Quickies

• Berlusconi is forced to resign.  This is probably good news in the long run for people hoping for a change in the status quo.  Something like this happening a year ago would have been unthinkable.

• A Republican-led court upholds the Affordable Care Act.  Elizabeth Wydra adds: "On the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision whether to review the constitutionality of health care reform legislation, the nation’s second most important court has dealt a devastating blow to the challengers of the Act, delivered by one of the country’s foremost conservative jurists.”

• Reagan appointed judge writes: "Since appellants cannot find real support for their proposed rule in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent, they emphasize both the novelty of the mandate and the lack of a limiting principle...It certainly is an encroachment on individual liberty, but it is no more so than a command that restaurants or hotels are obliged to serve all customers regardless of race,that gravely ill individuals cannot use a substance their doctors described as the only effective palliative for excruciating pain, or that a farmer cannot grow enough wheat to support his own family."

• It's election day.  Ohio gets ready to overturn anti-union legislation and Mississippi gets ready to outlaw birth control.

• Greg Sargent says Republicans have made an offer to grant new revenues but only if wealthy get huge tax cuts.