. Credit: Aref Karimi /AFP/Getty Images

When actress Cynthia Nixon described herself as "gay by choice" in a New York Times magazine interview, she not only set off a storm of reexaminations of the evidence on whether homosexuality is a matter of nature or nurture, but threw a verbal monkey wrench into the legal question of gay rights.

As Times science writer Karen Kaplan summarized, "The scientific consensus seems to be that there is indeed a biological basis for homosexuality -- though it's not necessarily 100% determined by either genes or by environmental factors." Science is painting a complex portrait in which biology -- not always genetics but also prenatal exposure to hormones -- is certainly an important factor, though perhaps not the only one.

Nixon, though, is framing gay rights in a new way. It's strangely reminiscent of the "gay cures" some religious groups have promoted. They say it doesn't matter whether homosexuality is inborn. It's still wrong, in their eyes, and so people have to "learn" to change their behavior, even if they can never change their sexual preference. A desire to philander might be "inborn" or "natural," they argue, but it still has to be overcome. Nixon, of course, is on the opposite side of that same logical coin. Why, she asks, should homosexuality be any less valid if and when it is chosen?

Why, indeed? So much of the debate about discrimination against homosexuals gets bogged down in extraordinarily judgmental issues. They shouldn't marry, opponents have told the editorial board, because studies show that children are better off with a mother and father. Actually, some excellent studies don't bear that out at all -- but that's not the point. Of the many heterosexuals who make bad parents, why isn't society judging their fitness to wed? When adults engage in sexual behavior of whatever type, why does society set up discriminatory laws against them only when that "type" involves homosexuality?

But in the courts, as the lawsuit against Proposition 8 wends its way through the appellate process, this issue could have very high stakes. Under the 14th Amendment, the courts have historically said that discriminatory laws must pass a very high legal bar to remain law, if they affect a "discrete" and "insular" community that has traditionally been singled out for discrimination. Traditionally, this has included ethnic and racial minorities, and women. In his ruling on the Proposition 8 case, then-U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker wrote that this surely applied to the gay and lesbian communities as well.

Historically, though, one of the criteria for such groups is that they must be a minority because of an unchangeable characteristic. If, as Nixon says, sexual preference can be a choice, then couldn't gays and lesbians simply "choose" otherwise?

Groups don't have to meet all of the criteria laid out, and other factors can be considered. But gay rights activists worry that if sexual preference is seen as mutable, they might lose points in their ongoing legal quest for legal rights.

Nixon, of course, speaks only for herself, and it's doubtful her comments would matter much, if at all, in the case. But in any case, I agree with her; it shouldn't matter. The complicated, perhaps never-knowable question of precisely how people come to be different from each other is a small one compared with the question of why there seems to be so much determination to deprive some of those people of basic rights that in no way harm other people.

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Photo: Actress Cynthia Nixon is seen attending the "Lysistrata Jones" Broadway opening night at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Dec. 14, 2011 in New York City. Credit: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Could Southern California Republican congressman Elton Gallegly please step in, and make one of his last acts in Congress a humane one –- one more time?

The Supreme Court just threw out a California law, saying the state overstepped its constitutional authority when it ordered changes in how slaughterhouses euthanize pigs and cows and goats who can't walk into the slaughterhouse chute.

It’s a complicated matter, and the justices ruled unanimously on the constitutional question that state law can’t be stricter than federal law in some matters. They didn’t rule on the humane issues or food safety questions, two of the matters that prompted California’s law. The pork industry took California to court, and won.

The questions of possibly tainted meat from potentially ailing animals -– pigs, cows, goats -- getting into the food chain was one of the confluent forces in the California law; the other was about animal cruelty. The public was horrified at a humane group’s video of cows that couldn’t walk being prodded and forced into the slaughterhouse to feed the American appetite for cheap and plentiful meat.

Gallegly stepped in once before on an animal welfare issue. The Supreme Court had ruled that a law banning the sale of animal cruelty videos violated free speech rules.

That law had originated in a ban on "crush videos," showing little creatures getting stomped to death by women, which evidently feed some creepy niche sexual thrill.

Gallegly, who is retiring from Congress, became a hero to animal groups for crafting a new law, along with some of his colleagues, that met those constitutional requirements for banning those so-called crush videos.

President Obama signed the law. Justice Samuel Alito, in perhaps a rare moment of agreement with the president, had dissented in the Supreme Court animal-cruelty video case.

In his opinion, Alito quoted from a Humane Society brief in describing this cruelty porn.

Warning -– this is very rough reading, so stop right here if you can’t deal with it:

[A] kitten, secured to the ground, watches and shrieks in pain as a woman thrusts her high-heeled shoe into its body, slams her heel into the kitten's eye socket and mouth loudly fracturing its skull, and stomps repeatedly on the animal's head. The kitten hemorrhages blood, screams blindly in pain, and is ultimately left dead in a moist pile of blood-soaked hair and bone.

Alito also wrote of the "criminal conduct" in the dog-fighting videos that brought the case to the Supreme Court, saying, "The videos record the commissions of violent criminal acts, and it appears that these crimes are committed for the sole purpose of creating the videos."

Another law that also meets constitutional muster could address the slaughterhouse animal treatment issue. Beyond that, the Agriculture Department could be a lot more vigorous in pursuing this as a safety issue of "downer" animal meat in the public food supply.

