Your customized headlines for Thu, Mar 29, 2012

In the course of Europe's economic crisis, Germany has pushed its neighbors into a new fiscal treaty, demanded that other governments take tough austerity measures, forced losses on private investors who hold Greek bonds and helped shove uncooperative politicians out of office.

The Supreme Court closed an extraordinary three-day review of President Obama's health-care law Wednesday, with its conservative majority signaling that it may be on the brink of a redefinition of the federal government's power.

Former MF Global assistant treasurer Edith O'Brien invoked her constitutional right not to testify Wednesday at a House hearing probing the collapse of the big brokerage firm and the disappearance of as much as $1.6 billion of customers' money.

Nobody in 1895 would have thought that a difference of just two feet might one day influence more than 40,000 jobs in the 21st century.

The final spike in the transcontinental railroad had been hammered down just 26 years earlier, and with railroad companies in hot competition, a tunnel was built under the heart of Baltimore to serve one of them.

Remember derivatives? The financial products that Warren Buffett compared to weapons of mass destruction? The ones that were at the heart of the financial crisis?

Well, they've been doing just fine. As recently as last spring, banks were increasing their derivatives' holdings. But that may be changing. In the second half of 2011, the total value of derivatives contracts by insured U.S. commercial declined by 0.6 percent—the "first year-over-year decline on record," according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The decline continued through the last quarter of 2011, when the notional value of derivatives experienced the biggest drop-off in history, falling by $17 trillion.

In the course of Europe's economic crisis, Germany has pushed its neighbors into a new fiscal treaty, demanded that other governments take tough austerity measures, forced losses on private investors who hold Greek bonds and helped shove uncooperative politicians out of office.

— Has a long-lost Mozart composition been discovered?

— Student loans for kindergarten now exist.

— "Opting out of the health-care market is about as realistic as opting out of dying."

— Good point from a TPM reader: If Roberts and Kennedy want a limiting principle, they can always write one.

Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches constitutional law. He's also author of the excellent book, 'America's Constitution: A Biography', and a former Supreme Court clerk. We spoke Wednesday morning about whether there's a clear "limiting principle" in the health-care case. Amar thinks there is: It's called "the Constitution," and, in his view, it's clear which side it's on.

Mitt Romney to Hugh Hewitt:

"I can tell you one thing. If I'm the godfather of this thing, then it gives me the right to kill it."

Er, I don't think that's really how it works.

The Supreme Court closed an extraordinary three-day review of President Obama's health-care law Wednesday, with its conservative majority signaling that it may be on the brink of a redefinition of the federal government's power.