The invisible primary for judicial repeal of the ACA

Slapped on a Friday evening with a hyperpartisan judge's palpably ridiculous decision purporting to strike down the entire ACA, I suspect that many progressive minds restarted a two-stroke motor that's been running since Texas v. U.S. first stained the horizon.

Stroke 1: this suit is too ridiculous even for Republican judges.  It claims in effect that Republicans in Congress repealed the entire ACA in a fit of absent-mindedness when they zeroed out the mandate penalty last December.

Stroke 2: we had the same reaction to the two prior anti-ACA suits to reach the Supreme Court, one of which failed by a 5-4 and the other by a 6-3 count. Will the absurd again become Republican orthodoxy?

Will this legal nightmare recur? Jack Balkin offers crucial perspective:

ICYRMI: Six online classics of 21st century history

"ICYMI" generally refers to something written a day or a week ago.  In recent days, I've had recourse several times to Michael Hastings' deeply reported 2012 reconstruction of Bowe Bendahl's upbringing, inner life and military career -- as well as of the negotiations for his release. It would be a mistake to suggest that everything most of us are learning now about Bendahl is in that story, but my sense is that 80 percent of it is.

That set me thinking this morning about other articles, written years ago but still online, that made a strong impression on me and that still resonate. Here's a short "in case your really missed it" list.

America's Sicilian Expedition: in the runup to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, pundits and scholars analogized the impending war to every conflict in American history, with the possible exception of the War of 1812. Some went further afield. One that struck me as a bit outlandish at the time was historian Simon Schama's essay raising the specter of ancient Athens' disastrous exercise in imperial overreach: