Notes McGehee in the comments:
Even if all the silver-lining guys are right, the best that can be said for what Roberts did is, he gamed the ruling to help bring about a desired political outcome.
If a 5-4 ruling striking down ObamaCareTax would have been a blow to the Court’s legitimacy, what does that make this?
Exactly. I am sick to death of the pollyanna GOP beta males who’ll attack the TEA Party with sneering gusto but who whimper in fear of the left pretending anyone other than a ruling class and the administrative state — leftist Statism, regardless of which Party’s running it at any given moment — won anything with this perverse and largely incoherent ruling.
Roberts didn’t save the Court by acting as its humble “custodian.” Four fucking liberal Justices didn’t give a good goddamn about anything but looking for a way to strip the Constitution of its power to constrain leftist Statists and Marxists. They voted unanimously in favor of the ridiculous argument that the Commerce Clause, intended to promote commerce between states and the Indian territories, gives Congress the right to force you to buy whatever shit they command you buy — and command businesses provide it — by way of centralized authority, regulatory threat, and price control. This, they’d claim, enshrined in a Constitution written and ratified by those who’d just thrown off the yoke of distant centralized government.
That is, what they argued for is fucking tyranny, plain and simple — and is at complete odds with the circumstances of our founding and the writing and ratification of our Constitution. That’s what four leftist Justices not only were prepared to do but actually did yesterday.
Did they care at all that, by way of the strict ideological lockstep leftism the Court’s authority may be undermined? Of course not. They don’t worry about such things. Because might makes right.
All Roberts had to do was his goddamn job as a Supreme Court Justice. It doesn’t matter a whit to me if his intentions were pure. He’s Chief Justice, not Chief Philosopher King, and his supposed humility and restraint was nothing more than the height of hubris, whether he recognizes it or not, whether he agonized over it or not. The Commerce Clause would have been successfully narrowed (that is, until the next time the left held a majority on the Court; as it stands, it isn’t narrowed, because the case was decided on a tax issue); the taxing authority of Congress laid out by the Constitution would have remained status quo; businesses could have resumed doing business without fear of the coming government onslaught; and physicians wouldn’t have been essentially enslaved, finally and fully, with SCOTUS precedent, while we, in turn, were all flipped from free people into subjects.
Had Roberts not concerned himself over how his ruling might play with those predisposed to kill off the Constitution any way, we’d today still be free. We are not. And no bit of mental prestidigitation is going to change that.
So fuck him, and fuck every last one of the bullshit apologists trying to peddle this as some sort of cunning victory, or victory for a healthy maintenance of the Union. It isn’t. It may prove politically savvy down the line some where — oh, pragmatism! — but from a foundational and fundamental structural perspective, the State now has the right to tax anything and everything, so long as it allows you to resist paying those taxes by instead paying a fine for refusing to pay the tax.
Meaning, the more wealthy you are the more free you’ll be. But you’re still, in the end, a subject.
This was rank judicial activism. And for those on the right who routinely complain about such things to turn on a dime and pretend to laud it here is the height of hypocrisy and evinces the depths of their timidity.
You are a subject. Get used to it or don’t. But stop acting like a supermodel just gave you a nice rim job when what really happened is a bloated bureaucrat munching on a Whopper fucked you asswise with a heavy cardboard scepter.
(thanks to darthlevin for the link to aaps)
Legitimacy.
Now there’s a good word. Or, that is, was once: something about the consent of the governed, I think.
Did Alito envision perjury here?
So again I ask, why isn’t official misrepresentation illegal? 1st Amendment? Come on.
The only legacy those jackasses should be thinking about is the one they leave for themselves. An good justice would smack himself every time he compromised the constitution (yeah, I know, that old thing), even accidentally, and not give a damn about what easily manipulated people think.
In Marbury v Madison, they set themselves up as priest-kings, and yesterday, they issued the last verdict they will ever need make with respect to government power.
Better asked, how do you argue two opposing points, in this or any court, in successive arguments?
Karma is a bitch. Roberts will discover that the good-intentions pavement he is being said to have followed here, leads him to a place where the current heat wave won’t break. Ever.
