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Later this morning, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its decisions in the key marriage equality cases. After yesterday’s performance by the Court, we can no longer be surprised by historically bad jurisprudence.

The voting rights ruling it issued yesterday, Shelby County v. Holder, is one of the very worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. Leaving aside the practical effects of the Court’s holding, which are likely to be awful (Texas has already won the race for “first state to enact a change to its voting laws that wouldn’t have been approved by the federal government if the Voting Rights Act could still be enforced”), the opinion is a travesty as a matter of basic legal reasoning.

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Kaiser Health's story also notes that during the media push for Massachusetts' similar healthcare law, "the campaign was advertised during Red Sox games at Fenway Park. That marketing is widely credited with helping build public acceptance." Once again in the healthcare field, the federal government is just following Mitt Romney's lead.

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Another NBC News story on precisely the same topic comes away with a similar conclusion: "progressives are ready to give her another shot."

Progressives are basically fine with Hillary Clinton taking the 2016 nomination. There! Settled.

And why shouldn't they be? As Markos Moulitsas puts it, “The fact that she makes 2016 uninteresting makes that attractive." Yeah, that's about all you need, too. She would win. And you know who's a good nominee to go with, in general, in politics? The one who would win the election. Progressives overall might prefer, say, an Elizabeth Warren or Martin O'Malley for the nominee, but they likely won't run if Hillary Clinton runs, so whatever.

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Now then, what's the problem? Oh right, it's the House of Representatives, which is terrible at everything, and offers no indication of being any other way until at least 2023. Let's give some credit: They're adept at passing go-nowhere bills to repeal Obamacare or ban abortion or tattoo the words "Under God" to every baby's forehead. Great work there from the House Republican Party. On issues that might appeal to an even slightly broader cross-section of the country, though, they've got nothing. You know this. You've seen the same routine in nearly every important vote since 2009. Remember that time the government considered arbitrarily defaulting on the public debt and destroying the global economy forever? That was a head-scratcher for the House; took some real "working out" before they concluded it would best be averted, for now.

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For the current coalition of mostly-Democratic-but-some-Republican backers as a whole, this is mixed news: The cost estimate checks out -- better than expected, even -- but the relatively small decrease in future illegal immigration raises some concerns about their claims that this will resolve the border issue conclusively, forever.

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Darrell Issa, Republican chairmain of the committee, has been selectively releasing snippets of testimony to the press, all of it designed to support his contention that the IRS targeting of conservative groups for additional scrutiny of their nonprofit status was a political maneuver ordered or somehow directed by the White House. There is literally no evidence for that claim and it's not true but Issa is sort of bad at his job in many important respects. Democratic ranking member Elijah Cummings asked Issa to please release full transcripts of witness testimony, but Issa refused, so Cummings just did so, with a full transcript of the committee's interview with an IRS employee who seems to have been the first one to flag a "Tea Party" group's application for tax-exempt status for further review.

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The White House would prefer, if we are in a cutting mood, to cut direct subsidies to farmers and crop insurance, two longtime mainstays of the farm bill that have basically totally fucked up our entire food system for decades but that also have made a few giant food companies quite rich. Here is how House Republicans made their bill:

The bill, which costs nearly $100 billion a year, would save a total of about $4 billion annually, including the food stamp cuts. It would eliminate some subsidies while creating others, raising subsidy levels for several crops. It would expand the current crop insurance program and also create a new type of crop insurance that would kick in sooner than the paid insurance farmers have now.

Good one, guys. Good policy, good attempt at deficit reduction, good governing.

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“The president also will announce that we will be assisting the Syrian rebels by providing them with weapons and other assistance. I applaud the president’s decision.”

Strangely, an administration official then told the Daily Beast's Josh Rogin that the U.S. wouldn't be arming the opposition.

“The president has made a decision to provide the Syrian opposition with military items that can increase their effectiveness on the ground, but at this point it does not include things like guns and bullets,” the official tells The Daily Beast.

Which is it? "Senator McCain heard that from reliable sources,” his spokesman told the Daily Beast. It appears that McCain was correct: The U.S. will be supplying the Syrian opposition with small arms.

