The U.S. Supreme Court term that begins Monday promises to be one of the most important for civil rights in decades, with the potential for blockbuster decisions on issues from race in classrooms and the voting booth to legal recognition for same-sex marriage.

Related: Conservatives warily ponder prospect of an 'Obama court'

Less than a decade after ruling that the nation's colleges and universities can consider the race of student applicants to achieve more racially diverse campuses, a practice now widely used by the nation's selective schools, the court has agreed to take a fresh look.

The new challenge comes from Abigail Fisher, a white student denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin. The school admits the top 10 percent of academic performers from all Texas high schools, then considers the race of applicants as one factor in admitting the remainder of an incoming freshman class.

Evan Vucci / AP

People who waited in line overnight to hear the Supreme Court on a landmark case on health care hold their belongings as they make their way into the court in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012.

Fisher did not finish in the top 10 percent at her high school and claims that the consideration of race in reviewing applications cost her a spot at the university. 

"There were people in my class with lower grades, who weren't in all the activities I was in, who were accepted into UT. And the only difference between us was the color of our skin," she said. 

The university, backed by civil rights groups, contends that while the top 10 percent plan achieves some campus diversity, many of its classes would have only a few, if any, black and Hispanic students without additional considerations of race. 

Making it harder to achieve the diversity colleges need, argues Gregory Garre, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing the University of Texas, "would jeopardize the nation's paramount interest in educating its future leaders in an environment that best prepares them for the society and workforce they will encounter." 

The Supreme Court that will hear the case Oct. 10 is different from the one that upheld a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Michigan law school in 2003. 

"Sandra Day O'Connor was on the court then, and she's been replaced by Samuel Alito, who has much less tolerance for affirmative action," says Tom Goldstein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court cases. 

O'Connor, who wrote the decision in the Michigan case, retired from the court in 2006. 

As a result, says Pamela Harris, a former Obama administration official in the Justice Department, "I don't think anyone thinks affirmative action is long for this world." 

Justice Elena Kagan, considered one of the court's liberals, will sit this one out. She was the Obama administration's solicitor general when the Justice Department became involved in the case in the lower courts. 

The Supreme Court will take up another racially charged issue this term if, as seems likely, it agrees to consider efforts to scale back the landmark Voting Rights Act. 

Passed by Congress in 1965 and renewed four times since then, most recently in 2006, a key provision requires states with a history of discrimination at the polls to get federal permission before making any changes to election procedures -- from redrawing congressional district boundaries to changing the locations of polling places. 

Three years ago, the Supreme Court brushed off a challenge to that requirement but strongly suggested that several justices had doubts about its constitutionality, given recent electoral reforms. 

"Things have changed in the South," the court said in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare." 

Pending cases ask the court to strike down the pre-clearance requirement entirely or throw out the list of areas, consisting of nine entire states, and of 12 cities and 57 counties elsewhere, that must get permission to modify their election procedures. 

The current map, says Bert Rein, a Washington, D.C. lawyer representing Shelby County, Ala., includes some localities that have made substantial reforms while missing other parts of the country that have failed to root out discrimination at the polls. 

As a result, Rein says, the system is unfair. "Florida has been forced into pre-clearance litigation to prove that reducing early voting from 14 days to 8 is not discriminatory, when states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have no early voting at all." 

But Debo Adegbile of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund says the current map is a close enough fit to cover the areas of greatest concern. 

"Congress is not a surgeon with a scalpel when it acts to legislate across the 50 states. But it can reasonably attack discrimination where it finds it," he says. 

The court is almost certain to take up a host of challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. 

It defines marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." As a result, same-sex couples who get married in the states where such marriages are legal are accorded state and local benefits but miss out on more than 1,100 federal ones. 

After at first defending the law, the Obama administration notified federal courts early last year that it concluded the law was unconstitutional. House Republicans then took up the law's defense. 

A Supreme Court ruling striking down DOMA as discriminatory would not force states to permit same-sex marriage. But it would require the federal government to recognize those marriages where they are legal. 

The court could address the issue of same-sex marriage more directly if it takes up the legal challenge to California's Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.  

Legal experts differ on whether the court is prepared to go that far, rather than deciding the DOMA issue now and coming back to the constitutionality of gay marriage in a later term. 

