Posted on 07/03/2012 2:12:26 PM PDT by Yardstick
President Obama’s public humiliation of the Supreme Court, that is:
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The Right needs to stop kidding itself that last week’s epic Dolchstoss amounts to anything but a loss: a loss to the country, a loss to the court’s apolitical reputation, and a personal loss for the chief justice, whose legacy now seems permanently sullied. From CBS News:
Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.
Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.
“He was relentless,” one source said of Kennedy’s efforts. “He was very engaged in this.”
But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, “You’re on your own.”
Spare me the argument that Roberts, with the ghosts of 1937 tramping through his mind, was trying to “preserve the integrity” of the court. His jaw-dropping, intellectually inconsistent, Kafkaesque ruling in the Obamacare case is likely to live in infamy, much like such earlier Supreme turkeys as the Dred Scott decision and Plessy v. Ferguson. In both of those cases, as in this one, the Court took refuge in legal niceties and sophomoric hairsplitting, refusing to acknowledge the greater moral issue and the looming national catastrophe.
Even if Roberts did make his “switch in time” pusillanimously, to avoid another Obama tongue-lashing and the ill will of the major editorial pages . . . so what? There are times in the affairs of men when business as usual should no longer obtain, and all right-thinking people (including the four justices who voted to strike down the monstrosity) must simply — in one of the Left’s favorite phrases — do the right thing. That Roberts did not will be to his everlasting shame.
Further, it’s not like it won him any good will or Strange New Respect, either from his poisonous colleagues (read Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s classic dog-in-the-manager “concurrence”; her shiv-between-the-ribs citation of Romneycare was also a nice touch) or from the New York Times, which thanked him thus:
Six full terms after Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined the court, the five in the majority have redefined judicial conservatism. The contrast in style and philosophy with the moderate minority is pronounced, including the conservatives’ willingness to flout court rules, constraints of precedent and well-established practices of legal reasoning to reach results they seek.
It is no wonder that the court’s standing in public opinion polls is at its lowest level in a quarter of a century, with just one in eight Americans believing that the justices decide cases based only on legal analysis.
Justice Elena Kagan said last month, dissenting in the crime lab evidence case, that the conservative majority sometimes forsakes “precedent-based decision making,” which guides lower court judges and provides predictability in the justice system. The court reached the right result on the Affordable Care Act, but that ruling was not a sign of change in a strident conservative majority.
You have to love that “moderate minority” phrase, too.
But this is how the Left sees itself — eminently, moderately reasonable, and only driven to extreme “by any means necessary” measures by the intransigence of the Right and for its effrontery in trying to oppose “progress” as they define it.
Until the Right understands that the Left cedes us — as the Times editorial so vividly illustrates — no legitimacy at all it will continue to be surprised by weak men like John Roberts, who allowed a rogue president to publicly browbeat him and the institution he heads — and then, when he had a chance to pay him back, turned tail and ran.
As Kafka wrote in “Zur Frage der Gesteze”: “Was der Adel tut, ist Gesetz” (“Whatever the nobility does is the law.” So start acting accordingly.
Roberts has made the court the handmaidens of the Ruling Class.
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“a loss to the country, a loss to the court’s apolitical reputation, and a personal loss for the chief justice”
Actually it is more of a loss to/of the Constitution. Without it, the others don’t mean squat.
I would put Krauthammer high on the list.
Churchill to Chamberlain, but seems appropriate for Roberts too.
George Will too.
I gave the “evil genius/silver lining” idea several hours of consideration on June 28, I really did want to believe it. But it just does not hold up. Roberts screwed the pooch, liberty, and America and will go down in history as another Benedict Arnold.
Conservative punditry also needs to start calling this “the liberal Roberts Court” since conservatives are now definitely outnumbered.
I’ve tried hard to put a hopeful shine on these recent decisions. I’ve tried to see the good in the opinions, but my fervor is fading. Roberts really did screw us all and body-slammed the Constitution in the process.
For some odd reason, I expect Roberts to make a rare public statement soon. If he really does read Supreme Court press coverage, then he must be horrified at the damage he’s done.
It’s very simple. He was threatened. He could not pass for a hero, so he surcumbed to the threat. Make no mistake, this is a ruthless regime.
Let’s not kid ourselves, this was the just the most recent assault. The federal dept. of education (unconstitutional) has been at it for decades, ditto the EPA, Agriculture, HUD etc. We fight at the outer edges constitutional debasement when it was the original debasements that laid the precedents for the marxists to build on. Their mission is as good as complete.
I agree with the pundit who said Roberts is playing chess and the rest are playing checkers. I think what he did will not help Obama get re-elected.
LOL! It was not Roberts job to “play chess” and try and hurt bambi’s re election chances, it was his job to uphold the contitution and he failed miserably causing untold damage to this country. He failed, he is a traitor....chess, checkers, WTFever.
And there is certainly no guarantee bambi will not be re elected. And even if Mitt does win, we will still have a houseful of lily livered pubbies afraid of their shadows, afraid to not be liked by liberals. And most certainly afraid to take the necessary action against Obamacare.
That is pretty lousy chess playing by the Court Jester.
Roberts isn’t special. He’s just another political sell out.
He and/or his family may have been physically threatened. It's the Chicago way.
Great quote. I think Gov. Patrick Henry’s words are appropo as well.
Can we stop calling it Øbama care?
Øbamatax is more appropriate.
Kafkaesque, Kagan? The fact that Kagan was even one of the judges ruling on this is Kafkaesque.
If Roberts is playing chess, he just blundered into a fool's mate.
Bingo - Roberts handed a victory to the statists trying to enslave us.
HE COULD HAVE SAID
“NO GOVERNMENT EVER HAS THE RIGHT TO COMPEL THE INDIVIDUAL INTO COMMERCE AGAINST HIS/HER WILL AND PENALIZE OR TAX THEM FOR NON-COMPLIANCE.”
The Roberts Court has become the Humpty Dumpty Court ("when I use a word, it means whatever I say it does").
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