That is to say, he was swayed by the promises of a “liberal” temper tantrum if the Court denied progressives the seminal opportunity to gut the Constitution once and for all — having invested so much political capital in going over the heads of the electorate and Republicans to usher in the era of socialized medicine.
So much for the “ingenious game of three-dimensional chess” Roberts is playing to bring back the era of individual liberty, federalism, and smaller government.
Now. Who’s for a vacation in Malta for the 4th?
Roberts and Obama should go to Malta and play three dimensional chess together and brag about how ‘brilliant’ they are.
Here’s a link to a Federalist Society podcast in which David Rivkin speaks to his first impressions shortly after the NFIB v Sebelius decision was handed down.
h/t LibertyLawBlog, which also has a good summation by Mike Rappaport on offer.
The fact that the joint dissent doesn’t mention Roberts’ majority was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him.
If true, good for them.
Obama has prior plans for the 4th. Fundraiser. In Paris.
No, not Texas. France.
I can’t find where Obama his own self is going to be in the city of lights. All I see are surrogates: a former Secretary of the Navy, Clooney and various Obamites who live abroad.
The missus, she’s going to London to visit the Olympics. I’m pretty sure the Queen has a hair appointment that day.
Ok, what joker put the pelican in CJ Roberts’ bed? VJ? DA? EK?
I don’t know about Malta, Paris sounds so much more egalitarian. Plus after Lady Di keeping the unwashed out is so much easier.
The NYT editor isn’t satisfied. In the comments leftists vie for the highest ratio of fact to blindness.
Failshit nation? Failshit nation.
“The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified and that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch.”
Senator Barack Obama
– Apparently we should have listened to him.
Maybe. Of course it could be a case of stopped clocks.
– Absolutely Leigh, and like a stopped clock, on those rare occasions that he’s right its for all the wrong reasons.
– The man seems to have an uncanny ability to profit from wrong decisions. He invariably picks the door with the tiger, but as he opens it the tiger turns into a swan.
– In this instance if his choice would have held, amd Roberts would have been rejected, its rather unlikly that any one of the other comservative nominees would have pulled a Benedict, and the mandate would have been struck down.
– Historians will probably want to brand this mellinia as the “Age of Irony”.
John Roberts is a cowardly whore with no principles just like our last two presidential nominees is the takeaway here
also we’ve learned that this vaunted “constitution” thing is a bulwark against tyranny sorta like a levee in New Orleans is a bulwark against flooded school buses
what we also know is that our ghetto trash choom gang president and out faggot chief justice and our poncey weirdo supremely unprincipled obamacare-inventing Team R nominee are all to some degree hyper-entitled white male Harvard trash
plus, that Elena Kagan sow ain’t getting any prettier huh
– Hush feets. You’ll get your Jodphors in a mangle.
– Eat your peas.
i can’t afford me no jodphors Mr. Hunter it hard out here for a pikachu in Barack Obama’s America plus I have to save up for my obamacare
taxpenaltytaxpenaltytaxpenaltytaxWhatever. There is and will be plenty of time for recrimination and court leaks/gossip.
As tempting as it is to lash out at Roberts or to bemoan the fact that we did not scream as loudly as Democrats and the mainstream media to our constitutional detriment, I think there is a deeper feeling which transcends the why’s of Roberts’ decision.
The sense of abandonment by the policies of the Bush administration was a key if not the key motivating force behind the rise of the Tea Party movement.
And now the crowning glory of the Bush judicial appointment program abandoned us for reasons about which we can speculate, but which constitute an abdication of responsibility regardless of motive.
That’s my sense of where we are right now.
Alone again, naturally.
link
so he’s saying the teadoodles are suffering from fear-of-abandonment issues?
I think the good professor is overthinking it
John Roberts is an unprincipled constitution-spooging whore
done and done
I’ll risk the wrath of my Outlaw! pals and say that Romney, while certainly my less than ideal candidate, doesn’t strike me as an entitled douche-bag. I don’t remember there being any outrage from the D-words when the Kerry/Edwards ticket had a combined personal wealth worth half of the national debt at the time.