"We're not at the point where the Supreme Court will require the state of Mississippi to allow same-sex marriage," says Louis Michael Seidman of the Georgetown University Law Center. 

Among other questions the justices will confront: 

- Must police get a search warrant before taking a blood sample from a suspected drunk driver? 

- How far can police go in using drug-sniffing dogs outside someone's house? 

- Can a 1789 law, the Alien Tort Statute, be used to bring lawsuits in US courts for violations of international law that occur in other countries? 

- And, in an issue of growing interest to U.S. businesses, should more limits be placed on the ability to bring class-action lawsuits?

Now it’s a tax? “Mitt Romney Wednesday reversed the position staked out by his own campaign just two days before and said the penalty levied against Americans who do not buy health insurance under President Obama’s health care overhaul is ‘a tax,’” the Boston Globe writes. Romney told CBS: “The majority of the court said it is a tax, therefore it is a tax. The majority has spoken. There is no way around that.”

And get this… “During a parade in Wolfeboro, NH, Romney was told by someone in the crowd that the health care penalty was a tax. ‘I agree,’ Romney replied.”

Newsweek/Daily Beast’s Tomasky: “After some tap dancing, Mitt Romney now says the individual mandate is a tax. Democrats should call his bluff and agree—it'll hurt Mitt far more than Obama.”

GOP 12: “Hogan Gidley, a former adviser for Rick Santorum's erstwhile presidential bid, tells Talking Points Memo that his boss tried to warn voters about Mitt Romney's difficulty with prosecuting the case against ObamaCare.” He said, “It’s a problem, I’m not going to lie.... Here we are a couple months into the general and you’re going, ‘Hey wait a minute, that Rick Santorum was right'."

CBN’s David Brody: “It makes you wonder if Rick Santorum was on to something when he said it would be a mistake to nominate Romney because it makes arguing the healthcare issue extremely difficult. You think President Obama will be ready with a few good one-liners for the fall debates? You betcha.”

Romney’s attempts to “clarify” or wiggle out of his position on the mandate reminds that back in October, George Will called Romney “the pretzel candidate.” Will hit him for “twists” on ethanol, TARP, and collective bargaining. Will wrote, “A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one.” And he called him “a recidivist reviser of his principles.” Will concluded: “Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?”

Bermuda Shorts: AP: “For nearly 15 years, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's financial portfolio has included an offshore company that remained invisible to voters as his political star rose. Based in Bermuda, Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd. was not listed on any of Romney's state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning - suggesting he could be wealthier than the nearly $250 million estimated by his campaign. The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney's ethics filings, and he has never been cited for failing to disclose information about his money. But Romney's limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed, according to experts in private equity, tax and campaign finance law.”

The Obama campaign, in pushing the story, said it “raises serious questions about whether Mitt Romney established a Bermuda corporation to avoid U.S. taxes and attempted to hide it from the public.” And it put out a web video entitled, “Do you have an offshore bank account?”

“President Obama’s re-election campaign pounced on recent reports about Mitt Romney’s offshore holdings as new details emerged about a Bermuda-based company that was omitted from multiple financial disclosure reports,” the New York Daily News writes.

And it dings him for his home in New Hampshire: “Mitt Romney’s week-long vacation at his opulent lakehouse has reinforced the common line of attack that he’s out of touch with the common voter — a controversy President Obama may be trying to avoid. … Yet whether he’s on a jet ski or not, Romney’s wealth — estimated at more than $250 million — made more uncomfortable headlines for him on Tuesday. The fortune, mostly made at Bain Capital, is largely held in a complex and opaque offshore network, including a Swiss bank account and in tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, according to a Vanity Fair report. Also, his campaign must now distance itself from the CEO of Barclays, who stepped down from the British bank Tuesday amid an interest-rate fixing scandal.”

The Romney campaign for its part is hitting Obama for “broken promises.” “With no record to run on, no rationale for re-election, and no positive message – President Obama is on the defensive, trying to win back the support of skeptical voters in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where he has failed to follow through on his promises on health care, unemployment, and spending,” the campaign writes in a morning email.

And it links to several not-so-positive headlines for the president as he makes his way through Ohio:

Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Democrats And Republicans See Challenges For President Barack Obama In Key Mahoning Valley”
Toledo Blade, “Obama Trip Recalls to GOP Biden Visit Four Years Earlier”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, Sen. Portman Op-Ed: “Obama's Policies Are Stifling The Recovery”
Toledo Blade, “GOP Governors In Maumee Before Obama Visit”
Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Romney Campaign To Rival Obama Bus Tour Through Ohio With Bobby Jindal And Tim Pawlenty.”