Popular culture is full of situations where the hero has to sell his soul to save something bigger than himself. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing but I was always taught that your soul is part of something that’s bigger than everything.
The Gospel according to Ronaldus Magnus (revised standard version):
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving,
subsidizetax it some more!If judicial “legitimacy” means operating as a rubber stamp for the ever-increasing, always-advancing state, then to hell with it.
The Court will become as legitimate as the Roman Senate with Caligula’s horse given that mindset.
Had SCOTUS upheld the law as acceptable exercise of Congressional authority based in the Commerce Clause a thousand pundits stood ready to declare it the end of the Republic. And rightly so.
SCOTUS upholds the law as an acceptable exercise of Congressional authority based upon it’s taxing authority and those voices go silent.
Because the net result is so different.
Except for the small matters of 1) you don’t actually KNOW what Roberts was thinking, or 2) what the political fallout of overturning ObamaTax would be. Regardless of how staunchly you think his decision is wrong, the likelihood of such a move being politically disastrous is a fact to be dealt with, not something that could be wished away just because you know the douchebag liberals on the court would do far worse. You have to deal with reality regardless of whether you think that reality extends out from a lie or not. There is also the fact that the media is nothing more than lapdog spin doctors for the Democrats. How do you aim to get the message to the people about the kind of Tyranny the liberal justices were trying to support ? These are not idle questions, they are real issues that have to be dealt with. I see a lot of hot air here and not much in the way of figuring out what to DO about it. As if striking down ObamaTax would have only positive consequences and no negatives. That simply is not the case.
Also, none of the liberals on the court are the Chief Justice.
– Rush is doing a pretty good job of nailing it all down, (for a change).
– It doesn’t matter “why” Roberts did what he did. What he did was bald faced recast, on his own with no power to do so, a failed legislation from the bench.
– This is such a complete jump of the shark you have to wonder if Roberts is senile, or suffering from some mental breakdown.
The only more direct control of people than taxing them for breathing would involve prison camps. I suppose the camps will be sold as one way to get us to full employment, since camps need guards, etc.
Joel Pollak is a bad, unhelpful hobbit.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/29/Obamacare-What-Long-Run-Victory
Typing louder? So how about that Romney, deadrody?
I’m pretty sure deadrody doesn’t spend a lot of time here. If so, then reading comprehension is really not his bag.
Better asked, how do you argue two opposing points, in this or any court, in successive arguments?
The law is an ass.
Oh, good Christ.
It doesn’t matter what Roberts was thinking. It matters what he did and how he did it. And I don’t much care what the temporary political fallout is, even if it helps Republicans. The Constitution was weakened and in that breach the left will find a way to invade and spread and sink like weeds.
The “reality” I have to deal with isn’t invented anew each day in a supposed constitutional republic. It remains contextualized and constrained by way of a stable rule of law. Roberts set precedent.
You may consider yourself a thinking Republican and a pragmatic conservative, but what you are is a self-deluded pawn and a useful idiot for those who would take away our liberties. You see in the a blind appeal to hoary foundational principles here a lot of “hot air” because, to you, the the realities of a New Day, and New Political Considerations, demand we Progress in our Thinking. Statism.
You are a slave who thinks his chains are friendship bracelets.
I suggest you deal with it.
How do you aim to get the message to the people about the kind of Tyranny the liberal justices were trying to support ? …I see a lot of hot air here and not much in the way of figuring out what to DO about it.
Those of us who’ve spent the past ten years trying to educate our friends and neighbors about what’s happening to them at the hands of the ruling class, using this site as a sounding board for our arguments, would say that we’ve been doing quite a lot.
But thank you ever so much for characterizing years of effort as so much hot air.
It doesn’t matter what Roberts was thinking.
It does if your primary obsession is mindcrime.
This is otherwise known as a leftist tell.
I linked it.
At least Middle Earth had two hobbits with character to take on the armies of Modor…the fate of the Republic depends on conservative midgets Mitt Romney and John Boehner (and a yet unnamed GOP Senate majority leader if we are lucky this election cycle). Otherwise we are fucked.
Enjoy the summer cocktails this summer Justice Roberts. Say hi to David Frum.
