The elephants in the room were quite visible in this week's Supreme Court hearings on the latest Republican attempt to destroy the signature legislation of America's first black President.

Justice Thomas---often incorrectly called a "sphinx" due to the absence of any oral questions from him since 2006---is, not by any stretch of the imagination, not an elephant. But for Thomas, apparently, asking questions is a bitch.

The ego equivalent of Thomas, Justice Scalia, is indubitably an elephant. He will stay on the court for several more decades, peppering bitchy lawyers with questions derived from the latest Huffpo trolls or the opines of Bill O'Reilly. With a wink at Justice Roberts, Scalia reasoned that removing health care subsidies for ten million people could easily be rectified by Congressional action---a preposterous suggestion that caused even Rand Paul to cover his mouth to keep from laughing out loud at the speciousness of the remedy.

Justice Alito was about as interested in the Solicitor General's bitching as an aging elephant is in relationship counseling.  Alito is his own kind of elephant, religiously reading the Wall Street Journal for any suggestions of Congressional remediation---especially right now. He searches the Murdock rag for news of the latest savory corporate mega merger, salivating on his robe when he discovers one.

What was unexpected in the hearing was the logic employed by the white elephant, Justice Kennedy. If plaintiffs were correct, he reasoned, the government had indeed used coercion, a favorable ruling for them then calling into question every government direction to the states in the last century including Reagan's coercing states in regard to conforming to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. According to one observer, Justice Kennedy's comments coerced everyone in the courtroom to pee a little, but for different reasons.

My prognosis is that Justice Roberts' question will key the majority opinion in favor of granting the administration enough leeway to correctly interpret four words in a law of ten thousand sentences. In effect, "Can't the next administration then interpret the law differently?"---a bitch of a question for both sides.

It's as easy as twirling a baton to identify the four elephants on the Supreme Court bench, and to be fair, the four pet donkeys as well. It's more difficult to discern whether Justice Kennedy is an elephant, especially when he thinks up his own arguments like the problematic constitutional effects of a coercion-of-the-states decision in favor of the plaintiffs. But the most difficult part of comprehending this week's Supreme Court's circus hearing on the legality of providing health care subsidies to ten million people is keeping track of all the bitches in the court room---there were just too many to count.