There’s also the Akron Beacon Journal front page: “High jobless rate expected for years.”
And the Cleveland Plain Dealer front page: “Romney’s Mahoning Valley opportunity.”
The Youngstown Vindicator: “Romney campaign to stop in Valley; GOP hopeful wants to stay a step ahead of Obama’s bus tour.”

Of course, on the other hand:

Sandusky Register flag on the background of an American flag and the president’s face: “Welcome, President Obama. Obama visits Sandusky today; public access limited.”
The Toledo Blade (with a smiling Obama): “China to face accusation of unfair trade. Complaint to world body affects Toledo-made SUVs.”
The Ravenna Record-Courier: “Aurora man wins contest, has lunch with Obama.”
The Dayton Daily News front page: “IT job demand brings six-figure salaries.”
Hamilton Journal News: “Demand for IT jobs boosting salaries.”

Charles Dharapak / AP

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, accompanied by his Ann, address a crowd after they walked in the Fourth of July Parade in Wolfeboro, N.H., Wednesday. At right is son Craig Romney.

WOLFEBORO, N.H.-- Mitt Romney contradicted a top aide to his campaign and aligned himself instead with the Republican establishment in labeling the health care mandate a tax, not a penalty, as Democrats have contended.

"Now the Supreme Court has spoken and while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it’s a tax," Romney said in an interview Wednesday with CBS. "Therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that.  You can try and say you wish they’d decided a different way, but they didn't. They concluded it’s a tax. That’s what it is."

Romney's description of the health care mandate as a tax aligns his position with that of GOP leaders, who have for days used the Supreme Court's majority decision upholding the law under Congress's taxation authority as a cudgel with which to attack Democrats and the president as having raised taxes.

Earlier this week, Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom took a position in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd that the mandate should be labeled a fee or a penalty, not a tax, and repeating again that Romney agreed with the Supreme Court's dissenting opinion, written by Antonin Scalia, that the mandate should be considered a penalty or fee and would therefore be unconstitutional.

By stating that the mandate is indeed a tax, Romney can now join a chorus of Republican leaders in attacking the president for what he claims was breaking a central pledge of Obama's candidacy -- not to raise taxes on middle-income Americans. But in doing so, he opens himself up to a similar attack: that the mandate in the health care law he passed in Massachusetts was also a tax.

"The American people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made," Romney said in the CBS interview. "He said he wouldn’t raise taxes on middle-income Americans."

Wednesday morning's interview was Romney's first public appearance in several days, as the candidate took the weekend off to vacation at his summer home here on Lake Winnepesaukee. Romney was joined here by all five of his sons and their children, filling his lakeside compound to the brim with activity over several days of boating, volleyball and at least one meeting with top campaign aides on the house's back deck. 

That meeting, attended by campaign manager Matt Rhoades and senior adviser Beth Myers, who heads Romney's vice presidential search effort, has fueled speculation that Romney may be close to picking a number two on the ticket.

Wednesday, Romney took part in the Wolfeboro Independence Day parade, along with most of his family and with Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who is considered by many political analysts to be on Romney's vice presidential short list. If parade-goers were looking for clues to the candidate's intentions or to hear policy discussed, they may have come away disappointed.

Instead, the attitude along the parade route through Main street was patriotic and festive, with the candidate criss-crossing the street to shake hands with supporters, snap photos and guzzle lemonade from a roadside stand. At the parade's conclusion at Brewster Academy, which overlooks the lake, Romney praised the "fighting men and women around the world continue to inspire me," and gave brief remarks saluting America on her birthday.

"I love this country," Romney said. "I love the people who have built this country."

Three times on "Meet the Press" last Sunday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the payment individuals must eventually make for failing to buy insurance under the health-care law is a penalty, not a tax.

"It's a penalty that comes under the tax code," Pelosi said, "for the 1%, perhaps, of the population who may decide that they're going to be free riders" by not buying insurance.

Moderator David Gregory persisted. "But it's a new tax. It is a new tax on the American people," he said.

"No, no, no, no," Pelosi responded. "It's not a tax. It's a penalty for free riders."