If only Romney would emerge in full. He’s still a cipher to me.
Happyfeet, I stopped listening to Limbaugh the day I heard him make fun of the way Joycelyn Elders talked versus making fun of the way she thought.
Let’s see if you can go a month posting here without using the words “cumslut”, “failshit”, “faggot”, “trash”, or “sow”.
(I’ll also mention that “defending Happyfeet in the Protein Wisdom blog comments” is in my List Of Things To Be Ashamed About Until The Day I Die™. Not the first thing in the list, but it’s up there.)
Could be the reason Romney is a cipher to you leigh, is that he’s just as much a cipher to himself. So much the worse for his followers.
I think that’s the gist of it, sdferr.
“…C’mon people….Don’t tell me you;re going to let one setback turn you into quiters….Jeeezzz….There are still a lot of things we can try that will be bigger and betters failures than this.”
– Bill Murrey
Roberts is not a “Machiavellian genius.” Roberts is a moral degenerate lifetime Washington D.C. politico, who is well known in the beltway to be borderline obsessed with his image. In other words, Chief Justice John Roberts emotionally operates on the same level as the average twelve year old girl, and just sold out not just the Republic, the Constitution and the entire American populace, but really the entire planet, because now that the United States is no more, the forces of evil will run absolutely rampant over the rest of the planet. And Roberts did it so that a bunch of coke-snorting sodomites and psychopaths in Georgetown will pretend to like him – for about five minutes.
…..
Which brings us to Barry Obama. One of the big arguments I see is that Roberts’ decision “catches Obama in a lie, so we’ve got him now!”
I don’t even know what to say to this. It is so stupid it just makes me want to give up on the entire deal.
Listen Jackasses, everything Obama has said and done for his entire adult life, his entire political career, his entire campaign, and in his entire regime is a lie. For the love of God, EVEN HIS NAME IS A LIE. He passed an obviously forged birth certificate last April. Every single thing he has said, promised and done has been total, complete, objectively proven lie after lie. And you think you’re going to checkmate him with THIS? You think that a point of semantics between “penalty” and “tax” is going to bring him down in this nation of Snooki-watching imbeciles? Are you on drugs, or just merely stupid?
link
Roberts needs to resign if confidence in this bullshit Supreme Court thingy is to ever have a chance of being restored i think
oh. that was supposed to be *our* faggot chief justice up there
I wonder how much we pay him to be an unprincipled whore I bet it’s more than Marion Barry gets but less than Aaron Sorkin makes
Maybe the Chicago Machine had some really bad stuff on Roberts and they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse…
But more likely, it is that subtle steady pressure to be liked that was at play. Look at the grooming approval of Lawrence Tribe to his student. This sort of pressure may explain some of the steady parade of Republican judicial appointees that all progress from lowly little reactionary bigoted caterpillars to beautiful lefty butterflies. [*snark*] Meanwhile, (for example) Clarence Thomas puts up with constant calls of him being an Uncle Tom, snake, stupid, and sell out. He is almost completely isolated. It is sort of the way some treat Jeff. It has to take a toll over time.
More Separated at Birth: John Roberts and…?
“This could be a huge day in the evolution of Chief Justice Roberts as a great chief justice,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a liberal law professor from Harvard. Mr. Tribe, who taught Mr. Roberts, said he had not opposed his nomination because he believed Mr. Roberts was less of an ideologue than many had charged. “I have some sense of gratification,” he said.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/a-re-examination-of-roberts-legacy/?smid=tw-share
hey I just met you and this is crazy but I got your number
please to not call me
part of this points to how we simply have to get the American Bar Association completely out of the whore-justice-picking process
the Affordable Care Act is unfair to immigrant workers and their families,
hey illegal aliens from mexico lookee here:wiki
Public Health care delivery is accomplished via an elaborate provisioning and delivery system instituted by the Mexican Federal Government. Public health care is provided to all Mexican citizens as guaranteed via Article 4 of the Constitution. Public care is either fully or partially subsidized by the federal government, depending on the person’s (Spanish: derechohabiente’s) employment status. All Mexican citizens are eligible for subsidized health care regardless of their work status via a system of health care facilities operating under the federal Secretariat of Health (formerly the Secretaria de Salubridad y Asistencia, or SSA) agency.
