October 4th, 2013
Here’s lawyer Jason Mazzone writing about a recent Matt Yglesias column on Obamacare and John Roberts:
In an article called “The Millions Left Out of Health Reform by John Roberts,” Matthew Yglesias reports that the fact that working poor in certain states will not benefit from the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion is “due to the actions of Chief Justice John Roberts” who, in NFIB v. Sebelius, “burnished his conservative cred by striking down the penalties portion of the Medicaid expansion.” As a result, Mr. Yglesias says, “[t]here are going to be pockets of the country where poor people continue to lack insurance for quite a long time, all thanks to Roberts and the stubborn intransigence of conservative politicians.” The Chief Justice certainly enjoys some special powers. But who knew he could singlehandedly invalidate an act of Congress? He can’t, of course. Even in the world of Slate reporters, one plus zero doesn’t equal five.
And for the record, Slate readers, in the portion of Sebelius dealing with the Medicaid expansion issue, seven Supreme Court justices, including those notorious Tea Party heroes Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, “burnished” their “conservative cred” and should therefore be blamed for depriving poor people of healthcare.
I don’t know much about Mazzone, but he sure doesn’t seem like your normal right-wing critic.
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It gets better: Josh Barro pointed this out to Yglesias on twitter last night, and Yglesias responded that you shouldn’t blame Kagan and Breyer because they “were obviously horse trading”. When it was suggested that maybe instead they thought Roberts was right on the law, Yglesias responded “I don’t think ‘right on the law’ impacts supreme court decisions”. Classic.
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[…] Can we please stop taking Matthew Yglesias seriously? […]
joe October 14, 2013 at 10:52 am
Completely serious, non-rhetorical questions here: How can Yglesias be so demonstrably wrong so often and still have a job? Does he absolutely nail other topics that I never hear about? Is his silliness part of Slate’s business model? Does he not have sit down meetings with his bosses to discuss how he can be less wrong in the future?