WHILE POLICY considerations will infuse the Supreme Court arguments Tuesday about the health-care mandate, the session will focus on this legal question: Does the Constitution give Congress the power to order all individuals above a certain income level to buy health insurance? This is the topic of the Supreme Court’s second of three days of consideration of the health-care reform act. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: Why the individual mandate holds the key to health-care reform

The Supreme Court opened its historic review of the national health-care overhaul Monday with an indication that it will be able to decide the constitutional question of whether Congress exceeded its powers despite arguments that the challenge was brought too soon. Read full article > >

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Supreme Court begins review of health-care law

The first day of potentially landmark oral arguments begins on the constitutionality of the sweeping health care law championed by President Obama.

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Supreme Court debates sweeping health care law

The Supreme Court begins its constitutional review of the health-care overhaul law Monday with a fundamental question: Is the court barred from making such a decision at this time? The justices will hear 90 minutes of argument about whether an obscure 19th-century law — the Anti-Injunction Act — means that the court cannot pass judgment on the law until its key provisions go into effect in 2014. Read full article > >

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Supreme Court to hear arguments on timing of health-care ruling

The Supreme Court on Monday joins the nation’s vitriolic debate over the landmark health-care law and the limits of federal power. And though thousands of pages of legal arguments about the Constitution’s history and the court’s precedents have landed on justices’ desks, the outcome may also hinge on less tangible factors. Read full article > >

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As Supreme Court justices review health-care law, stakes will be hard to ignore

PARIS — More than 30,000 cheering supporters gathered at the Bastille, the icon of the French Revolution, to cheer Jean-Luc Melenchon as he shouted out his promises of a new dawn. He will lead them into another insurrection, he pledged, waving his arms and laughing in delight, to upend the political system, to rewrite the bourgeois constitution, to bridle the gnomes of predatory capitalism. Read full article > >

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Ahead of French vote, the left of the left gains ground

On Monday the Supreme Court begins three days of oral arguments concerning possible — actually, probable and various — constitutional infirmities in Obamacare . The justices have received many amicus briefs, one of which merits special attention because of the elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central to the debate as it should be. Read full article > >

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Obamacare’s contract problem

While we hold the military’s honor sacred, the government cannot penalize speech, whether true or false, simply because it might harm this honor. Any law that seeks to protect the government’s reputation runs afoul of the most basic bargain of sovereignty, reflected in our Constitution. James Madison said, “The censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people.” In this context, it is doubtful that the government can ever be libeled by a citizen, any more than a citizen can libel himself. We don’t let the government sue for libel — only individual officials. And even if the government could be libeled, the First Amendment forbids laws banning speech that challenges or impugns the government’s reputation. Read full article > >

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Truth to tell, the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional

DOES THE Second Amendment protect an individual right to carry a gun outside the home? Last week, a federal judge in Maryland concluded that it does and in the process struck down a Maryland licensing provision for carrying concealed weapons in public. Read full article > >

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Editorial Board: The right of protection

Republicans and religious organizations fighting President Obama’s new birth-control-coverage rule are focusing their hopes on what could prove the next front in the battle : the courts. Since November, at least eight lawsuits have been filed in federal district courts across the country challenging the constitutionality of the rule, which requires employers, including church-affiliated organizations that object to contraception on religious grounds, to cover birth control in workers’ health plans with no out-of-pocket charges. (Groups that are exclusively religious, such as churches, are exempt). Read full article > >

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New front in birth control rule battle: the courts

Judge rules permit restriction is “unconstitutional.”

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Maryland Gun Law Struck Down

The Syrian government holds a referendum on a new constitution, amid continuing violent unrest and a boycott by the opposition.

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Syria holds vote on constitution

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has decreed that a referendum on the new draft constitution will be held on 26 February, state media report.

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Syria plans vote on constitution

President Bashar al-Assad set Feb. 26 for a vote on a new constitution as residents of some Syrian cities said life is ever more unbearable .

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With Cities Under Fire, Assad Sets Date for Syrian Referendum

A top official of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation who was involved in the controversy over the group’s funding of Planned Parenthood resigned Tuesday. Karen Handel, vice president for public policy, acknowledged that she had supported Komen’s decision to pull funding for Planned Parenthood in a resignation letter obtained by The Atlanta Journal Constitution. However, she said the decision-making process began before she joined the organization last year, and the policy change was thoroughly vetted at every level within the organization and unanimously agreed to by the board at a November meeting. Read full article > >

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Komen vice president Karen Handel resigns