The Ruling

Here I am, sitting in Jerusalem, web-casting NPR, and choking back tears at the Supreme Court's decision. As Paul Starr's great book will teach you, and I tried to convey in this long review of it, the healthcare law culminated a one-hundred year fight. It might well have been frustrated by the court.

But Justice Roberts has given us, well, justice, implying perhaps that there will be no monolithic, automatic majority to foil President Obama (or a Democratic successor or Congress) as the years pass. In a way, it is a pivotal moment for an American democracy that looked headed toward a kind of fatal polarization. Oh, and Roberts has now more than made up for flubbing his lines when he swore Obama in.