What a craven, contemptible son of a bitch.
Funny how, the more somebody worries about what other people think of him, the more he gives cause to think poorly of him.
On FNS this morning, Charles Lane: Roberts is playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers. Waiting for someone on the panel to say: You know he’s supposed to be the umpire?
Was that not pathetic, mv? Brit called bullshit on it, at least.
Charles Lane is a fellow piece of Harvard trash
Harvard sounds like a dangerous and expensive place.
Harvard sounds like a dangerous and expensive place.
they be running the country
time for affirmative action for non ivy scotus judges
– More like ruining, running into the ground maybe.
running on mt
Scalia and Kennedy are both Harvard. Alito and Thomas are Yalies.
Janice Rogers Brown wiki
She earned her B.A. from California State University, Sacramento in 1974 and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1977. She worked her own way through law school while being a single mother. In addition, she received an LL.M. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2004
I would like to thank Chief Justice Roberts for making the path to successful jurisprudence clear. Now the only question is just how difficult the opposition has to be to get the proper verdict.
To my friends on the left, you poisoned the well. Try not to be too surprised at how we idealists react.
See, I think America is a checkers kinda place. People are impressed by chess, but if you’re in a game of checkers (“King me fool!”), playing chess (protect the king at all cost!) ain’t going to win the game.
At most just confuse everyone and the game will end with no winner.
Na, [political] checkers is simple, if you want to play chess go to Europe, they got a hellofa chess game going on there. Here? I’d just as soon we stayed a nation of sovereign kings [king me!], every individual the master of his own fate.
I ain’t no pawn going to sacrifice my ass for the king…I am one!
I mean, you don’t need Harvard law school to understand the constitution.
The average eight grader can get a grip on it.
The Harvard training is what can rationalize it’s way around it.
I mean, you don’t need Harvard law school to understand the constitution.
yea but the scotus is a union shop
Chess is awesome, Lee. The Queen is a badass.
It looks to me as though CJ Roberts has burned his bridges. Who burns their bridges? Wise men? Or fools?
Chess is a game of process. I prefer poker. Or pool.
Or full-contact horseshoes.
The period between 7:04 and 7:14 was a golden age of comments.
Who burns their bridges? Wise men? Or fools?
meade
Finally, the Christian meritocrat must live in the light of the doctrine of Original Sin. Often seen as some dark, dismal dogma of the bigoted and the misanthropic, this idea may be the single most necessary piece of mental equipment a successful person needs to lead a genuinely constructive life in America today.
Original Sin is the idea that human beings, despite all their talents and capacities, are deeply and hopelessly flawed. Like water flows downhill, we are constantly turning toward our own selfish goals. We are vain, jealous, petty, self-seeking. Our judgement twists away from what’s right to what benefits us and our side. We can’t keep our fingers off the scales.
It’s not just our moral choices that go awry. Our thinking isn’t straight. What we think is logic is often self interest. When our interests and our passions are engaged, we lose all mental clarity just when we need it most.
At the collective level, this explains why meritocracy cannot in itself be an answer to the political problems of the human race. There are no Platonic philosopher kings, no unmoved movers, who will judge all things and all men clear and true. And the problem isn’t simply our ignorance and partial knowledge; it’s the flaw in our natures that means that our intellects are often the least dependable when we need them most.
link
Poison in wells: indiscriminate.
America: “No man a pawn!”
missed by 6 darn it
Then flees from the country during fourth of July?
I think Obama has some sorta Jedi mind trick or something. He can choke a person off his toes with just his mind maybe.
“Flee the country now John, like a Border Patrol Agent flees from a confrontation…like ME John. Join us John, John, you can be as one of us! These aren’t the founding documents you’re looking for John. Leave the country now John, leave the country…”
” Roberts is playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers. ”
Roberts is playing “Im’a fuck over some idiots, ’cause I’m powerful like a coked up Superman and the NYT will clap and love me at last.”
