Several days after the shock of the Roberts’ decision and many of the thinking Republicans are ready to move on — and in order to do so, they’re intimating that we bracket the argument that the decision itself was an illegitimate overreach by a rogue Court whose Chief Justice we now know was bullied into changing his opinion over fears that his court may appear politicized (the four lockstep votes from the liberal contingency that argued that the government has the inherent Constitutional authority, via the Commerce Clause, to regulate any human activity or inactivity, from cradle to grave, evidently doesn’t speak to the kind of “politicized” Court the Chief Justice fears), and instead concentrate on the political aspects of the decision, namely, the coming increase in costs.
My concern with such an approach — aside from the obvious: that it is possible to argue all aspects of this perversion of the Constitution coherently, memorably, and simultaneously, and therefore we need not artificially and consciously forestall branches of the argument that may resonate with an electorate that has already shown itself consistently opposed to the law and opposed to the decision — is that, by concentrating on costs exclusively, the debate begins moving away from the continued assault by a centralized ruling class on the very ideas of individual sovereignty and limited government that are at the heart of classical liberalism, and moving toward policy tweaks designed to make this massive overreach more streamlined and efficient and market friendly. That is, it moves away from classical liberalism and the foundational ideals of this country, and toward a debate over which Party has the better ideas for effectively running the administrative state.
Let me be clear: I have no problem whatever with Republicans pointing out that what is essentially a massive tax increase — with the end game being to run private insurance companies out of business and replace them with a single payer, government-run system — will be financially very painful for individual taxpayers, states, and those businesses who don’t receive waivers from the new liberal fascist ruling elite. But I would insist that the fight not be relegated to the policy weeds.
There is much more at stake here then this health care law, which is more a raging symptom of progressivism than it is the entirety of the disease itself. And, though I hate to say it, the ruling elite in DC — from both Parties — would rather haggle over who gets to run the Leviathan and how than do they have the authority to run it that way to begin with.
Roberts’ ruling — which many of us suspected was somehow compromised, a position that has obliquely at least been validated by certain reporting — was a remarkable, and simple to expose and explain, case of judicial activism. I’ve outlined rather simply how this is: the Democrat-controlled legislature, with no Republicans voting for it and no real debate, passed the Affordable Care Act, at the heart of which they built in the individual mandate. Democrats, the President, and liberal pundits argued obsessively and repeatedly that the individual mandate was NOT a tax. The law, therefore, contained a penalty, not a tax; Congress certainly knows how to pass tax legislation, and this wasn’t it — as all the Justices on the Court were aware.
It follows then that, because the law was meant to include a penalty, and it was a penalty that was voted into law, the law that Roberts and the rest of the Court was being asked to rule on was a law that contained a penalty, not a tax.
To make the remarkable assertion that a tax that was never intended was indeed the controlling feature of the law — and therefore upheld the Constitutionality of the law — Roberts had to essentially tell those who wrote and passed the law that what they meant doesn’t much matter: to someone who didn’t know that Congress had argued that it hadn’t passed a tax, the penalty provision, in the right light (and that “right light” is Roberts’ guiding position, that he must do everything to uphold legislative authority to pass even bad law) “could be read” as a tax, and therefore could function as one.
That is, Roberts re-wrote the law Congress wrote and voted on. Meaning, one way to teach people what happened here is to suggest to them that we don’t even have ObamaCare implemented. Instead, what we have is RobertsCare.
Roberts’ “reasoning” relies entirely on willful sophistry: the fact is, Roberts and every other Justice had access to legislative history, to public proclamations from the President and Democrats, and to the kinds of inter- and intratextual cues (tax legislation typically has its own set of conventions) that expressly argued against the idea that what Congress had done was pass a tax. He also has at his disposal the legal conventions for interpretation that attach to his supposed originalism: to wit, even had the Democrat Congress secretly intended to pass the measure as a tax — as a kind of trojan legislation — and their public pronouncements about what the enforcement measure was were either lies or meant ironically (in the sense of carrying the potential for the complete opposite of ostensible intent), the fact that they did nothing to signal those intentions means that, as intepreters, the Justices would have no real way of knowing that intent. And legal convention for legitimate interpretation requires that the legislation be written so as to make its legislative intent as clear as possible.
