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March 27, 2012 | | SILVER LINING Supreme Court justices will take up Obamacare for the second day on Tuesday, zooming in on the most contentious part of the law: the individual mandate. Will it stand? Even if it doesn’t, writes The Daily Beast’s Peter J. Boyer, a ruling against health-care reform could actually help Obama’s reelection—robbing Republicans of their most animating issue and allowing Dems to pivot to the law’s more popular components. DEFIANT North Korea plans to roll the dice with its missile launch next month, despite stern warnings from President Obama and the international community to abandon the idea. The Hermit Kingdom has claimed that the launch is for a peaceful space program, but South Korea and Japan aren’t buying it and have readied missiles defenses. At a summit in Seoul, Obama and leaders from 40 nations pledged to secure the world’s nuclear material by 2014 to keep it out of the hands of rogue states and terrorists. PROTEST There will be hoodies around the House of Representatives Tuesday as Congress prepares to hold a hearing on racial profiling in light of the shooting of African-American teen Trayvon Martin last month. Martin’s parents are expected to be in attendance. The Daily Beast’s Allison Samuels reports from Florida on new details from George Zimmerman’s account of the shooting—and how Trayvon supporters are pushing back. THE SUPREMES Survey says … Obamacare will stand. A survey of Supreme Court clerks and lawyers found that most of them expect that at least the central portions of President Obama’s health-care law will stand inspection by the justices. Only 35 percent of insiders surveyed thought it likely that the highest court in the land would nix the individual mandate. According to the roundup, even those who had clerked for the court’s conservative justices said that the chances they’d uphold the mandate topped 50 percent. Souring Mood Popular support for the Afghan War has sharply eroded in recent months, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. Sixyt-nine percent of those surveyed now think that the U.S. should not be involved in the war in Afghanistan. That is a significant change from four months ago, when only 53 percent said that the U.S. should no longer be fighting in that country. The poll also found that perceptions of the war effort have changed dramatically. Sixyt-eight percent now feel the war is going “somewhat badly,” while only 42 percent of those surveyed felt that way back in November. | | 
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