Most republicans are playing “Oh God I just got seriously fucked over by the supreme court…what fantasy can I weave to protect myself from the dark cold truth of that? ”
Democrats that can stomach this are playing ” OMG can you believe what that chump did? Ha ha! I love it when some rich white racist privileged piece of shit tries to buy us off! But fuck the Republicans. We’ll take a win anyway we can get it! ”
Democrats that can’t stomach it are working up the courage to vote for Romney until their firends find out and scare them straight.
Bastiat’s The Law is pretty good about now.
This section is now plainly true:
[bh note: edited to add my emphasis.]
*
I guess it depends who Roberts is playing chess with?
OT: I gave you a hard time earlier, EBL, so it’s incumbent on me to say that I think you’ve done a fine job engaging in the comments lately.
Cheers.
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb – born with a weak heart
(So I) guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It’s ok I know nothing’s wrong . . nothing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTPqPZzH-LA
Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo you got light in your eyes
And you’re standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up say goodnight . . . say goodnight
Hi yo We drift in and out
Hi yo sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I’m just an animal looking for a home
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I’m dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head
Ah ooh
Howzabout some “Burning Down the House”?
the “ivy league” has dutch elm disease.
Life During Wartime
“Those two conceptual moves, framing it as poverty and thinking about it as a matter of race, have a very deep history… and I think both politically and analytically that’s an almost fatally flawed framework,” said Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, i
eff the technocrats with a dildo
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/robert-putnam-class-now-trumps-race-as-the-great-divide-in-america/259256/#
no lube full force
That’s ridiculously good.
a random dirty socialist Associated Propaganda whore gives this glimpse into how the National Soros Radio media will spin repeal
that’s some weak fucking tea you got there, Associated Press propaganda whore
but, then again, isn’t this the exact sort of thing what made unprincipled coward whore John Roberts blanch and change his vote?
America
, calling their tactics unusual and hyperpartisan.
the whore of the communist party speaks
I really hope most of the CBS report is after the fact rationalization from a couple of clerks who only think they know what’s going on.
What if that’s the class divide Putnam’s talking about, the technocrats and the beneficiaries of/dependents upon technocrats against the bourgeoisie? Sorta ties in with geoffb’s comment in the other thread, don’t you think?
full disclosure: I haven’t read Putnam, so I might very well be talking out of my ass here. But I think there’s some truth to the notion that the class divide is more important (salient, as the political scientists like to call it) than the race divide. But marxist class analysis —i.e., by economic status, no longer holds the same explanatory power.
*
bh: Thanks for that Bastiat link. The dude had it all figured out before Marxism even was a thing, and it’s emminently readable and approachable, unlike most econ/philosophy works.
If it’s true that Robert’s cares about this shit, then Roberts himself might be one of the sources. My guess is that the two sources are close to Roberts and/or Kennedy.
I’m often struck by those very same things with Bastiat, JB.
CBS chimes in.
I could have sworn I saw no link to the CBS piece in the thread above. Tired eyes I guess.
Being a cipher worked out well for 44. Just a couple amorphous words, a lightning-strike smile and a tunnel under the Treasury, he’s golden.
Romney tries that? the media actually questions what the words mean, find flaws in his teefs and asplodes the tunnels. He’s got to do things the old-fashioned way. Which means, he’s most likely to lose.
Heh. Allow me to retain my brace of Knights. We’ll fork that bitch right in her ample ass~!
I’ve been thinking, I think he’s right about the “reputation of the court”. I’m extremely pissed that the law was upheld, but I understand the tax argument. I think I understand why Roberts upheld the law in the way he did, with the language he used. The law is so obviously an overreach, the conservatives on the court were going to use any insufficient justification to knock it down. But this law was constructed in such a way and argued for in such a fashion that the opinion of the conservatives (in re the commerce clause) may have had long reaching and adverse constitutional consequences. I’m not saying that the policy wonks who wrote the law knew this, or even cared. I think they wrote the law the way they did because it works the same way in Massachusetts, and it passed muster there. We can thank Ronmey and his pals for this shit sandwich. In other words, it’s an overreach, but not unconstitutional.
