How embarrassing and shameful is this? We've got lies being spread on Fox News, a Supreme Court Justice repeating those lies during hearings before his court and then Fox repeating the lies told by the Justice in their "reporting" that evening.
Here's more from Steve Benen on Antonin Scalia telling repeating the falsehood that the "Cornhusker kickback" was part of the Affordable Care Act -- There is no 'Cornhusker kickback':
It's not fair for anyone to expect Supreme Court justices to become experts in every area of every law that comes before them. There are simply too many cases, spanning too broad a legal spectrum.
That said, it's not unreasonable to think justices should be relatively well informed about the basics of health care law, since literally tens millions of Americans are counting on them to make a fair and reasoned decisions. It makes displays like these rather embarrassing. [...]
In this case, Scalia doesn't seem to realize that the so-called "Cornhusker kickback" wasn't included in the Affordable Care Act; it was taken out before passage. Scalia probably heard something about it on Fox News, assumed it was true, and internalized his party's talking points. More than two years later, the conservative justice is still parroting a claim that has no basis in fact -- indeed, he's practically boasting about it during Supreme Court oral arguments.
Scalia is bringing to the discussion all the sophistication of a House freshman appearing at a Tea Party rally.
And here's more on Fox repeating the lie on Greta Van Susteren's show that evening --- Fox's Bream Falsely Suggests "Cornhusker Kickback" Is Part Of Health Care Law:
Fox News reporter Shannon Bream said that during Supreme Court deliberations on the health care reform law, "some of the different justices talked about the Cornhusker Kickback and other things that were tucked into the law so that votes would be gotten along the way." In fact, the provision in question, which would have provided extra Medicaid funding for Nebraska, was removed and is not part of the health care reform law.
Bream: "Some Of The Justices Talked About The Cornhusker Kickback And Other Things That Were Tucked Into The Law." From Fox News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (host): Fox News' Shannon Bream was inside the Supreme Court hearing today. She joins us. And Shannon, I probably should hold up at least the 2,700 pages of the bill that apparently nobody's read. Nobody read it before it was voted on, and now nobody's read it before the decision is going to be made about whether it's constitutional. But anyway, what happened today?
BREAM: It's quite a workout there. By the way, Justice Breyer did have sections of the law with him today, and he acknowledged in open court, Hey, I haven't read this whole thing. But he talked about the fact that if you shoot down the mandate, how do you decide what parts of the law live? And he talked about the fact that there are coequal branches of government. Do I jump in and do Congress' job, telling them which pieces I'm going to going to keep and not keep? And there was discussion in the court as well that there were deals made for some of the votes, he said -- you know, some of the different justices talked about the Cornhusker Kickback and other things that were tucked into the law so that votes would be gotten along the way. And they -- several of them expressed concern: How do we undo all of that? Is that our job? [Fox News, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, 3/28/12]
And there's more in the Media Matters report on how the provision did not make its way into the health care law.