Families come in all shapes and sizes but have one thing in common: love. As the March 26-27 hearing dates near for the legal challenges to Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act before the U.S. Supreme Court, Washington Post observes that the families of the Supreme Court justices themselves exemplify the diverse American family

SCOTUS has a choice before it in the two marriage equality cases they have agreed to review. Will they follow the logic of Plessy v Ferguson and its doctrine of “separate but equal” or Brown v Board of Education and a clear declaration of “equal”? Will they choose the logic of Dred Scott v. John Sandford and its “blacks have no citizenship rights” or that of Loving v Virginia and its “states have no discrimination rights”?

Judges elsewhere, like Mark Cady in Iowa and Vaughn Walker in California, have chose the path of Brown and Loving. Will John Roberts walk that same path, or will he and his conservative colleagues choose to be remembered like Roger Taney for sending Dred Scott back into slavery?

I know you may feel it’s been discussed to death already, but can I just drag us back one more time to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act?

The Electoral College. The medical insurance industry. Campaign finance laws. Congressional budget negotiations . . .

If you’re looking for the identity of my candidate for Patron Saint of the United States of America — a man born on the 4th of July, no less — then you need look no further that the list above.

Of course, there is plenty more evidence to support my belief . . .

The story that has everyone buzzing comes from Jan Crawford of CBS News, who writes that John Roberts did indeed switch his vote on the Affordable Care Act ruling at the last minute, much to the chagrin of the Court’s conservative wing.

Roberts declared that the sole reason the individual mandate is constitutional is because it is a tax and Congress has the power to levee taxes.

Watching the wingnut apoplexy unfold today after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, it began to occur to me that with increasing frequency, President Obama deftly plays Road Runner to the Republicans’ Wile E. Coyote. And just like in the cartoons, everyone knows the ending long before the boulder lands or the dynamite explodes.

Was there a late-game shift in the thinking of the Supreme Court on their Affordable Care Act ruling? That’s certainly the implication from this catch by Brad DeLong. Repeatedly in his opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurring opinion as a “dissent.”

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, voted to basically uphold the entire Affordable Care Act. The important thing is that the law is constitutional and for the most part will go into effect as planned.

In a surprise move, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal justices in finding that the individual mandate was constitutional, while Anthony Kennedy actually joined the conservatives in concluding the mandate was not constitutional.

The Supreme Court didn’t hold a press conference, but they made a major contribution to the lives of Americans in a ruling today. And wonder of wonders, it benefits corporations at the expense of regular people.