So what is the payment that virtually all citizens must make if they decline to obtain health insurance when that provision of the Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014?

In his Supreme Court opinion declaring the law constitutional under Congress's taxing authority, Chief Justice John Roberts called it a tax no fewer than 26 times. The health-care law itself repeatedly refers to the payment as a penalty, but Roberts said that didn't matter. The conclusion about what it is, he said, "should not change simply because Congress used the word 'penalty.'" 

For him, the issue is how it actually works, not the label attached to it in the statute.

Penalties, Roberts said, work much differently from taxes. Quoting an earlier Supreme Court decision, he said a penalty "is an exaction imposed by statute for an unlawful act." But failing to buy health insurance is not unlawful, because a citizen has an alternative -- either buy insurance or pay a tax. The conclusion: It cannot be a penalty.

"Neither the Act nor any other law attaches negative consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS," Roberts wrote. "The shared responsibility payment merely imposes a tax citizens may lawfully choose to pay in lieu of buying health insurance."

It is, he put it succinctly, “a tax on going without health insurance.”

Is all this semantics, or does it matter? It made all the difference to Chief Justice Roberts. His opinion makes it amply clear that if he thought it wasn't a tax, he would not have voted to find it constitutional. Under the law of the case, the Supreme Court declared that payment a tax, not a penalty.

Updated 12:04 p.m. - The Supreme Court's determination last week that health care reform could be sustained as an extension of the power of Congress to tax has launched a battle of political semantics in Washington over taxes. 

Republicans have latched on to the high court's ruling that the individual mandate -- the requirement that individuals have insurance, or pay a penalty to the IRS -- was essentially a tax. Though the majority decision was authored, ironically, by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, it offered an affirmation of Republicans' long-held contention that President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement represented a tax hike.

Democrats have preferred, instead, to call it a "penalty" rather than a tax, parrying Republicans' attacks by using language presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney has used in defense of his own similar health reform law in Massachusetts.

As recently as this Monday morning, the Romney campaign was using the same language.

"It was a penalty, and the governor had all the authority he needed under our state constitution to put in the reforms that he did put in place," Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said this morning on MSNBC. "The governor has consistently described the mandate in Massachusetts as a penalty."

Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom

The aftermath of the court's ruling, in short, has resulted in a bizarre situation. Republicans -- including Romney -- attack "ObamaCare" as a tax, even as the party's standard-bearer uses language to defend the Massachusetts law that closely resembles Obama's law. (The Romney campaign is also quick to note that there are other taxes included in the health care law beyond the mandate.)

“The Supreme Court left President Obama with two choices: the federal individual mandate in Obamacare is either a constitutional tax or an unconstitutional penalty. Governor Romney thinks it is an unconstitutional penalty. What is President Obama’s position: is his federal mandate unconstitutional or is it a tax?” asked Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for Romney.

And Democrats are uncomfortably wedded to a Supreme Court decision that handed them their desired outcome, but created for them a new political headache. Mindful that embracing a new tax could be politically treacherous for them in November, the White House and Democrats downballot are scrambling to spin the mandate as anything but a tax, despite the court's ruling and the fact that the "penalty" is paid to the IRS.

Republicans pointed to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's comments toward the decision on "Meet the Press" this Sunday as an acknowledgement of that.

"It's a penalty that comes under the tax code for the 1 percent, perhaps, of the population who decide they're going to be free riders," said the California Democrat, who as House speaker was one of the law's chief proponents.

The GOP is likely to find much more success in using this tactic downballot. They have been hammering away at House and Senate candidates since the decision was first announced.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, for instance, has targeted Democratic candidates in releases and videos throughout the weekend for supporting, they assert, a tax hike.

For its part, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has pushed back by launching automated calls against Republicans that accuse them of wishing to "put insurance companies back in charge of our health care."

But that appears set to be a separate battle from the one between Romney and Obama. Republicans' most visible figure this election year will have trouble explaining to voters how his proposal in Massachusetts is not a tax, but Obama's is. That was a chief conservative criticism of Romney during the primary: that he was the worst possible candidate to challenge Obama on health care, because of the similar law he had passed.