Alternately, when Congress and the President states its intent and then crafts legislation that seeks to match that intent, from the perspective of originalism, it is incumbent upon the originalist Justice to accept that legislative intent as asserted.
When a supposed originalist and strong federalist rewrites law from the bench in order to promote his own ideological preference — in this case, Roberts clearly believes that it is the right of Congress to pass bad law, and that this right supersedes SCOTUS’s right to overturn it in”close” issues of constitutionality — he is engaging in judicial activism. Roberts rewrote the law to try to teach us all a lesson on the importance of keeping separate the branches of government, deferring to the legislature on its authority to write and pass bad law, so long as it is Constitutional.
To do this, Roberts had to invent a hermeneutic route to constitutionality — and to do this, he settled on the Tax authority of the Congress.
And to reach that position, he rewrote a penalty as a tax — hubris — and simultaneously further institutionalized an incoherent notion of language whereby the intentions of a text as written are less import, for determining ultimate legal meaning, than the whims of a Justice to “see” in a text whatever it is he can make the marks that make up that text do.
A tax becomes a penalty solely because the penalty in the original text was changed to a tax by CJ John Roberts. This despite the fact that he knew no tax was intended by the Congress.
Therefore, the law is now his. This is RobertsCare. And how we get there matters.
Until we start teaching that lesson — as I’ve been arguing here for years and years and years now — we’re doomed to repeat the kinds of foundational errors that, when nestled into the rules of “legitimate” hermeneutic procedures, will always and (irony!) intentionally move us away from individual autonomy and toward tyranny.
The rest is theater.
(thanks to JHo)
That “Golden Rule” thinger Jesu Soter advocated? It means “Harm your enemies and benefit your friends.”
Governments? Governments are instituted to ignore the views of their subject populations, and seek to extract maximum gain to their ruling elites, whether of pelf or of power.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “meaning”.
he’s not just a whore he’s a shockingly amateurish whore
Anyway, welcome to Animal Farm! Just like sheep, we’ll have free food and health care for the rest of our lives. Of course, there will be the new fences every where to keep us out of trouble (for our own good, really). We may also notice the new sheep dogs who seem, at first, to be unnecessarily aggressive, but we’ll get used to those, too. And there will be that little bit of unpleasantness at the end, but, hey free food. Yippee!!!
There was a veteran of the court (missed the name) on Laura Ingraham, and Rush just played the clip. He echoed precisely Jeff’s point, that Roberts deliberately rewrote the unconstitutional law Congress passed in order to find it constitutional. RobertsCare. It’s forever.
John Eastman thinks Roberts ought to resign over this. He won’t of course. Unless Roberts can resign in such a timely fashion that he gives his BFF Obama a chance to appoint an even more compliant lackey to SCOTUS.
I’m only half kidding.
“John Eastman thinks Roberts ought to resign over this.”
I urge he be removed. And I’m not kidding.
how can you have any faith in anything the Roberts court does anymore?
Constitutional law is a fucking joke in this failshit little country.
Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:
…the mandate was the strangest tax in memory, one enacted for the purpose that it not be collected since the purpose was to compel a private transaction which itself would not be taxed. If the mandate worked as designed, the Treasury would not have seen a penny out of it.
Look, this is the age of the Emperor’s new wardrobe. Roberts indulged in sheer lawless whim. It would be amusing if were not so sad that the moiety of Republican Elite Pundocrats are spinning like prolix dervishes to paper over the plain truth: Justices are not gods but men, and men behave like swine with regularity.
Roberts is the chief pig in Animal Farm.
I’m expecting to see “Impeach
Earl WarrenJohn Roberts” bumper stickers any day now.Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices?
Republicans fall prey to cliche and jingoism, just like everyone else.
Yeah, that whole “Republican form of government” thinger [Article IV, Sec. 4]? We didn’t really mean anything by that. Public servants making themselves the masters of the public? Sure, go right ahead, that’s what was intended all along.
Funny, Jeff Y, I was just writing on that op-ed. See my new post.
I urge he be removed. And I’m not kidding.
I agree. I don’t know what the mechanism is to remove him, but surely there is one.
