BuzzChatter Tuesday: Boehner seeks to lobby Supreme Court on Hobby Loby case
Now that the mystery of the missing airliner has been (sadly) resolved, what’s cable television going to do?
• “In the United States of America, no citizen should be compelled to violate their convictions, let alone be punished for refusing to do so.” — House Speaker John Boehner urging the Supreme Court not to require business owners to provide health coverage that includes emergency contraceptives that conflict with the owners’ beliefs.
The court on Tuesday is to hear oral arguments in two cases that center on coverage mandated by the Affordable Care Act. No rulings will be made on Tuesday, but court watchers will be looking for clues as to where the justices stand on these highly anticipated cases.• “Why hasn’t Roberts offered up any sort of free-market plan of his own, or signed on to one of the plans proposed by conservatives in the four years since ObamaCare passed?” — conservative Milton Wolf, who is challenging incumbent Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts in this year’s August GOP primary.
Wolf is keeping up the pressure as best he can on the three-term incumbent. Monday’s pitch was on health care. Wolf’s slogan about Roberts: “Too wrong for too long. It’s time for a change.” Wolf’s odds, though, haven’t changed. They still fall in the long-shot category.• “Our view is simply that if Russia is flagrantly violating international law and the order that the G7 has hoped to build since the end of the Cold War, there's no need to engage with Russia.” — Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, on kicking Russia out of the G8 in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Rhodes said there’s no point in including Russia. The response from the Putin government: No big deal. The organization has outlived its usefulness. Remember, the organization was known as the G7 until the last 1990s when the group decided to include Russia. The G8 didn’t last long.• “It’s very clear that U.S. sanctions aren’t effective without the Europeans.” — Jeremy Shapiro, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution about punishing Russia for its incursion into the Ukraine.
This story was originally published March 25, 2014 at 7:00 AM with the headline "BuzzChatter Tuesday: Boehner seeks to lobby Supreme Court on Hobby Loby case."