It’s also not his concern whether there might be negative consequences. His job is to uphold the rule of law. What he did instead was uphold a law Congress didn’t enact. Congressional intent? Out the window.
He legislated from the bench. I repeat, that was not his job.
Neither do the people praising to seventh heaven Roberts’ adroitness at playing 9 dimensional chess 47 moves ahead of everybody else.
As for the rest of “suck it up and deal, bitches” bullshit, relish your newly increased chocolate ration, comrade.
“The Constitution was weakened “
– I doubt its an over statement to say the Constitution was shredded if this fraud is allowed to stand.
– I keep wondering how much longer we the peo[ple are going to keep playing this suicide game with our Republic.
“. . . the likelihood of such a move being politically disastrous is a fact to be dealt with.”
Likelihoods are not facts. At least, I don’t think they’re facts. They’re nothing but conjectures. Sure, we may desire to contemplate such things, particularly as subjects of future political action. But we ought not to pretend they are concrete. So also with other hypotheticals. Such hand waving elisions are very often the source of political mischief. But oh my, political ‘science’.
It’s funny deadrody didn’t comment on the post where I went through the “thinking” of the ruling from an hermeneutic analysis and broke it down that way.
Maybe the hot air words I used it that one were just too big for him.
there’s a plethora of “conservative” babblemonkeys declaring this a secret big big win, but a decided dearth of obamawhores declaring this a secret big big loss
that’s very curious
…the likelihood of such a move being politically disastrous is a fact to be dealt with…
Please define “politically disastrous” for us. Is it really mean Op/Ed columns in the NYT? Is it terrible name-calling from Jon Stewart and the clowns on MSNBC? Is it demonstrations in the streets by the same caterwauling idiots that demonstrate every fake injustice served up to them by the Left?
Because from where I’m sitting, “politically disastrous” is a ruling that extends Congress’ taxing authority to include non-activity. “Politically disastrous” is a Supreme Court that refuses to enforce the limits of the Constitution, telling the voters that Congress is free to force anything they want on us, so long as it’s willing to lie and cheat and bribe the voters enough.
The “facts to be dealt with,” as you put them, are ephemeral, amounting to little more than temper tantrums from the spoiled children in the news media and the Occupy crowd. The facts that we’re dealing with are the ones that forsake the responsibilities of the Judicial and grossly expand the powers of the Executive and Legislative.
What good are checks and balances if one side refuses to fulfill its responsibilities?
It’s Schrödinger’s court! Is it a tax? Is it a mandate? It’s both. But if you let Roberts look in the box, the quantum state collapses, and liberty dies.
By politicians and the electorate.
Or, in deadrody’s world, by extrasuperdooperlegislators who step in to correct our dangerous path of self-governance. Like the Gods of old. Who also would have wanted Mitt Romney made President at whatever the long term constitutional costs.
Romney, Boehner and McConnell are the scions of the House of Stewards who think they can wield the ring without being corrupted by it, silly cow. [grin]
Nick Gillespie would also like you to understand that, contra Krauthammer, the drenching warm shower from Roberts is not, in fact, rain. Point number 2 is especially…poignant.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/29/3-essential-takeaways-from-the-obamacare
Hot Air links to a safer messenger.
This, Dale, I decided not to blockquote
Actions say otherwise and speak clearer than words which can be lies.
But, Jeff! The Republican Establishment doesn’t exist! They said so!
!
– Rush:“With Roberts decision to go outside the bounds of law to ‘save the act’, I feel like the Chief of police of my town just held a news conference and announced that the police department will now help criminals break into my house.”
They each link to each other, back and forth, a little web of ruling elites and those hoping to catch their notice while playing as watchdogs speaking truth to power.
It’s all so sickening and surreal.
Liberation from the mastery of consent is a hugely thrilling experience. All the smart kids are into it and enjoying all the benefits. It’s almost as thrilling as not having to read Hegel.
Robelosi: “I had to shred the Constitution so we could find out what was in it.”
Naturally! For the greater good of having a diverse neighborhood, where criminals aren’t unkindly shamed or unhelpfully kept from plying their trade by racist profilers.
