Given Kelo, I highly doubt that takings arguments intrigue the court. The court has pretty much given the government carte blanche to take whatever it wants.

So, one of two things is happening:

1) The court wants to make it appear as if it is giving due consideration; but really has no intention of stopping the rush to strip people of their contract rights with no due process.

The Court could simply be saying: "You don't dictate deadlines to us. We dictate them to you."

This is the most likely scenario.

Or

2) The court finds intriguing the argument put forth that the Treasury is misusing TARP funds to make an end run on the Constitutional requirement for Federal spending to be initiated in the House of Representatives.

I find this less likely, but it's more likely than any intrigue on the part of Ginsberg regulating government takings post Kelo.

It's pretty clear that the Executive has, with the Legislative's cowardly acquiescence, usurped the Constitution. It remains to be seen whether the Legislative will be of any value to us going forward or whether we may dispense with it altogether in this Brave New World.

There is no standing issue, apart from certain hallucinations on the part of counsel for Chrysler and the Treasury Department.

The Indiana pension funds are creditors of Chrysler. They stand to get screwed in Chrysler's bankruptcy proceeding. Standing. Standing. Standing. I tell you three times. (Hat tip to RAH.)

The notion that the Indiana pension funds lack standing to challenge the unprecedented arrogation of power by the Treasury Department -- at the expense of the bankruptcy court and the courts that supervise it -- is arrant nonsense.

Treasury can and does appear in bankruptcy proceedings, but must do so on the same terms as any other litigant.

The notion that there is some sort of "standing" issue here would cloak an issue of sovereign immunity -- waived in bankruptcy (see 11 USC 106) -- in standing garb. The parallel is ill considered and must fail if the courts are to remain independent arbiters of our rights and obligations, rather than puppets of the Administration of Change.

"The parallel is ill considered and must fail if the courts are to remain independent arbiters of our rights and obligations, rather than puppets of the Administration of Change."

This is the most important comment.

If the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction over TARP when the Treasury deliberately misuses it as a slush fund, then what is the further point of a Judiciary?

Obama is trying to neuter the Supreme Court.

One hopes the court still has one or two balls left.