Let me put it this way, I know most of you won’t agree, but I think Roberts was right. I also think that he was too smart by half, and what I think he considers his “teaching moment” will be completely wasted by the pragmatic GOP looking for votes they won’t get and the mouth-breathing “professional conservatives” who’ve taken over many of the local tea parties (at least around here).
Roberts did outline a remedy. I think that the other conservatives on the court have a little more experience with politics than Roberts and understand that the remedy will never be applied.
Roberts did outline a remedy.
Small comfort. No comfort at all really, given that the remedy has a remedy, which is to reinstate all the federal overreach that the Court has declared Constitutionally permissible.
I don’t want to live in a nation where I have the freedom to fight back against bad law from Washington. I want to live in a nation where Washington understands and respects the limits of its power to enact bad law in the first place. It disheartens me that there are so very few people in that fetid swamp who’ll admit to any limits on their power at all.
Federalist 78 (first in a series of 6 Federalist papers dealing with the Courts): The Judiciary Department (my emphases):
***”The standard of good behavior for the continuance in office of the judicial magistracy, is certainly one of the most valuable of the modern improvements in the practice of government. In a monarchy it is an excellent barrier to the despotism of the prince; in a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”***
What sort of barrier to despotism, encroachment or oppression when the Judiciary comes to the aid of the institution of a tyranny; to the aid of the displacement of Republican government? Or simply, baldly, seizes tyrannical powers to itself?
Hamilton famously asserts the Judiciary is “. . . the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. […] The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
Yet we find this analysis wanting, do we not? The Judiciary is, contrary to Hamilton, the most dangerous branch, for the Judiciary, exercising its vaunted “judgment” in Hamilton’s term, can dispense with the entire Republican underpinning of the Constitution. And it can do so by means of the expedient we have seen: The Judiciary merely rewrites the Constitution. And has.
Yet the Framers have provided our Republican form of governance, our Constitution, with Republican tools in order to safeguard itself. I urge we use them. Remove Roberts from the bench.
I don’t want a philosopher king using the bench to provide teachable moments. That’s no different than “social justice”. Not only that, but the procedure Roberts used to get to his teachable moment institutionalized an idea of legitimate interpretation for the Court that will inevitably lead to tyranny.
If you are against judicial activism, be against judicial activism, whether its the leftist nut jobs or Kennedy in Kelo, Scalia in Raich, or any of the others in Lawrence.
Roberts wrote this law. This is RobertsCare. If there’s a teachable moment in here, for the sake of classical liberalism please please please let this be it.
Having said that, I appreciate the argument and your willingness to make it, LMC. And I’m happy to keep discussing this until I make my point entirely and foundationally clear.
Mike Rappaport: John Roberts’s Decision
Small comfort. No comfort at all really, given that the remedy has a remedy, which is to reinstate all the federal overreach that the Court has declared Constitutionally permissible.
I agree. I think Roberts was too smart by half. He reminds me of a Hoosier I know who was trying to teach me to weld. This guy knows everything there is to know about welding, told me he could teach me to weld in forty minutes… and he did. But every time he sees something that I’ve done he’ll tell me why it’ll fail. “That the wire you used? It’ll work, I guess, but you’re too close to the cat.” “Makes that noise because you warped the shit out of it.” Never tells me any of this while he’s watching me do it, or on the phone, he just assumes I know I’m doing it wrong when I’m doing it and I’ll know how to fix it later.
If you are against judicial activism, be against judicial activism, whether its the leftist nut jobs or Kennedy in Kelo, Scalia in Raich, or any of the others in Lawrence.
Shit, wish I had more time. Here’s my thinking. I think it would have been activist to strike down the law based on a misleading argument. I think that the mandate as written, intended and argued is, in fact, a tax. I think it was always meant to be a tax and was written as a tax to pass constitutional muster. I think the commerce clause argument was bullshit on its face, but used by the Congress and the Administration to argue the law because they honestly believe that the Commerce Clause is the justification behind the government’s tax power. It’s not. Congressmen and PR hacks and pundits don’t know this. Constitutional lawyers and Supreme Court Justices are supposed to. Therefore, if the court struck down a tax because it isn’t justified by a spurious commerce clause argument, it would be more activist than upholding the tax as it was written and argued.