What I find most ironic is, Roberts’ own defenders are saying he engaged in something that could, quite reasonably, be construed to violate the Constitutional rquirement that federal judges adhere to “good behavior.”
Imagine, had ACA been struck down, how we would be roundly mocking the Left, for surely they would be spinning such a defeat as a victory.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most clueless of them all?
I’ve been past the three finest wine shops around Little Rock (and, no, that’s not a joke. We have ’em. But it takes more than a bit of driving).
Can’t find a goddamn thing bottled in 1776. And I had cash money!
Did find some really good bourbon though.
And bought a bunch of fireworks along the way.
Gonna be a good 4th (the ‘works will scare the holy shit out of the beagle).
Fuck John Roberts. I ain’t buying shit. Take your tax and shove it up your ass.
– Rush mentioned another aspect to the Roberts decision. Apparently there is a standing law, one tha has never been found at risk, that was written in 1877, or sime such date, that states “No tax case may be brought for high court review a priori until such tax has actually been paid”.
– Which would say that Roberts not only acted Uncostitutionally in rewritting a piece of legislation, he also broke the law by hearing the case at all, once he made the decision that it, in fact, was an atempt to tax.
– I don’t know if that makes him criminally liable, but what about some means to make him revisit his decision at least?
This court decision is treated as Bastiat saw the broken window treated.
And it’s entirely wrong, as Bastiat knew.
He decided it was a penalty in that circumstance, BBH.
– I understand Jeff. But the law as written states he had no right to even entertain the case until a tax had actually been paid by someone, which it hasn’t as of yet. He can’t have it both ways, although I know that was the twisted logic he used.
He’s the Chief Justice. He can have it any way he pleases, and you can either like it or lump it.
Hence George Orwell’s Schroedinger’s Cat analogy: It’s a penalty and a tax all at the same time! (Just don’t look too closely at it).
No, BBH. That was part of his cunning genius to save us all from ourselves. These are not the droids you’re looking for.
Ramirez had a good cartoon yesterday : a picture of the Constitution with Obama standing in front of it and pencilling in Obamacare.
Ramizerz forgot to draw Roberts erasing the Constitution to make room for Obama’s penciling.
Indeed. This is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, it is.
– Well for what its woreth the Left is also screaming now, a day later, because the commerce clause was struck down, and that means if everything must be based on a ‘tax’, then anything going forward must be passed in Congress as a tax, which even in this time of craziness would be political suicide, at least until after the elections,, and yes, I’m assuming that the Left won’t be able to depend on a repeat of this travesty in the future.
– BTW. If this stands it will be the first time a tax is paid to a private company, Insurance payments, not the government, in our history.
Whoreth the Left, to acquire it’s daily bread.
I just learned something from outraged physicians today. If the ACA refuses to allow/pay for a test because it is deemed unnecessary and you later become, say cancer-stricken and die, the government and its minions are not liable for patient deaths. However, the medical provider IS.
To over-simplyfy an analogy, it’s like handing a master mechanic a pair of scissors and telling him to fix your car and then suing him when it can’t be done.
The Commerce clause wasn’t struck down. The only thing that happened was that for now, Congress’s ability to regulate commerce doesn’t extend to compelling commercial activity. Four justices, however, are on the record as being dandy with the notion.
I might aver that squashing ACA in SCOTUS may have been the only way to rid ourselves of it, and that is now over. Consider the link Nick Gillespie provides above.
http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/21/romney-on-immigration-he-would
At the bottom he notes the vagueness with which Romney discusses his “replacement” plans for Obamacare, as with much else.
He as well as others like Ben Domenech often wonder just what exactly this “replacement” for ACA might be. Nearly all establishment Repugs blather that “we must keep the popular parts of the bill.” What happens if nearly all the command economy features of the bill remain in place as the “fix?” The mandate is the least of the bill’s problems. That’s just money. Anyone think this Repuglican party will have the nerve to say “your 26 year old son cannot remain on your adult insurance any longer?” Just what parts of ACA does the GOP have the stones to cut? Death panels? Guess what. So long as the government can dictate to insurers and providers what services they must provide and at what cost, you have a death panel by any other name. Because someone will say “no” at some point, whether it’s IPAB or some Repuglican iteration thereof.