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New York city officials were told of Holder's decision Wednesday, according to the News. On Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly reportedly "vigorously objected to the plan in telephone conversations with Holder."

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Luntz has also previously consulted for the NFL on matters related to the ongoing lawsuit 4,000 former players filed against the league relating to concussions, and has appeared on ESPN representing the league, but in this case he appears to be working just for the team in question, with the disgusting and offensive name. That team, named after a wildly derogatory name for American Indians, has received a great deal of criticism for its name recently, including a trademark lawsuit and a letter from 10 members of Congress urging a change.

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There is the (interesting but only marginally consequential) media debate over the terminology to use when referring to Snowden: Leaker, whistle-blower, source? And then there is the much sillier public wrangling over whether Snowden is a "hero" or a "traitor," as if those maddeningly reductive (and not exclusive) terms expressed anything other than the speakers' tribal allegiances and predispositions. He's a man who did a remarkable and newsworthy thing. The thing he did is what people should probably still be talking about.

The New Yorker on Sunday and Monday ran three different pieces, by three different authors, examining Snowden the man. The first, and best, was by Amy Davidson, who sketched his biography and quoted his justifications, but largely held off on casting moral judgment in favor of raising useful questions: "How many people with a private contractors’ job and a password have the privilege of knowing the names of our spies?" And:

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The best thing the bill has going for it is that Mitch McConnell is going to actually allow it to come to the floor. (Minority Leader McConnell has veto power over most Senate business, because many  senators have convinced themselves that the founders wanted him to.) The "Gang" has four Republican members, meaning only a few more are needed in order to reach 60 votes and beat a potential filibuster. Kelly Ayotte is one Republican who's publicly announced her support for the bill.

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"What a funny joke," I thought. I mean, the bookers probably don't even have phone numbers for Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall! When are those two on TV? It could take ages to look that kind of thing up. And McCain is probably already in the green room, right now, waiting for Sunday morning. (Though hopefully he's not at the NBC green room, as "Meet the Press" is being preempted by tennis this weekend.)

Sen. McCain is on one of the Sunday news talk shows nearly every weekend. (Graham is often on one of the others.) This happens despite McCain not having any important leadership position or even expertise on any particular topic. McCain fancies himself one of America's foremost foreign policy experts, but he is actually just a belligerent hawk. Neither he nor Graham is actually on the Senate Intelligence Committee. They just love cameras and bombs.

The problem isn't just those two: It's the entire rotating stable of camera-seeking elected officials and predictable talking heads, a majority of whom are white and conservative. The guests who aren't partisan are Beltway centrists, more concerned with politics than policy.

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The NSA got a FISA judge to order Verizon to turn over "all call detail records or 'telephony metadata' created by Verizon for communications between the United States and abroad" or "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls." The records include "metadata," meaning the records show the phone numbers, call length and possibly location the calls were made, among lots of other helpful identifying information.

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Tony Bosch, the clinic's founder and a man for whom there aren't enough synonyms for "shady," is ruined and broke. There's not much doubt that he was selling a great deal of banned substances to a large number of professional athletes. What's unclear is whether the sworn testimony of a longtime liar -- a make-believe doctor who kept handwritten notes detailing his illegal activities for some reason -- is enough to actually suspend 20 players over. Something that's very clear is that MLB approached the investigation, built around a lawsuit against someone the league knew couldn't afford to defend himself against an army of well-paid attorneys, as if it were an arm of the federal government. This, for example, sounds more like an FBI sting than a civil action:

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Hugging Barack Obama was maybe the best political decision New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has ever made, and he's made some very canny ones. I'm not saying his embrace of the president following Hurricane Sandy was entirely cynical, but it was very boisterous, and it continued through last week, when Obama visited the Jersey Shore and once again made nice with Christie before the national TV news cameras.

Here's what's odd about this Republican governor who currently seems much more popular with Democrats than national Republicans: He's quite conservative. Especially for the Northeast. That was, in fact, his original appeal, back when conservatives were thrilled about him: He's the most conservative possible successful statewide officeholder for a blue state like New Jersey.

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