I guess, in short, I think Roberts interpreted the law correctly. It’s not unconstitutional to lie in order sell bad legislation.
Remember, we were all calling this a tax in 2009.
I’ll try and be more clear if I get some more time to explain this PM.
then Alito Scalia Kennedy and Thomas are out of control activist judges trying to subvert the constitution to advance an extreme right-wing agenda Mr. Cookies
I have trouble with that idea
No, LMC, that’s just not the case. We have legal conventions that apply. No precedent exists for this to be considered a tax, as Landmark Legal wrote in their brief. If Congress was going for a trojan horse tax — that is, they lied (or intended the passage of a penalty to really be a tax) — there’s no way of knowing that based on legislative history. In fact, they specifically rejected an earlier version that would have set out a tax.
We knew it was meant to function as a tax in 2009, but that’s not what was passed. They went with a penalty and wrote the law that way. Roberts made it a tax by deciding that’s what it was, not because that’s what was passed.
This is now RobertsCare.
Remember: I agreed with him in french fry case, while the left was railing against him, because I agree that the legislature has a right to make stupid laws, and it’s up to the electorate to rein in the legislature when they do so. However, they don’t have a right to make unconstitutional laws — nor does Roberts have a right to prop up his love of federalism by becoming a judicial activist and rejecting, rather inarguabley, originalism.
Lots of cut-n-paste, bear with me.
They called it a Penalty to avoid the anti-injunction act. But just because they called it a penalty, does not make it not a tax.
The “shared responsibility payment” is assesed on the “taxpayer” based on “adjusted gross income” and compliance reported to and enforced by the IRS. On your 1040. If you have purchased health insurance, you don’t have to pay the penalty.
The gov’t argued that even if they didn’t have the commerce clause dodge, they still had the power to raise your taxes. And it didn’t matter what they called it.
Roberts agreed that it did, and offered precedent:
We’ve had discussions around gathering the intent of a text from adjacent signs and symbols and other clues, even in the face of an unreliable narrator. Given the fact that the government used the tax argument in as part of its case, and that the government often uses higher taxes as a way to modify behavior, (my taxes would be higher if I wasn’t married, my taxes would be higher if I didn’t have a mortgage, if I didn’t have kids…etc) I think Roberts was right to take them at their word and declare that the penalty is a tax.
It’s like a reverse deduction. So yeah, I think to overturn the statute base on the commerce clause would have been judicial overreach.
I’m not happy about it, and I wish it weren’t so, but I don’t think he invented some new law out of whole cloth.
Not sure who the “they” is, but the anti-injunction act doesn’t have to apply to any ‘tax’ the Congress would exempt from it in law. Which they write. So there is no need to use ‘penalty’ to avoid conflict with that act if Congress so chooses.
“They” are the people who wrote the law, the wonks employed by congress and the administration, I refer to them as the government. The tax is labeled a penalty to induce congressmen to vote for it. Not to necessarily free it from anti injunction, but that was beneficial to their argument, see above.
My point was, I thought, to render any such beneficial support moot. But maybe I don’t get it, so far as that goes. On the other hand, I read the four-man dissent and find quite a few categorical denials that any such tax has existed or can exist in the law as written. It’s pretty damned ironclad, so far as they are concerned.
Except in the legislative history,they clearly rejected the tax and reworked the law to make the tax a penalty. Then, after reworking it, they passed it.
Roberts changed it back. When he gave us RobertsCare.
Which, frankly, no one really expects the GOP to repeal. They’ll hold show votes, but that’ll be it.
As I always understood it there were three forms government revenue can take: (1) fee for service — such as a national park entry fee; (2) penalty for noncompliance, such as a fine levied in court or by a regulatory agency; and (3) taxes and tariffs.
The intent of the ObamaCare “tax” is clearly punitive.