Team Obama, after a rough start, ends the month on a high note… Obama the escape artist… Can Republicans still repeal the law?... And do they have the appetite to do so?... Roberts puts his stamp on the decision... Obama travels to Colorado (arriving at 1:55 pm ET) to inspect the wildfires there… Rothenberg Report doesn’t see a House wave coming… And “Meet the Press” will have Nancy Pelosi, Bobby Jindal, and Howard Dean.

Pete Souza / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama talking on the phone with Solicitor General Donald Verrilli in the Oval Office of the White House June 28, 2012 after learning of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

*** Ending the month on a high note: Perception-wise, June started off as a rough month for President Obama and his allies. First came that disappointing May jobs report; then the Democrats’ loss in the Wisconsin recall; then more bad news out of Europe; Obama’s “the private sector is doing fine” remark; and finally the development that Team Romney outraised Team Obama in May. But the thing about perception is that it can change, and it did in the second half of the month. The president’s immigration/deportation announcement put Romney on the defensive; the Washington Post made the charge that Romney invested in firms that shipped jobs overseas; numerous polls showed that the overall fundamentals of the race hadn’t changed, suggesting that the Obama ads have been more effective in the swing states than the GOP ads; and yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court -- countering a lot of the conventional wisdom -- upheld his signature health-care law. So what started out as a rocky month for Obama ended in a better place for him, just as he embarks on his post-July 4 bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania next week.

*** The escape artist: Yesterday’s SCOTUS outcome was typical of what we’ve seen for Obama over the past four years: He finds his back against the wall -- sometimes due to his own doing, sometimes not -- and then escapes disaster. We saw this during the Dem primary season before Iowa (remember the summer of ’07); during Jeremiah Wright; during the ’08 general after the McCain-Palin bounce, during the 2009-2010 health-care fight; and now after the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday, which easily could have gone the other way. And make no mistake: The decision upholding the law was something Obama and his allies NEEDED; they had to have something to show for the steep price they paid for the health-care law. This was a hurdle the president had to clear to get to November; but the ruling is no political booster rocket. He simply doesn’t have a new drag. Of course, as relates to his re-election, Obama once again finds his back against the wall. The unemployment rate is at 8.2%, and a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Can he again pull a rabbit from his hat here? We’ll find out in four months.

*** Can Republicans still repeal the law? As for Mitt Romney, his campaign made lemonade out of yesterday’s health-care lemons by announcing that it and its victory fund raised more than $4 million from 42,000 donors since Thursday’s ruling. (Although do keep in mind that Team Romney averaged $2.5 million per day last month.) And Romney made this argument after the decision -- vote for me because I will repeal the health-care law. But is repeal a realistic outcome? On “Morning Joe,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said that Senate Republicans could do it through reconciliation. But conservative writer David Frum argues that Republicans would no longer have the high political ground; they’d find themselves in the same position Democrats did in 2009-2010. “Suddenly it will be their town halls filled with outraged senior citizens whose benefits are threatened; their incumbencies that will be threatened.” The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza makes two other points: 1) the Congressional Budget Office, like it did last time, would probably rule that repealing the health-care would INCREASE the deficit, and 2) reconciliation can be used only for things that have a budgetary effect. “Much of the A.C.A., such as the insurance exchanges and subsidies, would fall under these categories. But a lot of it, including the hated individual mandate, does not.”

*** And how much appetite do they have? Here’s a separate question: How much appetite will Romney have in continually making this repeal argument? Indeed, Obama already had a rebuttal to this in his own remarks yesterday: Isn’t it time to move on? “The highest Court in the land has now spoken… But what we won’t do -- what the country can’t afford to do -- is refight the political battles of two years ago, or go back to the way things were.” There’s also the risk for Romney that talking about repealing health-care will only give Team Obama opportunities to show clips like this one, via American Bridge, of Romney touting his Massachusetts health-care law and its own individual mandate. And Romney’s folks may come to the conclusion that they don’t need to talk about health care because every other Republican will. He may have the luxury (and political necessity) to pivot off of health care, other than using it at rallies, while the various House and Senate GOP candidates pound away. This is one of those issues that could have less impact on the presidential but more on the downballot races.