Repeal and replace will be neither easy nor obvious. A clean isolated repeal unlinked to any replacement would be better. Given history, the GOP won’t do that.
Also, since the only people paying the tax,I think, are people who don’t have health insurance, the tax won’t be paid to a private company, will it?
then anything going forward must be passed in Congress as a tax,
I heard Cuccinelli say that, and it’s utter bullcrap. Think about what just became precedent… Anything passed by Congress which acts as a tax but is called something else, may now be booted to SCOTUS and repackaged as a tax anyway. The exact opposite of what Cuccinelli said now pertains. Congress now knows that anything which cannot make it through as a tax measure can make it through by calling it something other than a revenue bill, and transform due to the magic of quantum jurisprudence in Roberts’s chambers to a legitimate tax, standing as the law of the land.
Schrödinger’s Law: it’s not just for physics.
“…telling him to fix your car and then suing him when it can’t be done.”
– That comes from the same area of Congress where they got that gasoline additive that must be added to fuels by law or the company will be fined, but which doesn’t exist. Its called “The Department of contradictive enforcement and non-existant substances”.
– Forward!
“….may now be booted to SCOTUS and repackaged as a tax anyway”
– That is certainly a possibility. But I would suggest that an ongoing repeat of this lawlessness by the Judiaciary would result in insurection.
Okay y’all. Which way is the Gulch?
But I would suggest that an ongoing repeat of this lawlessness by the Judiaciary would result in insurection.
On the contrary, Roberts has now established that virtually anything, any encroachment that is not permitted by the Commerce clause, may now be permitted under the powers of taxation. Because he has a robe, and you don’t.
If that assessment is correct (and I incline to believe that it is), Robert’s has done the opposite of what his defenders are saying he accoplished here. Instead of depoliticizing the Court (don’t look to us to enact the unpopular legislation you’re afraid to vote into law/don’t look to us to strike down the popular legislation you’re afraid to vote against, that’s not our job), he’s made it more political than ever (today’s fat tax carbon tax, junk food tax, ammunition tax, pedestrian tax brought to you by the Supreme Court!).
– Don’t think its quite yet time for the gulch Leigh. We’re only one day later, and both sides are screaming.
– This whole clown car farce has yet to play itself out.
It’s a penalty and a tax!
Glimmer is a floor wax and a dessert topping!
ObamaTaxCare is to law what Blade is to vampires… all their strengths, none of their weaknesses.
Instead of depoliticizing the Court (don’t look to us to enact the unpopular legislation you’re afraid to vote into law/don’t look to us to strike down the popular legislation you’re afraid to vote against, that’s not our job), he’s made it more political than ever (today’s fat tax carbon tax, junk food tax, ammunition tax, pedestrian tax brought to you by the Supreme Court!)
I agree. What worries me the most is the precedent Roberts has set for monstrous expansion of the Congress’s powers of taxation. Refer to Levin’s discussion yesterday. He noted Roberts could not even identify what kind of tax the magical mandate/tax/gryphon beast is. It’s not an excise tax. It’s not an income tax. But it is a tax upon every single breathing citizen levied when you refuse to enter into a private contract with another party, chosen by the government. That is sickening unto oblivion. And it is now established precedent.
More sickening when you note Roberts literally used the phrase “gun to the head” of the states regarding the Medicare expansion issue. Roberts could not stomach putting a gun to the faces of the fifty states, but shove the mandate/tax gun into every single citizens’ face? No prob, Bob.
Compare and Contrast:
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
The Court Taketh Away and The Court Giveth.
If you don’t want to be taxed into bondage of some form or another, it’s time to head to the Gulch.
Of course, that can’t stop them from taxing the Gulch….
Exhibit B proves Exhibit A guilty.
I believe Roberts would argue the citizens placed the gun in the hands of Congress and Congress put the gun to their collective head. All he did was decline to play superhero and snatch the gun away.
So we’e back to elections having consequences, in a democracy —one of them being that you deserve what you get when you get what you want.
A lawyer on Rush just exploded this feel-good crap about the commerce clause.
