Posted on 10/19/2013 9:01:26 AM PDT by LS
Few people are as unpopular on the right at Chief Justice John Roberts. He is viewed as having legitimized Obamacare. But did he?
My understanding of the "leiu" (the law, according to Inspector Clouseau) is that for a suit to have merit there must first be a harm. Keep that in mind.
Matt Sissel currently has a suit against Health and Human Services on appeal claiming that Obamacare, since it was ruled a "tax," in fact violates the Constitution's origination clause that all tax bills must originate in the House. According to Andrew Kostler at the Heritage Foundation, the concept has merit.
The difficulty, he argues, is that often courts don't want to get into the legislative one-upsmanship. However, Sissel's case will come up for review soon.
According to Kostler, the Origination Clause was breached. It was first introduced on in the House as a resolution called the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009." The House passed that measure, but the Senate used it as a vehicle for a health-care overhaul. The House bill in the Senate was "gutted almost entirely" and retitled the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," passed in 2009.
If the appeals court rules in Sissel's favor, he could obtain an injunction.
Personally, I think a real case will await the first imposition of a real tax penalty or fine in January which would generate a new, possibly stronger case. If that occurs, Roberts could very well have been admonishing conservatives to get on the stick when he said that it wasn't the Court's job to correct bad legislation and may have been winking and nodding a message: "you have the means right now to stop this once I deemed it a tax and no one objected."
It will be interesting to see where this path leads.
Whatever ‘they’ have on Roberts would make for some interesting reading.
Can’t see anything coming from the origination argument:
“...“Having become an enrolled and duly authenticated act of Congress, it is not for the court to determine whether the amendment was or was not outside the purposes of the original bill.” Rainey v.
United States, 232 U.S. 310, 317 (1914); see also United States v. Munoz-Flores, 495 U.S. 385,
410 (1990) (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment).2”
DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS PLAINTIFF’S AMENDED COMPLAINT
It’s hilarious to hear them argue that it’s not a tax!
It’s a huge hidden tax: in increased premiums- which tax is both collected and disbursed by exchanges and insurance agencies, and, of course, the penalties.
They are now losing their employer sponsored health plans if not having their jobs cut to part time or gone entirely. They are finding their choice of doctors or even hospitals is being limited. Their private insurance has skyrocketed in cost with ridiculous deductibles. They cannot get to the Obamacare webs site and if they do they get more sticker shock and have their private information compromised. If they say that the insurance is not worth the cost they get a little surprise from the IRS next year.
So few people are signing up that the financial failure of the Exchanges is almost assured without massive new government subsidies. A year from now Obamacare will be a heap on the ground and one would hope even the low information voters might finally have a clue. However the MSM media will, like their counter parts in North Korea, be trumpeting Obamacare's success, the triumph of the Dear Leader and blaming all of the failures on external forces like the GOP.
PS - pllttt!
Words ... Words ...Words ...Words ...Words ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... My esteemed colleague .. BLAH BLAH BLAH ... BLAH BLAH BLAH ... Of COURSE I’ll yield time ... Words ...Words ...Words ...
I’ve thought that was Roberts’ intent since the ruling came down. “You made a mess; I’m giving you a way to fix it if you are smart enough to figure it out.”
Robert’s rewrote the law from the bench with the most specious legal gymnastics conceivable to call the unconstitutional imposition of a penalty under the Commerce Clause a tax in the first place.
If a man can stretch that far, I don’t see him having any problems doing away with the Origination clause. The Constitution means nothing to him.
Robert’s got what does mean something to him: Flattering coverage in the Slimes and the Compost.
That's a reach.
Yes, with the pirate Roberts, who is wholly lacking in integrity, it is the subPreme Court now.
“I’ve thought that was Roberts’ intent since the ruling came down. “You made a mess; I’m giving you a way to fix it if you are smart enough to figure it out.””
If that is the case then John would appear to be suffering form the delusion that politicians are an intelligence sort, able to maneuver in steep political battle with each-other.
But that of course is a harmless delusion compared to the original delusion regarding the nature of his job, the death-toll of which is already 40 million + counted in just one edit.
The truth is it doesn’t matter if Congress & the president “made a mess”, the point is they did not and can NEVER be allowed to have this power over the people and their states! That is the whole propose of the Federal Constitution. What they have done with that power messy, unwise, or imprudent is by no means your matter to judge.
But John Roberts has already proven himself to be an injustice just like the majority of his hand picked federal ‘colleges’.
I guess in retrospect we shouldn’t really expect anything else from theses Federal Employees, they are after all Hand picked by the very government they have hypocritically (and unconstitutionally I might note) claimed the exclusive right to sit in judgement of.
The mouth in this case has a 200+ year history of rarely biting the hand that feeds it.
Those who subscribe to their judgement on exclusive their own employees, not only disregard the oath, but the very concept of Federal Constitutional law.
“I’ve thought that was Roberts’ intent since the ruling came down. “You made a mess; I’m giving you a way to fix it if you are smart enough to figure it out.””
If that is the case then John would appear to be suffering form the delusion that politicians are an intelligence sort, able to maneuver in steep political battle with each-other.
But that of course is a harmless delusion compared to the original delusion regarding the nature of his job, the death-toll of which is already 40 million + counted in just one edit.
The truth is it doesn’t matter if Congress & the president “made a mess”, the point is they did not and can NEVER be allowed to have this power over the people and their states! That is the whole propose of the Federal Constitution. What they have done with that power messy, unwise, or imprudent is by no means your matter to judge.
But John Roberts has already proven himself to be an injustice just like the majority of his hand picked federal ‘colleges’.
I guess in retrospect we shouldn’t really expect anything else from theses Federal Employees, they are after all Hand picked by the very government they have hypocritically (and unconstitutionally I might note) claimed the exclusive right to sit in judgement of.
The mouth in this case has a 200+ year history of rarely biting the hand that feeds it.
Those who subscribe to theses Employees ‘exclusive’ judgement over their own employers, not only disregard the oath, but the very concept of Federal Constitutional law which cannot be enforced by those who benefit from its disregard.
There is also the equal protection angle. Obama has extended waivers to some Americans and not to others. The law does not apply equally. I don’t know why that hasn’t been brought up.
Tilting at windmills..... trying to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear
John Roberts....traitor
"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes." - Abraham Lincoln
NOT one person is signed up in the Oregon Healthcare Exchange...and the state got millions from Obama for it....
“The stench from the bench is making me clench.” - Michael Savage
He could have coined it specifically for the robed goon Roberts.
My take is that the Court could (but probably won't) find the law's uneven application a violation of the EP Clause. However, that would just change how the law should be applied. The Act itself would still be constitutional, at least in the eyes of Roberts' Court.
disclaimer - not a lawyer, never taken a law class.
That is one of the points that I have never understood.
9 members on the Supreme Court.
Many of their ruling are split , but they all have required a majority
Roberts passed this thing with a majority of One.
WTF happened, and is it legal itself?
It’s 100% unConstitutional. Only in the DC bubble, do they think it matters. The joke is on them when no one signs up for this crap. Roberts should be swinging from the nearest lamppost.
Who knows? Maybe they did blackmail him into supporting it but he planted a poison pill by calling it a tax.
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