*** Roberts puts his stamp on the decision: And, of course, we have to talk about Chief Justice John Roberts. Back in March, after the oral arguments in the health-care case, we wrote about the negative consequences of another 5-4 decision. But the 5-4 decision we got yesterday -- with the conservative Roberts joining the four reliable liberal justices – was something different: It made the court look less political. “The fact that the chief justice, a conservative appointed by Republicans, wrote the opinion today would and should give Americans a lot of confidence in the decision that it's not just a political thing," SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein told NBC’s Pete Williams yesterday. In the process, Roberts is getting lots of praise in the MSM (though also criticism on the right). Here’s Dana Milbank’s headline in the Washington Post: “The umpire strikes back.” For you conservative historians, we even saw some Twitter references to the old “impeach Earl Warren” billboards. That said, we’re fascinated by the contortions many more serious conservative commentators are doing re: Roberts. They are actually holding their fire.

*** Obama travels to Colorado: Transitioning from yesterday’s health-care decision, Obama heads to Colorado today to inspect the wildfires spreading throughout the state. He arrives in the state at 1:55 pm ET.

*** Team Rothenberg doesn’t see a House wave coming: The Rothenberg Political Report has updated its House forecast for November. Bottom line: It (like the Cook Political Report) doesn’t see a wave coming. “Our new projection for gains/losses in the House this November is now between a +1 gain for Republicans and a +6 gain for Democrats.” More: “We rate 201 seats a safe GOP, 161 safe Dem, 25 as Lean/Favored for the GOP, 19 for Lean/Favored for the Dems, and we have 29 total tossups. The 29 includes 9 pure toss-ups (CA-7, CO-6, IL-11, MN-8, NY-1, NY-19, NY-21, NY-27, PA-12), 15 Toss-Up/Tilt GOP (CA-52, CO-3, FL18, IA-3 moved this week toward the GOP, IL 12, IL13, MI 1 moved this week toward the Democrats, MI11, NH1, NV3, NY11, NY18, OH, 16, TX 23 and UT4), and 5 Toss-Up/Tilt Democrat (CA-41, NY24, RI1, WA1).”

*** On “Meet” this Sunday: NBC’s David Gregory will interview House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, plus have a debate between Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Howard Dean.

Countdown to GOP convention: 59 days
Countdown to Dem convention: 66 days
Countdown to Election Day: 130 days

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*** Friday’s “Daily Rundown” line-up: Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) on the Supreme Court’s ruling… NBC’s David Gregory on the campaign consequences of it all… NBC’s Kerry Sanders with the latest on George Zimmerman’s bond hearing in Florida… More 2012 trail news with NBC’s Tom Brokaw, Demos’ Bob Herbert and the AP’s Beth Fouhy.

*** Friday’s “MSNBC Live with Thomas Roberts” line-up: MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts talks with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, former RNC Chair Michael Steele, Time magazine’s Michael Crowley, and all four co-hosts of MSNBC’s “The Cycle” -- Steve Kornacki, S.E. Cupp, Krystal Ball & Toure.

*** Friday’s “NOW with Alex Wagner” line-up: Alex Wagner’s guests include “The Newsroom” Creator/Writer Aaron Sorkin, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (D), the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich, and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.

*** Friday’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” line-up: Chis Cillizza, filling in for NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, interviews NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell and Miguel Almaguer, former Department of Justice Prosecutor David Rivkin, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart and Ruth Marcus, USA Today’s Susan Page, National Journal’s Major Garrett and Medora Works Directors Davy Rothbart and Andrew Cohn.

*** Friday’s “News Nation with Tamron Hall” line-up: MSNBC’s Tamron Hall interviews Newsweek’s Zachary Karabell,  Dem strategist Jimmy Williams,  Natoma Canfield – the woman mention yesterday in Obama’s speech after the healthcare ruling, and Colonel Jack Jacobs on the Stolen Valor ruling.

*** Saturday's and Sunday's "Melissa Harris-Perry" line-up: On Saturday, Melissa Harris-Perry interviews, among others, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, writer Rebecca Traister, and former SC GOP Chair Katon Dawson. On Sunday, she interviews Dem strategist Karen Finney and The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, who taught both President Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts at Harvard, wrote on SCOTUS Blog: “Today, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a heroic rebuke to the growing number of Americans who feared the Supreme Court had lost the ability to rise above the narrowminded partisanship that dominates the country’s political discourse.

“More than a year ago, writing in the Boston Globe, I made a simple point … that ‘this law doesn’t literally force anybody to do anything; it just increases the tax liability of those who refuse to buy insurance.’ Fortunately, the Chief Justice ended up articulating essentially the same common sense view despite protestations and pressure from his conservative colleagues on the Court that he approach the case more artificially.”

