Political Science Confirms the Obvious - the Current Supreme Court is Dominated By Right-Wing Ideologues

The not-so-new-news in this post at The New York Times is that the U.S. Supreme Court, as currently constituted, is as conservative as it has been in nearly a century. This is a topic about which I have commented numerous times here before. In anticipation that the Court is about to overturn the Affordable Care Act (of which I am not a big fan*), it is important to point out that should they do so, the Court will be demonstrating both well-studied ignorance of the economics of insurance markets and an astoundingly poor grasp of sound legal reasoning.

There is no surprise in all this. Republicans have been appointing ideologues to the court for decades. Democrats have let that happen and have appointed centrists when the opportunity has arisen. So now the ideologues on the court are doing just what they were appointed to do - they are acting like ideologues for whom accumulated knowledge and sensible reasoning are no barrier to getting the outcome they seek.
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* The primary issue in the current case revolves around the "individual mandate" which we have, you'll recall, because the Obama administration decided to play footsie with the insurance companies rather than actually try to reform the provision of health care in the U.S.; when the court overturns the Affordable Care Act they will be supplying the best "practical" argument yet for implementing a single-payer national health care system.