They re-wrote it to change a label, to politically cover their collective overtan asses. Roberts areed with the government’s own argument that it was a tax. The government used the legislative history in the oral argument:
Roberts concurred with the dissenters that the Commerce Clause did not apply, but he found that the Government’s second argument, that the government can raise your taxes, pretty much at whim, had merit. That’s all he did. He didn’t create new law, he upheld a bad one. One that he knows won’t work, and we know he knows it won’t work because he basically tells us that this tax will destroy the private Health Insurance market. Hence the “the power to tax is the power to destroy” quote.
That’s what pisses me off.
Pretty much at whim hardly sounds like “consistent with Constitutional authorities”. I guess no one supposes that members of Congress can be barred from saying with Nancy Pelosi “Are you serious? Are you serious?” and simply declare the authority wherever they see fit. That should do the trick.
Which hastens us down the road to single payer, just like the Progressives intended.
Roberts can rot in hell with the rest of them.
Yeah, but he told us that’s what he would do when he was confirmed.
Stare Desiarnez, ‘member?
We were concerned then, but we let it go.
Saying this over and over again won’t make it any more true.
See my latest post, because I spell it out from the perspective of language.
Whatever his reasons, whatever teachable moment, whatever fidelity to federalism, from the perspective of what interpretation actually is, Roberts did violence to the text. He didn’t interpret at all. He rewrote and then justified it based on a decidedly non-originalist approach to interpretation.
They rewrote it to change a label which effectively changed what it was they were doing, because we are talking about law and legal precedent.
As I noted in my first response to the ruling — in an update — if its to the government’s later argument after the fact that it is indeed a tax that Roberts was paying deference, then what he did was rule on a different law than the rest of the justices. Because the one passed by Congress doesn’t change simply because the government needed it to to make it Constitutional. The are presenting Roberts at that point with a different law than the one that Congress passed.
As I noted in my first response to the ruling — in an update — if its to the government’s later argument after the fact that it is indeed a tax that Roberts was paying deference, then what he did was rule on a different law than the rest of the justices. Because the one passed by Congress doesn’t change simply because the government needed it to to make it Constitutional. The are presenting Roberts at that point with a different law than the one that Congress passed.
Both Roberts opinion and the joint dissent looked at the tax argument. It was part of the government’s case. Not a new argument at all. The government always maintained that it had the all the power to assess the “penalty” it needed from the Taxation clause. The dissent complains that the government hardly mentions it in its case, but some justices clearly thought it more important than others, it caught Scalia by surprise. At any rate, in oral argument Verrelli clearly notes the legislative history and a vote where the Senate voted 60 to 39 that the mandate was an exercise of the taxing power.
There is precedent for congress to enact taxation under different labels. even though the dissent states:
Roberts even picks out a case that uses the word “penalty” for “tax” and footnotes it to the dissent. Sotero or something.
Another point, about HHS defining the scope of the revenue as “extraordinary”. Regulating bodies often define limits and scope re revenue requirements. HUD, for one. Most of these taxes fall on corporations rather than individuals, but having a regulator in on the tax process is hardly “extraordinary”.
What I’m saying here, is that I understand the arguments, but Roberts didn’t change the law or write a new law. What he did was wuss out on a opportunity to limit the taxing power of Congress by forcing Congress to identify any further taxes as taxes not surcharges, penalties, fees or excises (all of which can be taxes). I don’t think he was wrong, I wish he had flexed the court’s muscles.
If he had been a liberal, he would have, that’s why liberal courts are more “successful”, they are not loath to legislate from the bench. I don’t think, also, that his vote change had anything to do with cocktail parties. I think it is a legitimate weakness in the conservative view of the court, he made a conservative call. I’ll repeat from another thread, we don’t need “conservative” Justices, we need radicals.
And that’s a shit ton of commas, right there.
I didn’t say it was a new argument. I said to accept the argument is to accept a new law — not the one passed, but rather a different one, in which Congress voted on and passed a tax.
As for the legislative history, Verrili notes the Senate vote but then has to accept that the law went to the House where it was purposely changed, with the tax being removed and reworked as a penalty.