Who needs the fucking commerce clause when you got the power to tax the shit out of everything and nothing all at once.
Palpatine never had it so good!
And had he voted against instead of upholding it with the magical changing taxpenalty chimera, the same would have happened, and we wouldn’t now be in the position where Congress will be incentivized to hide or rename all its new taxes, then just wait for a challenge at some later date, under some later Congress, probably, for this precedent to cover them. Meanwhile, all your activity and inactivity are belong to us.
Yay, best of intentions!
Gather up a list of those defending Roberts and next time they write in a column or mention on a show how the left is engaged in judicial activism yada yada yada remind them to fuck themselves sideways with a frozen swordfish.
[W]hat Roberts has done is fundamentally shift the constitutional debate… an Imperial Presidency and supine Congress can pretty much do as they please so long as it’s covered by at least one of those fig leaves known as the General Welfare, Necessary and Proper or Commerce clauses of the Constitution.
The new assumption is, thanks to Roberts, that at least two of those clauses in fact cannot simply be dragooned into the service of whatever a passing majority in Congress wants to do.
Delusional. Why? Because Roberts’s opinion about the commerce clause was irrelevant to his ruling. He did not need to even pronounce a word about the commerce clause because he believes the mandataxdate thingy is kosher under the powers of taxation. Any future objection in court about overreach of the commerce clause, referring to Roberts’s opinion, will be swatted down by the opposition with the simple rejoinder: It was not material to ruling in favor of ACA, because Roberts said it was constitutional on taxation alone.
Which is the sum and substance of Ginsberg’s dissent: if we’re upholding on tax power grounds, why the hell are we wasting time talking about the commerce and elastic clauses?
Much easier to compile a list of people who don’t deserve a swordfish shagging, don’t you think?
Predictable: Hugh Hewitt’s lackey Duane Patterson is now on Ed Morrissey’s show, ready to tell us that Roberts is pouring lemonade, not urine. Bootlicker. At least Ed is not predisposed to buy it.
Yay, best of intentions!
Yes. See: The Road to Perdition.
This is fucked up. My poor folks lived through the Great Depression, WW2, the Carter years and for what? Watching their pensions slide into the Pacific as California finally tips over and the federal government taxes the living shit out everything they’ve worked for. My husband hasn’t gotten a COLA on his military pension in three years. His co-pay on Tri-Care has tripled. Thankfully he is healthy, but he isn’t getting any younger either.
This is outrageous that all the people I know have worked their fingers to the bone for lo these many years and are the ones who are getting poorer. My dead-beat hippy friends have laid around on their asses smoking weed for thirty years and are better off financially since they are scamsters and are ensconced in California.
Hard work evidently is not its own reward.
Sorry for the rant. Carry on all.
/rant off
And so even I was being too optimistic about how long it would take for Roberts’ opinion about Commerce to be ignored. It can be ignored immediately.
Levin was too easy on him.
Nauseating. After being proved dismally wrong with his prediction that ACA would go down, Hewitt’s lackey is now claiming “Commerce clause hog-tied! Yay team!” Can’t wait to see how that prediction works out. And Hewitt’s lackey is quoting yet another lawyer who got the entire prediction of outcome wrong, Sean Trende, who apparently thinks this is a win.
The Stupid Party: Doubling down on our moniker!
BTW noted jackass Hugh Hewitt confidently predicted with no qualifications that ACA would go down, as late as Wednesday night on air.
The number of blogs I read has been slowly dwindling for years and this whole episode is a perfect little example of why.
The ruling class needs an army of lawyers and spinners, George. I Tweeted Hugh and Erickson yesterday and heard nothing back. Was a day when they’d try to debate the issues. No more. All team, all the time.
Many lawyers on “our” side seem to think the Constitution is their own little plaything, and that it’s part of a team sport that they’re playing professionally. As it should be.
We’re just fanbois cheering from the sidelines. As it should be.
Good thing he was wrong. Or else we never would have gotten this super secret cunning cagey permanent political victory for the GOP!
Why on earth would you want to lie to yourself about what your own government has done to you?
And Obama is threatening to veto the Defense Appropriation because Congress declined to double or triple it again as part of his package of defense cuts.
