I think that the Supreme Court will find for the government in King v Burwell — the silly case where four words in the Obamacare law are supposed to trump everything else said and implied in the law. I just don’t think that any reasonable person could could find the challenge to be anything but laughable and that is why I think only three justices on the Supreme Court will find for the plaintiffs — because three of the justices of the court are unreasonable (and unreasoning) ideologues. But that’s just what I think. What I know is that I can’t predict what the Supreme Court will do — especially in such politicized cases. Who could have predicted the Supreme Court would decide to take Bush v Gore — much less that it would decide as it did.

On Monday, Jonathan Bernstein wrote a compelling argument about what would happen if the court does decide to end subsidies on the federal exchanges, How the Obamacare Subsidies Battle Could Play Out. He thinks that the Republicans will put together a bill that fixes the problem but add to it some kind of poison pill that damages the law. My bet would be that it would be a repeal of the medical device tax. The Republicans hate it, even though it is a very fair tax, given that the medical device manufacturers are getting a government sponsored increase in sales. But if it isn’t this tax, it will be something else. And then the Republicans will “dare the president to veto it.”

But as Bernstein noted, it is very likely that the Republicans won’t even manage to do that. They have shown themselves to be incapable even of passing legislation to embarrass the president, because such a large number of them don’t think any given act of embarrassment is enough. In this case, many Republicans won’t want to do anything to help the healthcare law, even if on balance, they manage to hurt the law. The Republicans are, after all, the party of all or nothing. “Some Republicans, on the other hand, would prefer chaos, even if they take the blame…” Meanwhile, the Republicans do nothing.

Over the weekend, Jonathan Cohn wrote, The Clock Is Ticking and Republicans Still Have No Serious Obamacare Alternative. He puts it in his usual understated but clear manner:

But what have the Republicans done in the six months since the Supreme Court first announced that it would take King v Burwell and potentially deprive health insurance from eight million people? To quote Cohn, “Zero.” He speculated that the Congressional Republicans may talk about fixing the problems just for cosmetic purposes. I don’t think there is any speculation: they aren’t serious about fixing this problem. If they were, they wouldn’t be supporting the lawsuit.

As I’ve written before, the Republicans have backed themselves into a corner. Obamacare is as conservative a plan for healthcare reform as there is. So the moment they labeled their own idea of an individual mandate as a communist plot, they were doomed. So the only thing they have to offer is a pretense of caring “to insulate the party from a political backlash should millions of people suddenly lose health insurance.” But what is really going on is that the Republicans do not care and will do something only in the event that they absolutely have to. In this case, I hope they don’t have to.

We seem to have had a couple of good days this week regarding politics. Of course, a large part of this is due to my greatly reduced expectations. Obama’s slap with regards to the TPP was good news, but there is little doubt that the Senate will eventually approve fast-track authority for the TPP. And on Monday, Jeffrey Sterling was given three and a half years for his leaks to James Risen. Now that’s still a good deal of time to be locked in a cage, but it is nothing compared to the two decades that the government was pushing for.

You should watch the following ten minute documentary by the great Norman Solomon, which was shown on Democracy Now! At this point, I’m not even certain that Sterling is guilty of these “crimes.” One thing is for certain: the government has had it out for him for well over a decade. It all started with a discrimination suit he filed against the CIA. It was thrown out of court for the usual reason: it could compromise “state secrets.” That is, of course, the government’s great “get out of jail free” card where it can never be held accountable — even though decades in the future, we will find out that there was nothing to the claim.

The prosecution of Sterling clearly had nothing to do with any leaks. It was all about getting back at him. The whole thing happened under the Bush administration, and seems to have ended there. It was only under our “liberal” president Obama that the Espionage Act was pulled out of World War I and used against Sterling and others. The whole thing is an outrage. But I hope that Sterling is the leaker. As retired CIA officer Ray McGovern said in the documentary, “I don’t know whether he did it or not, but whoever did it did a service to our country, because our country needs to know.” If Sterling was the leaker, he’s a hero and he deserves a parade. If he isn’t, he’s a martyr. Regardless, he deserves far better than this country is giving him.

The fact that the judge in the case gave Sterling such a relatively moderate sentence has been widely seen as a rebuke to the government. On Wednesday, The New York Times ran an editorial, Overkill on a CIA Leak Case. It described the sentencing as “a significant rebuke to the Obama administration’s dogged-yet-selective crusade against leaks.” As usual, the government argued that the leaks had put the United States in great peril. Of course, that is what the government always argues. Peter Maass noted the ridiculousness of this, Obama’s War on Leaks Faces Backlash in Court. He quoted Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith as noting what ought to be obvious, even to the authoritarians in the White House: that it is “jeopardizing vital credibility through exaggerated claims about the national security harms of disclosure.” In other words: it the boy who cried wolf.

But it is worse than that, of course. As The Times editorial put it:

In fact, as we know, John Kiriakou was given two and a half years in prison for revealing our country’s torture program, but not one person has even been prosecuted for doing the torture. This is our legacy. The Tea Party thinks that the United States isn’t being true to itself? Where is the outrage about this? Nowhere, of course. That’s because to them, the United States is most pure when we never admit to our mistakes. And in that regard, the Tea Party and President Obama are very much in agreement. Let’s look forward, not backward! (Except when it comes to whistleblowers, of course.)