And what I’m saying is that you’re wrong, and that the idea of language that allows for such a thing is pernicious.
Again, this begs the question. For it to make sense you must already be inclined to see a tax where a penalty was presented and voted on.
Then why beg Kennedy to side with him?
Look, I understand your position but it rests on a false premise – namely, that just because a Dem Congress tried to write a penalty to function like a tax, what they really secretly did is write a tax, lie about it, and it is Roberts’ job to see through their lies to save the legislation for them.
Thing is, they didn’t write a tax. To call it a tax is to accept later arguments they made, when Constitutionality was called into question, that contradicted the arguments they’d offered when they were putting the bill up for vote.
At which time they were arguing it wasn’t a tax.
And in fact still are.
Roberts rewrote the statute to make something the Dems were hoping would function like a tax into a tax. Roberts is not the single bestest originalist on the Court. He’s its PR director.
[Dissent of Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito, JJ. p – 17, footnote 5] “[…] 5) Of course it can be both for statutory purposes, since Congress can define “tax” and “penalty” in its enactments any way it wishes. That is why United States v. Sotelo, 436 U. S. 268 (1978), does not disprove our statement. That case held that a “penalty” for willful failure to pay one’s taxes was included among the “taxes” made non-dischargeable under the Bankruptcy Code. 436 U. S., at 273–275. Whether the “penalty” was a “tax” within the meaning of the Bankruptcy Code had absolutely no bearing on whether it escaped the constitutional limitations on penalties.”
It’s a tax! It’s a penalty! It’s two laws in one!
Roberts’ ego has subsumed his sense of integrity and jurisprudence.
I’ll see you all in the Gulag.
For it to make sense you must already be inclined to see a tax where a penalty was presented and voted on.
Who wasn’t? Wasn’t it argued for months that this was a huge tax increase on the middle class? I think the Republicans in congress all considered it a tax. If intent matters, why is this not a tax? It was clearly intended to be a tax from the get go. Penalties can be taxes and taxes can be penalties.
The law doesn’t function any differently (except that it functions at all) if the penalty is enacted under the tax power. Roberts specifically asked Verrelli why they didn’t call it a tax. Verrelli says to make it more effective, Roberts accepted that explanation. I did not see any mention of the House in the transcript.
Again, this begs the question. For it to make sense you must already be inclined to see a tax where a penalty was presented and voted on.
I am so inclined, because the penalty is administered as a tax, by the taxing authority, due when taxes are due and written into the tax code.
The arguments against the penalty being a tax, in the oral arguments and the dissent are pretty much picking nits. There’s no meat. Carvin and Clement, in oral arguments both said that they thought that the government had the power to enact the mandate as a tax. Congress has enacted similar taxes with different labels before.
I don’t see how Roberts saying that the penalty is in effect a tax changes either the intent of the congress or the law itself, since it was meant to be a tax all along and congress called it something else to obscure its function?
Anyway, as for lobbying Kennedy, why not? He wasn’t going to get Scalia, anyway did you read Ginsburg’s opinion? I grew breasts. (also I usually take those kind of stories with a grain of salt)
Anyway, have a great fourth, if you’re not under fire watch, blow something up. I probably won’t get to check back until Friday.
What was argued is that it essentially a tax in terms of how it works, whether you call it a penalty or not. What wasn’t argued, however, is that the law isn’t changed by passing a penalty rather than a tax. In fact, that’s what allowed the suit.
That’s the method for collecting payment, as determined by a Congress who passed a penalty. What’s the taxing authority under the Constitution?
That’s because you see no difference between the two. Congress may have meant to obscure its function. But there are legal conventions to be followed in interpreting. They asserted a penalty. They wrote the law so that it said penalty. They didn’t use the trappings of tax bills. That the government’s lawyers after the fact asserted it as a tax means they, like Roberts, were hoping that they could make the law mean anything that was required for it to pass. That is, they’d accept any iteration of the legislation, even one they didn’t pass, so long as it was held to be constitutional.
Because why lobby at all? His vote was the fifth.