A Republic if you can keep it. No? Okay, then, a tyranny until you decide to throw it off.
The mechanism, leigh is impreachment. And even if you could get Kennedy et. al. to testify that Roberts admitted changing his vote because he was worried what the NYT and the WP would say about his stewardship of the court (which in my opinion would qualify as a misdemeanor on the part of the Chief Justice), and get the House to vote out a bill of impeachment, you’ll never find 51 Senators with the balls to pull the trigger on him.
The best check on this Earl Warren in the offing is a Legislative and Executive in the hands of a party whose fidelity to the Constitution is greater than they’re fidelity to the perquisites of power. But for that to happen, we’re first going to have to have an opposition party willing to oppose.
The best check on shitty grammar is pruf-redeing. And look how well that’s working.
I htae wehn pelope msilpsel wrods, it mkeasit hrad to furgie out waht tiher synaig.
I oppose. I oppose allowing servants to act like masters. I oppose watching the gravest injury to our form of government descend from a pretended heaven of gods known as the Supreme Court and then speaking of the injustice issuing therefrom as though it were still to be placed in the hopper as “Good Behavior”, rather than the most serious injury possible. As though the annihilation of our form of government is a nothing much ado.
I thought it was impeachment, Ernst. That has only happened once from what I remember, and it was a very long time ago. I also have my hopes pinned on more conservative senators and congressmen being elected.
Maybe it’s poetic license in books about the history of our republic, but it surely seems that our legislators took their jobs more seriously back in the day. I’ve always been cynical about politics since around the time I started seriously paying attention to the news and not thinking of it as a boring hour of Walter Cronkite in the evenings, was during Watergate, and that was the summer before I started high school.
Aw man. I’m stuck in the other thread.
In short, I don’t think he found anything that wasn’t there. He didn’t re-write it, but I wish he had sent it back to be re-written, and I think he is absolutely certain that the law is unworkable. He just wants us to figure it out for ourselves.
He’s the Alan Greenspan of the court.
He’s the Alan Greenspan of the court.
That’s for sure.
Yes he did. Otherwise, why not find it unconstitutional and send it back to be re-written constitutionally?
He found what wasn’t there because Congress never passed a tax. I agree, however, that what he should have said in striking it down and creating fixed precedent on the Commerce Clause, is that Congress does have the authority to tax, and that if they want to pass a tax like this penalty seems to be aiming to be they know how to do it.
Attempting to split the difference in order to save the law and save the “appearance” of a non-politicized Court (to whom?) means that he screwed us all.
And he says so when he writes that what Congress didnt pass as a tax can be read as a tax — if one disregards that Congress didn’t pass it as a tax, and didn’t pass it like they do other taxes.
Let’s not kid ourselves: the economic destruction and remaking of America is the goal here, implemented by a Cloward-Piven strategy to so over-stress existing institutions that the public will be clamoring for direct rule from the District of Columbia, and the permanent political class’s century-long “progressive” dream will finally be a reality. That’s one of the things “fundamental transformation” has always been about. And John Roberts just gave them carte blanche to proceed apace.
I agree with VDH: there’s no good news here, just an enormous — uphill — challenge. For most Americans, the worth of Obamacare has just been endorsed by no less than the chief justice, largely taking it off the table in November unless Mitt Romney — the worst possible candidate to argue this — can somehow make a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-did case as part of his larger economic message.
This is what happens when the debate centers on programs instead of principles, and why it’s so critical for the Right to move the discussion to the larger issues. Yes, it’s tough to compete with the Democrats’ sob stories, and to make the abstract concrete. It’s tough to accept that perhaps a majority of our fellow Americans would cheerfully trade liberty for a false sense of security. It’s a tough job — but somebody’s got to do it.
link
i luv the smell of defeat first thing in the morning
“If you thought it was a good idea for the federal government to go in this direction, I’d say the odds are still on your side,” McConnell said. “Because it’s a lot harder to undo something than it is to stop it in the first place.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/02/2878796/minority-leader-odds-long-to-undo.html#storylink=cpy
Well, luckily we got the worst possible Republican in the entire country for the job.
It’s like expecting a mother to strangle her baby.
