OLYMPIA – When a divided Supreme Court settled the question of whether federal health care reform is constitutional Thursday, it turned up the spotlight on the issue for Washington’s hotly contested governor’s race.
Now the question is, how long before that light dims?
Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna, one of the original plaintiffs in the failed multi-state challenge, said he was surprised at the ruling but insisted he was relieved, not disappointed.
Former U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, Inslee’s likely Democratic opponent for governor this November, was happy: “I always believed this was constitutional. I had no qualms in voting for this bill.”
Gov. Chris Gregoire, who disagreed so strongly with McKenna’s decision to draw Washington into the court battle that she filed as a “friend of the court” on the other side, was both celebratory and caustic.
  

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If this morning's CNN fiasco on announcing the Affordable Care Act wasn't a good enough reminder about how bad the media frenzy can get over something like a major Supreme Court ruling, this segment from The Daily Show on Wednesday night showed how silly the news network talking heads have been all week.

The Republicans said all along that the individual mandate was a tax, Sen. Mike Crapo said this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act on that point. Democrats had insisted it wasn't.

“It's an incredibly big irony,” the Idaho Republican said.

President Obama rejected the GOP arguments that the penalties contained in the law amounted to a tax, and promised the American public he wouldn't raise taxes, Crapo said.. During the Senate debate on the Affordable Care Act, Crapo said he offered an amendment that would have stripped the bill of anything that violated Obama's pledge. It was rejected.

“Now, we're back into that argument,” he said. Although the law is constitutional, “this is still the bad law we said it was.” 

Want to read the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act for yourself?

Here's a link, courtesy of Scotusblog.com.

Viewers of CNN may have been justifiably confused this morning when, over a span of four minutes, the Supreme Court ruling was described as a major defeat for President Obama and the Democrats to a “huge, huge victory.”

That's because at about 7:12 a.m. Pacific, CNN said the court struck down the individual mandate, based on the reading of their reporter at the scene. Instant analysis by Wolf Blitzer and company began assessing the damage, and they were quick to call the game against Obama.

Meanwhile, other sources were reporting the Affordable Care Act was essentially being upheld. CNN was missing a key point, that the individual mandate was being upheld as a tax, and within the power of Congress.

By about 7:16 a.m. CNN was reversing course, acknowledging that the mandate was upheld. “This is a huge, huge victory,” Blitzer intoned.

They only touched briefly on the fact that they blew the initial call.

John King: “It's a complicated decision.”

Blitzer: “It's a historic moment.”

Apparently in those historic moments, TV anchors sometimes get a little overanxious..