Dana Milbank with the headline of the day: “The umpire strikes back.” His lead: “John Roberts was the first justice to appear from behind the curtains when the buzzer sounded in the Supreme Court chamber at 10 a.m. sharp. He forced a tight grin and scanned the audience, which, on this historic day, included several members of Congress and retired Justice John Paul Stevens. The only hint of what was afoot came from Justice Antonin Scalia, who, taking his place at the chief justice’s right, bowed his head as if in mourning… In the audience, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), an opponent of the law, folded his arms across his chest, his mouth slightly agape. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) put his chin in his hand. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), a leader of House conservatives, shook his head. Scalia was reclining in his chair, staring blankly. Justice Clarence Thomas was practically horizontal.”

And: “Whatever one thinks of the health-care ruling, Roberts’s opinion was extraordinarily brave.”

National Review didn’t think it was brave, but a “folly” instead: “If the law has been rendered less constitutionally obnoxious, the Court has rendered itself more so. Chief Justice Roberts cannot justly take pride in this legacy… Opponents should take heart: The law remains unpopular. Let the president and his partisans ring their bells today, and let us work to make sure that they are wringing their hands come November.”

Charles Krauthammer calls this decision by Roberts his “Nixon-to-China” moment. “Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature. … As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce. … But he lives in uneasy coexistence with Roberts, custodian of the court, acutely aware that the judiciary’s arrogation of power has eroded the esteem in which it was once held.”

In fairness, as one of us will write later this morning, the taxing power argument didn’t come out of nowhere. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued strongly for it. For example: “If there is any doubt about that under the Commerce Clause, then I urge this Court to uphold  the minimum coverage provision as an exercise of the taxing power.”

Verrilli fended off eight justices, including the liberals, who came after him for the president and members of Congress denying that it was a tax. He argued that not all members of Congress denied it was valid under the Congress’ taxing authority, including Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who was entrusted as one of the key shepherds of the bill. And Verrilli acknowledged the legislative politics, but pointed out the reality: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objectives. But it is in the Internal Revenue Code, it is collected by the IRS on April 15th.” 

Republicans want move toward repealing the law. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning unabashedly called for the Senate, assuming a narrow GOP takeover of the Upper Chamber, to use “reconciliation” to kill the law.

But David Frum calls GOP hopes of repealing the law a “fantasy” and the ruling a “Waterloo.” “First, today's Supreme Court decision will make it a lot harder to elect Mitt Romney. President Obama has just been handed a fearsome election weapon. 2012 is no longer exclusively a referendum on the president's economic management. 2012 is now also a referendum on Mitt Romney's healthcare plans.”

He also notes that Republicans will be the ones faced with political backlash. “[I]t will be their town halls filled with outraged senior citizens whose benefits are threatened; their incumbencies that will be threatened.” And that since many Republicans want to keep elements of the bill, that one-page repeal bill “will begin to grow.” He adds that there’s “no internal consensus on what a replacement would look like. Worse, any replacement of the law's popular elements will require financing. But where is that money to come from?” And he contends the bill will become not just more popular, but more difficult to undo as states begin to implement it in 2014.

In other words: “If replacement does not happen in the first 100 days, it won't happen at all—that is, it won't happen as a single measure, but rather will take the form of dozens of small incremental changes adopted episodically over the next 20 years. The outlook then: Even if Republicans win big in 2012, they will have to fight inch by bloody inch for changes they could have had for the asking in 2010. Truly, this is Waterloo—a Waterloo brought about by a dangerous combination of ideological frenzy, poor risk calculation, and a self-annihilating indifference to the real work of government.”

On the other side of the aisle…

Huffington Post’s Stein and Grim: “Democrats won [yesterday’s] battle, but the war over health care remains unsettled… Having endured years of sustained attack for constructing a bill that was based, fundamentally, on conservative principles, Democrats on Thursday were conceiving of ways to make the Affordable Care Act more popular rather than structurally different.” And: “[A] bill that has been sold to the public before would need to be presented once again during the presidential campaign.”

Josh Marshall at left-leaning Talking Points Memo: “In politics like in everything else, wins tend to generate more wins. They excite the winners and demoralize the losers, especially when the losers were certain they were about to win big. Getting the wind knocked out of you and desperately choking for breath for a minute on the field isn’t a plus. So a loss for the opponents of ‘Obamacare’ strikes me as what it is: a loss for the opponents of ‘Obamacare.’ On all levels.”