That McConnell is the epitome of a limp noodle, non-Republican pretend republican. Let’s have everymore less of him, what say, subjects?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYZVJoV0jC0&feature=youtu.be
Bill FUGGIN Whittle y’all! He brang what needs the bringing!
It’s one thing to see a formerly conservative justice “grow” in office as his jurisprudential instincts get tugged left. It’s frustrating, but feels like less of a sucker punch. If Roberts buckled to such obvious political bluster as was thrown at him in this case, then Chief Justice John Roberts is a chicken and a coward. He will spend decades on the court treating what’s left of American liberty to a thousand deaths. We may as well dub him “Brave Sir Robin” and get used to the idea of a Quisling on the court controlled by the most vicious liberal mouths and the monolithic leftist bloc on the court itself. We might as well admit that James Carville and David Axelrod have the “conservative” chief justice on their leash and can make him roll over with a voice command.
link
“He will spend decades on the court . . . ”
Not if the people see to it he is removed.
I have to break a bit with you here, while still despising the decision. If you have to pay it, that happens on your 1040 and the IRS enforces it. It’s a fucking tax. When they said it wasn’t, they were lying. They do that a lot.
When the gubmint demands your cash, they’re taxing you, unless you committed a crime, in which case it’s a fine, a penalty. It’s a fucking tax.
Well there are also fees…
Remain calm, Republicans. All is well!
i luv the smell of defeat first thing in the morning part 2
Senate Republican leadership sources tell National Review Online that the Romney campaign’s position on the Obamacare penalty — that it’s not a tax — will not change the conference’s plan to make a tax-based case against the law. As with Romney, Senate GOP leaders reportedly agree with the Supreme Court’s dissent, but they are eager to highlight the law’s new taxes and regulations. In other words, Senate Republicans share Romney’s broad take on the ruling, but they may emphasize the tax aspect of the law more than Boston.
link
“. . . more than Boston.”
. . . should send chills down every red-blooded American spine.
July 2, 2012
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A tea party battle cry
Published: 10:01 PM 07/01/2012
By Yates Walker
Conservative Activist
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Republicans need to fight and fight to win. To be honest, the odds are against us. To have any chance, we need to begin with a reality check.
We always lose. Conservatism has a pristine losing streak for the last hundred years. Pristine. This must be understood. One of the biggest and most repeated lies about politics is that Democrats capitulate to Republicans. In the past three months, every late-night host has joked about Obama and his progressives caving into their GOP masters. That has never happened. Not once. For two reasons, Democrats always win: 1) because elected Republicans are wimps, cowards and/or idiots — usually all three; and 2) because the Democrats have a secret trick.
Here’s how it works.
Sally the Democrat wants to teach sign language to baby seals. She asks Bob the Republican for $8 billion to fund a pilot program. Before he can answer, Sally calls Bob a heartless baby seal-hating Nazi sympathizer. Bob publicly denies the charges. He then praises Sally’s program as a worthy cause and asks if she can get by with $2 billion. Sally settles begrudgingly with Bob for $4 billion.
And we let the Democrats call this compromise.
The government always grows. New programs crop up. Old programs get bigger. Inch by inch, billion by billion, Washington Republicans have been capitulating forever. In the battle for limited government, the GOP is filled with weak stewards. The road ends in serfdom unless Republican voters demand something different from their elected leaders.
Many Republicans were counting on Obamacare being struck down. It seemed a sure thing. The law was immensely unpopular. Its mandate was repellant, foreign and an obvious assault on individual liberty. In oral arguments, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli revealed himself to be a double agent, coughing and stammering his way to catastrophe in a pitiful defense of the law. And to put a cherry on top, Justice Kennedy asked all the right questions.
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Many were certain of the outcome. Nearly everything else this president has attempted has failed in dramatic fashion. Over the past three years, Barack Obama’s Change Leviathan has been so clumsy, faltering and poorly managed — the signature of big government — that another failure seemed a sure thing. Most conservatives were shocked by the ruling. All were horrified. But as odious as the Supreme Court’s decision is, it will be providential if it reignites American passion for individual liberty.