Because admitting the truth would mean having to do something?
Li’l Duane, Hewitt’s lackey, gave away the game. He mentioned how while talking to many lawyers about what happened, no one wanted to say anything mean about Roberts, because they might have to argue in front of him someday.
Careerism meets cowardice. Old friends.
I see a lot of hot air here
Dude. Wrong blog.
Also, none of the liberals on the court are the Chief Justice.
Liberal is as liberal does.
At least Middle Earth had two hobbits with character to take on the armies of Modor
They got in the back way and snuck around, unseen. It was the rest of the Fellowship and stuff who took on the armies.
Well for what its worth the Left is also screaming now, a day later, because the commerce clause was struck down
If only:
No wonder you died alone. You couldn’t play the game any better than our esteemed host.
Why does this lemondade taste funny? /team-R beta male
And Obama is threatening to veto the Defense Appropriation because Congress declined to double or triple it again as part of his package of defense cuts.
Yup. When hubby took his commission in the USArmy, he and everyone else at that time (early 60’s) was promised life-time healthcare. All that changed when Jimmuh Carter kicked the chocks out from under that promise and let it roll off the runway and burn.
respecting Part III- A, the commerce clause and necessary and proper section, the decision notes that Roberts is writing for himself, not for a majority. Furthermore, the Dissent is labeled as: “Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito, dissenting.” It is not labeled as “dissenting in the judgment, concurring in part” or some permutation.
You cannot say it was the “opinion of the court” that the mandate violated the commerce clause. You have to cobble together sections where Roberts is writing for himself and the dissent (which did not formally join with Roberts), is writing for itself.
This, this, this, this and this. Partial/special concurrences are mother’s milk to the Supremes. But the dissent did not do so here.
So the Roberts 3D chess/kendo-master-saves-the-commerce clause spin is pure bullshit happy talk. The opinion is as fractured as Bakke was, and about as helpful. Maybe it will become more clear in a couple of generations. By which time it won’t matter.
And the fact the dissent did not chose to join in any part of Roberts’ opinion just goes to show how pissed they are with him about this.
Potter Stewart was no John Marshall.
For what it’s worth, leigh, I spent my formative years pledging allegiance to a country that promised liberty and justice for all. Your hubby’s not the only one what got screwed.
E-mailed to Duane Patterson:
Roberts has done the worst possible thing vis-à-vis this ruling. As we’ve seen, when SCOTUS helps expand the power of the state, IT NEVER GETS ROLLED BACK.
Even if Obamacare is repealed, the Dems (and many Repubs) will—from now on—craft all of their liberty-crushing, Constitution-shredding legislation in such a way that they can play Schroedinger’s cat with it—treat it as a mandate to prevent applying legislative rules on taxation, and then treat it as a tax to make it “Constitutional.”
There is no silver lining to this cloud. Roe v. Wade may have energized Christians into becoming involved in politics, but in the meantime, millions have died and it still remains the law of the land.
This is one more leftward click in a ratchet that we’ve never been able to click back.
The Sweet Meteor of Death cannot come soon enough.
And the fact the dissent did not chose to join in any part of Roberts’ opinion just goes to show how pissed they are with him about this.
You wanna know why Roberts took the first plane out of the country? It wasn’t to avoid the press; it was to put some space between himself and Scalia. I would just love to be in the room the next time this gang gets together.
respecting Part III- A, the commerce clause and necessary and proper section, the decision notes that Roberts is writing for himself, not for a majority.
But but but Big Win GOP! We never lose in the Stupid Party! We spin faster than a Sperry Rand gyroscope!
Thank you for your service, Squid.
There are legions of pissed off vets out there who are in the same boat. Speaking of boats, are you still doing the Coast Guard thing?
I never served, leigh. I did most of my pledging in grade school.
They also serve who only pay the
penaltytax.Ah. Well, close enough for government work, as they say.
Jonah Goldberg grows hair on his feet:
“[A]ll he’s [i.e. Roberts] done is fuel the notion that a reasonable [emph. added] conservative is one who surrenders to liberals while offering interesting explanations for their surrender.