Matt Yglesias on what’s at stake in November: “[I]t turns out that the provisions a Romney administration would need to repeal to gut the law are wildly popular. According to a Reuters poll earlier this week, 78 percent of self-identified Republicans favor ‘banning insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions’ and 86 percent of them support ‘banning insurance companies from canceling policies because a person becomes ill.’

“In other words, once the basic framework of the law is in place, it’ll be all but impossible to kill. That’s probably why no country that’s instituted a universal health insurance program has ever rolled it back—even strong conservatives like Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom or the current right-wing government in Canada leave existing programs in place. The problem for Democrats is that if Romney takes office in 2013, none of this stuff will have actually happened yet. Repealing the law in its abstract form is a bit politically risky for Republicans but not nearly as risky as it will become in the future.”

Mitt Romney's successor as governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick (D), praised the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the 2010 health-care law -- and tweaked Romney in the process.

"Today's decision is a victory for the American people, a victory for the proper role of government, and a victory for our constitutional checks and balances," Patrick said at press conference in Boston.  

Patrick, an Obama campaign co-chair, sought to tie the federal health-care plan to the one Romney signed into law as Massachusetts governor.

"Congress acted, in 2009, for the same reasons our legislature. And Gov. Romney acted in 2006 because health is a public good and everyone deserves access to it -- because reforming the system brings costs down and improves the system for everyone. Today the court upheld that power."

"[Romney] deserves credit for his role together with the Democratic legislature and Sen. Kennedy and the business community and patient advocates for doing a lot of good, for helping people help themselves," he added.

Patrick said the system in place in Massachusetts has improved coverage, citing stabilizing premiums and coverage of 99.8% of children. Patrick then used Massachusetts' results to counter Romney's claims that the federal law will raise taxes, drop coverage, and eliminate jobs. 

"Each and every one of the list of horrors Gov. Romney now says will happen in America because of Obamacare did not happen in Massachusetts because of Romneycare," Patrick said. 

Patrick also praised Chief Justice John Roberts for setting aside partisanship by siding with the Court's liberal justices to uphold the law.

"The chief justice said basically that it's not the court's business to offer an opinion about whether they approve or disapprove of the choices the Congress has made, but instead in a constitutional system to determine whether the Congress had the power to make the choices it made," Patrick said. "The Affordable Care Act is not ultimately about President Obama or Chief Justice Roberts or any other member of the Court or Congress. It's about Americans all across this country who are trying their very best to make their way forward.  It's about helping people help themselves."

ANALYSIS

It’s interesting to note that two prominent conservative judges have upheld the individual mandate under the Commerce Clause -- Judge Silberman of the D.C. Circuit and Judge Sutton of the 6th Circuit.

It’s interesting that Roberts went a way no other conservative judge from the lower courts had gone. He upheld it under Congress’ constitutional power to tax. Why does this matter? It suggests Roberts is guarding his legacy as the Chief Justice to show the Supreme Court has not become totally political and predictable. And that conservatives can be independent thinkers and not lock-step.

A veteran, conservative Supreme Court lawyer said Roberts will likely be seen as being intimidated by the Left. He added that he believes it’s clear the opinion was initially a 5-4 decision to strike down the law under the Commerce Clause and that  Roberts flipped in the end. He points out that it's unusual for there to be a jointly written dissent among four justices. In the decision, Roberts appears to be saying to the Right, "Look, I’m with you on the Commerce Clause, but it can be upheld under taxing authority."

In the end, there is also a big policy issue. The court said to Americans, you don't have to buy insurance under the mandate, but you have to pay the tax. What will Congress do next? That’s the big question – stay tuned.

The Supreme Court has upheld the healthcare law, upholding the individual under the taxing authority of congress, not the commerce clause.

It was indeed a 5-4 decision, but with Chief Justice Roberts voting with the liberal majority.

Watch NBC's live analysis and coverage here.

*** UPDATE *** Here's the court's entire opinion.

*** UPDATE 2 *** President Obama is expected to speak from the White House at 12:15 pm ET.

*** UPDATE 3 *** We expect to hear from Mitt Romney at 11:45 pm ET.