Nothing is cresting over the horizon. The point of no return is not approaching. It’s here. It’s now. It’s victory or death time. Ronald Reagan said that freedom is never more than one generation from extinction. Like it or not, if you’re reading this, you’re that generation. The duty is yours and if you fail, your children’s America will be a faint and doddering shadow of the land of opportunity you once knew.
Sound the trumpets. Load for bear.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/01/a-tea-party-battle-cry/#ixzz1zWHjvaYX
preview is my friend
This kind of goes with the title of this thread.
I’m not sure whether to laugh or heave a heavy sigh.
the saddest part is that this Eric Fehrnstrom loser is supposed to be a public relations professional
He’s not very good at it, is he?
he own’s etch-a-sketch stock
Except it wasn’t. They wanted it to work like a tax without passing a tax.
And now that this thing is constitutional, guess what else? HHS gets to become a legislator! But that doesn’t make it Congress.
Weathervane a pointy pointy.
Anoints McConnell’s head, anointy nointy.
HaffaaraAAhraarrr…
Romney is helping to make the it’s not a tax as far as we, the elite D.C. establishment, are concerned, you miserable teatards argument?
Gosh, I sure am glad I listened to my smarty smart betters on Team GOP, and didn’t do something unhelpful and quite possibly Visigoth-y (or even hobbit-y), like vote for Santorum, or Cain, or Bachman, with their laughably niave and even quaint preference for princple over pragmatism. Boy howdey, that coulda been embarassing.
I never even got a chance to vote for Santorum. 2nd most populous state and we get to rubber stamp or futile protest as we like.
That’s your betters saving you from yourself. Show a little respect. And maybe some gratitude too, you embarrassing. mouthbreathing, bitterclining teatard!
It’s spelled just like it sounds…
“The fact is, I’m gay. Always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be more happyfeet<a href="http://tinyurl.com/andersoncooperisgay…"
The fact is, I’m male. Surprise!
It was. They wanted a tax. They needed a tax. But they didn’t want to call it a tax. They couldn’t call it a tax and get it passed. So they lied. What works like a tax without being passed as a tax? A Notatax! Which is a tax. Because they lie. Also, cheat and often steal.
Of course, there was no need for Roberts to go there. He went all Stretch Armstrong on this because he’s a pussy.
Pablo, it’s a fine. It is a penalty for noncompliance. They wanted it to work like a tax but you don’t use the tax power to assess fines that have nothing to do with TAX compliance.
It was illegitimate. It IS illegitimate, but Roberts has pronounced it legitimate, which makes his ruling illegitimate.
Which is the exact opposite of what he thought he was doing.
Even using Roberts’ logic, I’d find that the gubmint doesn’t have the authority to tax inactivity. I agree that the ruling is illegitimate. But fines don’t show themselves on your 1040.
I heard Rush over the weekend referencing Roberts quoting a former Justice that I don’t remember something about it being the Courts duty to find a way to uphold legislation if there was any way possible.
Did anybody else hear that and know the details or can provide a link?
LMC’s got you, B Moe. First cite.
[Opinion of Roberts, C.J. pp 31-32] ” […] That is not the end of the matter. Because the Commerce Clause does not support the individual mandate, it is necessary to turn to the Government’s second argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s enumerated power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1.
The Government’s tax power argument asks us to view the statute differently than we did in considering its commerce power theory. In making its Commerce Clause argument, the Government defended the mandate as a regulation requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. The Government does not claim that the taxing power allows Congress to issue such a command. Instead, the Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance, but rather as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product.
The text of a statute can sometimes have more than one possible meaning. To take a familiar example, a law that reads “no vehicles in the park” might, or might not, ban bicycles in the park. And it is well established that if a statute has two possible meanings, one of which violates the Constitution, courts should adopt the meaning that does not do so. Justice Story said that 180 years ago: “No court ought, unless the terms of an act rendered it unavoidable, to give a construction to it which should involve a violation, however unintentional, of the constitution.” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 448–449 (1830). Justice Holmes made the same point a century later: “[T]he rule is settled that as between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.” Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 148 (1927) (concurring opinion).
The most straightforward reading of the mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. After all, it states that individuals “shall” maintain health insurance. 26 U. S. C. §5000A(a). Congress thought it could enact such a command under the Commerce Clause, and the Government primarily defended the law on that basis. But, for the reasons explained above, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power. Under our precedent, it is therefore necessary to ask whether the Government’s alternative reading of the statute—that it only imposes a tax on those without insurance—is a reasonable one.
Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. See §5000A(b). That, according to the Government, means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.
The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a “fairly possible” one. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932). As we have explained, “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657 (1895). The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below. “
Of course, what appears utterly nonsensical about this is that the Congress can be wrong on the authority once, as Roberts would have us understand with regard to the Commerce Clause, for instance, but not wrong on all the authorities throughout the bill law as written, by definition. But that is plainly absurd. As the dissent makes note. There is no reason to assume that a Congress which can mistake one (or more) authority is incapable of mistaking all authorities.
Finally found it:
(A)s an authority for his deferential maneuvering, Roberts turned to none other than Justice Holmes, citing the famous jurist’s concurring opinion in the 1928 case of Blodgett v. Holden, which declared, “between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.”
The way I see it, by following this dictum the Court is very close to deciding themselves into obsolescence. It is getting very hard to not find an “interpretation” that would uphold any law passed.
Quote from here:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/29/how-judicial-restraint-shaped-john-rober
billlaw“between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.”
If Roberts had a spine, he’d have noted that neither interpretation would make the statute constitutional, being as how Congress does not have the power to “tax” a non-activity. Well, they didn’t have that power a week ago, anyway. Thanks again, Roberts!
[Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., dissenting] “[…] In answering that question we must, if “fairly possible,” Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932), construe the provision to be a tax rather than a mandate-with-penalty, since that would render it constitutional rather than unconstitutional (ut res magis valeat quam pereat). But we cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not. “‘“[A]lthough this Court will often strain to construe legislation so as to save it against constitutional attack, it must not and will not carry this to the point of perverting the purpose of a statute . . .” or judicially rewriting it.’” Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n v. Schor, 478 U. S. 833, 841 (1986) (quoting Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U. S. 500, 515 (1964), in turn quoting Scales v. United States, 367 U. S. 203, 211 (1961)). In this case, there is simply no way, “without doing violence to the fair meaning of the words used,” Grenada County Supervisors v. Brogden, 112 U. S. 261, 269 (1884), to escape what Congress enacted: a mandate that individuals maintain minimum essential coverage, enforced by a penalty.
Maybe they did, maybe they really did think that penalty would pass Commerce Clause muster. I can’t say for certain.
What I can say for certain is that they took out the tax and rewrote it as a penalty. Making it a penalty that was voted on, and a penalty that comes to count as what was passed.
Sure. They voted to lie to us. Nothing new there.
What other penalties are assessed based on AGI?
There is not taxing authority here. No precedent for it. And when that was raised in the dissent, Roberts essentially told us not to worry about labels.
He rewrote Congressional taxing authority. IRS involvement is moot because there’s no precedent for the authority and the Constitution suggests that Congress doesn’t have the authority to tax in this way.
Which is why they were forced to move away from the tax idea — that, and they didn’t want to run afoul of Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class — and rework the statute to declare a penalty.
As I noted yesterday, this law gives HHS Secretary the power to essentially write legislation. But that doesn’t make her Congress and more than the fact that the IRS was charged with collecting penalties makes the penalty a tax.
Apparently, there is no limit to Congress’ authority to tax. And no, there is no precedent for this no matter what it is or what you or they want to call it. We’ve crossed a bridge too far.
It’s possible to think of a number of limits to Congress’s authority to tax.
A hail of bullets, just for one.
Sdferr,you’re sounding positively bloodthirsty.
Jut trying to think along the lines of a good Republican, like say, James Madison or Ben Franklin, RI Red. It’s a good exercise. I recommend it to anyone who cares to understand the stance of the founders and framers.
Very good sdferr. I’ve been there for some months now.
Well, by all accounts, we have a militia of some two or three dozen pw-ers here. Sounds more like guerillas than guerre.
are you fucking kidding me
are you fucking kidding me
don’t want to stir up the moonbat press to early.
oh. sometimes I forget how strategic these Rs can be
oh. sometimes I forget how strategic these Rs can be
nah dumb as a box of boxers. ain’t no hollering about the derecho in the commie press. the rinos be gun shy.