How the Supreme Court Set the Stage for the Jan. 6 RiotClaude Solnik

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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012

Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.

Expanding agencies’ regulatory power turned presidential politics into an all-or-nothing game.

By Philip Hamburger

Jan. 5, 2023 5:28 pm ET

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The Supreme Court building in Washington, Nov. 16, 2022. PHOTO: PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

On the second anniversary of the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it’s worth considering how politics—and especially presidential elections—have increasingly become like warfare. A pair of developments—one legislative, one administrative—have raised the political stakes. In the 20th century, the Supreme Court simultaneously expanded Congress’s legislative powers and allowed them to be exercised by administrative agencies. The high court thereby loosed administrative agencies to exercise immense legislative power. Little could be more destabilizing.