How broccoli landed on Supreme Court menu (New York Times)

The symbol for perhaps the most important Supreme Court ruling in decades is without a doubt broccoli. Justice Antonin Scalia made an example of it during the health reform law oral arguments to question how far Congress can go in directing commerce—the broccoli argument. The same argument came up in the early ’90s when President Clinton proposed a universal health care plan, long before a connection to the vegetable had been made. In 2009, the vegetable actually did pop in a CNS column headline: Can President Barack Obama and Congress enact legislation that orders Americans to buy broccoli? This appears to be the first public mention of the vegetable in the context of the commerce clause. Terence P. Jeffrey, editor in chief of CNS News and the column’s author, chose the vegetable, in part, because he knew George Bush didn’t like broccoli.