From the February 24, 2011 issue
Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
Can Republicans defeat Obama’s health care bill by persuading the courts that mandatory health insurance is unconstitutional? On December 13, 2010, Henry Hudson, a federal judge in Virginia, declared unconstitutional the central provision of the health care reform law. Judge Hudson reasoned that the law’s command that citizens purchase health care insurance extended beyond Congress’s authority to legislate. It has long been established that Congress may regulate citizens’ economic activities, such as entering into contracts, producing or purchasing goods and services, or shipping goods across state lines. But it is entirely unprecedented, Judge Hudson said, for Congress to regulate “inactivity”—a failure to buy insurance.
More »The Fading Dream of Europe
Orhan Pamuk, translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely
Uprisings: From Tunis to Cairo
William Pfaff
Dictators do not usually die in bed. Successful retirement is always a problem for them, and not all solve it. It is a problem for everybody else when they leave. What’s to be done afterward? The popular uprising that overturned the dictatorial Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali regime in Tunisia in mid-January sent a thrill of hope through Arab populations.
Aside from the exceptional and complex case of Lebanon, Arab nations have since the demise of the Ottoman Empire mostly suffered from European quasi empire, their own exploitative military and party dictatorships, and recently, hereditary family dictatorships, a reversion to absolute monarchy in secular guise.
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