The ultimate answer to any of these practices that occur in the course of slaughtering billions of animals, whether on family farms or by ritual killing techniques or in mega-slaughterhouses, is also perhaps the best chance of survival of our species too.

It’s a move toward a vegetarian diet. Meat protein generally consumes more land and water and energy than vegetable protein, and all of those -– land, water and energy -– are going to be scarcer and more expensive in the decades to come. 

Because we humans feel pretty helpless to do anything to change the world by our lonesomes, I once asked Jane Goodall what was the single thing that one individual could do to make the biggest impact on the planet and the prospect of human survival, and she said, "Stop eating meat."

Until we do, isn’t it the least we can do to treat with respect and consideration these animals we kill by the billions in order to feed ourselves?

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 Photo: Pigs in the food chain. Credit: Reuters

For those who follow political and legal controversies over the Voting Rights Act, there were a couple of eyebrow-raising features of the Supreme Court’s decision last week in a Texas case.

The court rejected an interim redistricting plan necessitated by population growth that will give the state four new seats in the House of Representatives. The plan was drawn by a federal court in Texas, which rejected a map drawn by the state legislature.

The lower court’s plan was friendlier to the creation of minority districts than the legislature’s version. But the justices ordered the lower court to go back to the drawing board and use the legislature’s plan as a “starting point” for a map to be used in the April 3 primary. They criticized the lower court for having "substituted its own concept of the 'collective public good' for the Texas Legislature's determination of which policies serve the interests of the citizens of Texas."

The legislature’s map is still awaiting approval -- or disapproval -- by a special federal court in Washington, D.C. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, states with a history of racial discrimination in voting must “preclear” voting changes with either the attorney general or the D.C. court. Meanwhile, opponents of the legislature’s map sought to block it based on another part of the Voting Rights Act covering the entire nation. Thus the Texas federal court’s map.

The legalities are complicated, the politics less so. The legislature’s map was drawn by a Republican majority. It is opposed by Democrats and Latino activists who say it dilutes minority voting power.

Hovering over the dispute is an argument by conservatives that Section 5, which like the rest of the Voting Rights Act was inspired by the discriminatory practices of the 1950s and 1960s, is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has not squarely addressed that issue, but -- ominously for minorities and the Democrats they tend to support -- it said in a 2009 case that Section 5 raised “serious constitutional questions” related to states’ rights. This week’s decision cited that language.

So what’s so intriguing about this decision? First, it was unanimous, coming in an unsigned opinion with no recorded dissents. That suggests that even liberals on the court take seriously the idea that federal judges are too ready to override the decisions of legislators in states with a history of old-fashioned voting discrimination. That’s a sign of the times. So is the fact that the court that overrode the legislature in the Texas case was located -- in Texas! The reason Congress gave preclearance authority to a federal court in Washington was that it didn’t trust federal judges in the South to enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Is that an obsolete assumption? If so, is the Voting Rights Act itself a relic? Sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to address that question.

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California's judicial branch weathered a cut of $350 million this year from its operations budget on top of a continuing annual $300 million cut imposed over the last several years. The state also diverted $310 million from a special fund for courthouse construction. When several trial courts threatened to shut their doors for lack of funding, the Judicial Council -- the authority that leads the three levels of California courts -- bailed them out with $300 million from its own administrative budget.

In his proposed 2012-13 budget unveiled last week, Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking no further immediate cuts to the courts. But if expected revenue fails to materialize, the courts will face automatic "trigger" cuts.

The day after the budget release, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye visited with the Times editorial board and discussed a range of topics, including funding. Click below to listen to audio excerpts, or read partial transcripts of the discussion.

Listen: 'Slower, thinner, smaller'

I’m grateful that our discussions with the governor’s office and the governor about the four-year cumulative hit to the branch resulted in the no-cuts, no-impact in the fiscal year budget for the branch unless there’s a trigger....

I feel it’s the first step in a journey that we still have to go because since 08-09 the judicial branch has sustained approximately $653 million in cuts.

As you know fiscal year 11-12 the one we’re in we took a $350 million cut but that was on top of a $300 million ongoing cut so it’s $650 million. And over four years we’ve become slower, thinner, smaller, and that’s not how justice is meant to be served anywhere, period....

We still need restoration. And what we’ve tried to do is be realistic….

But 11-12 is the threshold year where we’re running out of those options. You know it’s a fourth- year diet. And we’re done. We don’t have any more reserves, or very few reserves to move around….

We’re not a union shop [at the Judicial Council] so we don’t have contracts. Our employees are sticking with us in hopes for a better day. And we realize we cannot sustain in this fashion….

 

 Listen: Human impact stories

 We’re seeing in human impact stories that that’s where we’re being hit hardest, where courts have limited time, hours are limited, people aren’t getting in to get ex parte orders so they’re sleeping in their cars. Their kids get taken out of state because they weren’t able to get that order filed. Or because they couldn’t get their child support order modified. It was made at a time when he earned $60,000. Now he earns much less than that. He has to pay child support which is over half of his salary. He can’t get into court to get that modified. So in the meantime all he’s paying is child support and loses his apartment.

We’ve seen that we’ve tried efficiencies, but we’re a little bit beyond efficiencies and we’re now into reductions and trimming the edges in order to make ends meet. But we are still looking for those efficiencies. Some of those efficiencies will have to be statutory.

--Robert Greene

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Photo: California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye speaks with the Los Angeles Times editorial board on  Jan. 6. At left is Ronald G. Overholt, interim administrative director of the courts. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times