George, the GOP wins when they lose. It’s the natural order of things since 1932.
Tradition! And Burkean minimalism too!
I suspect many of the legal arseholes for the GOP who are spinning wildly to invent a brilliant, cunning rationalization for Roberts’s betrayal are doing so for one other reason: To save their worthless reputations as pundocrats. No one, not one of them, predicted anything like this (with the single exception of Alberto Gonzales). They were all spectacularly wrong, and now they have to prove “No,we were not wrong so much as less severely conservative than that clever Roberts.”
Jonah G:
Now, I don’t know what’s in Roberts’s heart, but no court watcher I’ve heard from puts much weight on the idea that Roberts did anything other than reason backward from the result he wanted in order to buy respect from the court’s critics at the expense of his own beliefs.
Eat a sack of dicta, GOP cheerleaders.
I wouldn’t read more into that a natural human desire to be in the chorus, George.
Reading around the web is depressing today.
John Roberts is teh genius! Reaching across the aisle. Wotta guy!
I fear that our chorus may be the one from Oedipus at Colonus.
Ledgerdemain
Definition
leg·er·de·main[ lèjj?rd? máyn ]NOUN
1. show of skill: a display of skill or cleverness, especially for deceitful purposes
“a dazzling display of political legerdemain”
2. performing arts
Same as sleight of hand (sense 1) [ 15th century. French léger de main “light of hand” ] [21st Century. American “Chief Justice John Roberts”]
As a lawyer, I’ve been railing about the erosion of the rule of law on various panels and in some written articles over the past few years. One example that has had me frothing this last year is a program set up by a certain US District Court judge in RI, where anyone who files a case claiming mortgage foreclosure irregularities is automatically given a stay against any further action and is assigned to a special master for mediation. The judge has no authority to do this for various reasons beyond the scope of a blog comment, but they go to the heart of due process. This has been appealed to the 1st Circuit. Up until yesterday, I had a certain level of confidence that the appellate process usually gets it right.
When the Chief Justice of the highest court in the land gets it so obviously and purposefully wrong, my faith in the rule of law is proved unfounded. That is a hard thing for a lawyer to accept.
Yoo–hoo.
But red, all the smart commentators are saying he had to get it wrong in order to get it right. Why do you think you’re smarter than they?
Correction: Lewis Powell was no John Marshall.
Powell is the guy who pulled a Roberts in Bakke not Stewart.
I regret the error.
Taranto get’s it wrong:
They may have agreed, but they didn’t concurr, did they? The left gives even less of a shit about what John Roberts thinks than I do.
Ernst, I’ll take pride in my ignorance then. I am truly sick at heart. Yesterday was shock. I’ve known we were careening down the track for a long time, but yesterday showed that we are completely off the rails. Even if the thing gets repealed, it shows that we’ve gone past any hope of recovery. If there’s anyone around to read it in the future, this decision will be right up there with Dred Scott. And both cases are about slavery.
Taranto gets it wrong, indeed.
If people would step back from the legal implications and look at how Roberts was able to “reason” to where he did, people would see that no decision really matters any more, in terms of fidelity to the Constitution.
We live in a judicial tyranny. On occasion, the Justices may of their own whims grant us leave for periods of freedom. But ultimately, what the law says is really and truly up to them — and in this case, one man.
Stare decisis is fidelity to the Constitution, because the Constitution is Supreme Court precedent, and not some faded ink on a bit of dry parchment composed by dead white slave holders long since reduced to moldering bones!
Bow before
ZodRoberts!“The Commerce Clause is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave simply because he will predictably engage in particular transactions. However, the Congress’s power of taxation is precisely such a license.”
FIFY
Levin is smashing the happy talk right now about the Commerce Clause.
That lining’s not silver, it’s arsenic.
Totally different.
The decision was illogical, illegal, and catastrophically dangerous. Roberts suddenly turned into possibly the worst Justice the Supreme Court has ever seen.
Think of the Constitution as a web server. This was a Denial-of-Service attack. The Congress can regulate *ANYTHING*, any behavior outside of the literal narrow bounds of what parts of the Bill of Rights they still pretend to respect (Kelo, anyone?).