Free Republic

Part One: The Opportunity The Political Cudgel--and the Embedded Nail The Supreme Court’s Obamacare-affirming decision--which can be summed up as “Read John Roberts’ lips, it’s a tax”--has put a political cudgel in the hands of Republicans. The cudgel, of course, is taxes. But a huge nail is also embedded in the cudgel: the fundamental deceit of Obamacare. Yet in the week since the Court’s decision, Republicans have yet to demonstrate that they truly grasp the significance of this weapon--or that they can effectively wield it. Why? Some Republicans are worried that the fight over Obamacare distracts from the issue of...

Though few Americans are aware of it, the unconscionable ObamaCare ruling of Chief Justice John Roberts stands to provide Barack Hussein Obama unlimited and fundamentally irrevocable power less than 2 years after the November election. For should he win, Obama will acquire the “legal” authority to select 15 individuals whose word will automatically become the law of the land. Within the 2500 pages of the comically-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is cached the 2014 establishment of the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Nominated exclusively by the president, the 15 members of the Board will ostensibly be tasked with “…prevent[ing]...

Texas will not expand Medicaid or establish a health insurance exchange, two major tenets of the federal health reform that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld last month, Gov. Rick Perry said in a Monday morning announcement. "I stand proudly with the growing chorus of governors who reject the Obamacare power grab," he said in a statement. "Neither a 'state' exchange nor the expansion of Medicaid under this program would result in better 'patient protection' or in more 'affordable care.' They would only make Texas a mere appendage of the federal government when it comes to health care." Perry's office sent...

Christie: ‘I’m Really Glad' that Extortion is Still Illegal in U.S., 'Even When Done by the President’ By Patrick Burke July 9, 2012 Subscribe to Patrick Burke's posts (CNSNews.com) - New Jersey's Republican Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that he was “glad that the Supreme Court ruled that extortion is still illegal in America” and added, “even when done by the president of the United States.” The former U.S. attorney was referring to the recent Supreme Court decision that the Medicaid provision in the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, was unconstitutional. At a talk at the Brookings Institution in Washington,...

Feeling misled? You certainly should. Congress created a law so complex that it occupies between 2,400 and 2,800 pages depending on who says what, almost all of them unread by the people who voted for it. President Obama and his Democratic colleagues told you many things about the law – most of which were either mischaracterizations or outright lies. What Chief Justice John Roberts did was tell the truth, and now we can move forward. This is all on Chief Justice Roberts. The four liberals who concurred with him don’t believe that the individual mandate is a tax. They firmly...

John Roberts didn’t defer to Congress in the ObamaCare case; he just re-wrote the law... This isn’t judicial minimalism; it’s judicial meddling. There is a good reason why not even most liberal commentators are applauding the actual legal reasoning Chief Justice John Roberts used to avoid striking down the ObamaCare law: The “reasoning” is thinner than unleavened bread, and crumbles to dust not just upon gentle handling, but merely under the weight of a piercing gaze. Let us count the inanities, inconsistencies and constitutional/statutory infirmities of the key section of Roberts’ decision, which ruled that the ObamaCare mandate-and-penalty is a...

...... Just as Justice Owen Roberts' switch was attributed to the political storm of Democrat opposition to the Court's reversal of New Deal legislation, there is a widely cited report....that Chief Justice John Roberts had originally sided with the conservative dissenters in the ObamaCare decision, but changed his vote because of concerns about the political prestige of the Court in the eyes of the media and Washington elites. Owen Roberts destroyed his judicial papers. However..... He acknowledged that the Supreme Court's pro-New Deal decisions "reduce the states to administrative districts rather than coordinate sovereigns" and that his switch reached "a...

Time magazine demonstrated in its last issue that it was so overwhelmingly thrilled with John Roberts upholding ObamaCare that it put Roberts on the cover with the title “Roberts Rules,” touting his “landmark decision.” Inside, the magazine gave the ruling 15-plus pages of coverage. By contrast, the Congress voting to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for failing to deliver documents on the “Fast & Furious” program drew two dismissive paragraphs – one less paragraph than Time editor Richard Stengel took to boost Roberts as a chip off the old block of “John Marshall, the greatest of all Chief...

Jacob J. Lew, the White House chief of staff, on Sunday defended President Obama‘s health care law but rejected the “tax” label that the Supreme Court, in a ruling that mostly upheld the law last week, used to describe the penalty payment required for those who choose not to buy health insurance. The Supreme Court affirmed the so-called individual mandate to buy health insurance on the ground that it might be “reasonably characterized as a tax.” Since the ruling, Republican leaders have denounced the White House for raising the tax burden on Americans with the law, and they have called...

In 2005 I was asked by the Bush administration to assist Judge John Roberts during the Senate confirmation process for his nomination as chief justice of the United States. Over several pressure-packed days, and throughout the confirmation process, I felt I got to know him fairly well. I found him to be one of the most brilliant, thoughtful, and humorous people I’d ever met. Those qualities don’t always go together. It was clear he was going to be a major right-of-center voice on the Supreme Court for decades to come. So it is with a great deal of personal interest...

Speculation persists over why Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberals to uphold the President Obama's signature health-care reform law, and that could affect the Supreme Court. Unprecedented leaks of behind-the-scenes information at the US Supreme Court are raising questions about whether the threat of political attacks and other potential criticism played a role in the high court’s recent decision to uphold President Obama’s health-care reform law. The most detailed leaks came in a CBS News report over the weekend, suggesting that Chief Justice John Roberts may have switched sides in the high-profile case in part to insulate the court and...

Question for legal tweeps: Obama campaign is now denying that administration SG ever argued that Obamacare mandate is a tax. Looking at oral arguments, SG Verrilli said mandate is 'justifiable under its tax power.' Can't find him saying 'It is a tax'… So therefore: Is Obama hiding behind legal hairsplitting, arguing mandate is constitutional under tax power but is not actually a tax?

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat,If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet. -- The Beatles in "The Taxman" Of the 17 lawyers who have served as chief justice of the United States, John Marshall -- the fourth chief justice -- has come to be known as the "Great Chief Justice." The folks who have given him that title are the progressives who have largely written the history we are taught in government schools. They revere him because he...

WASHINGTON -- I have a headache. I imagine you do too, if you have been trying to interpret the legalese employed by those legal sages who have pronounced on Thursday's Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. I would rather read the lyrics of a thousand rap composers than the anfractuous language of one legal sage. Thanks, however, to Professor E. Donald Elliott of the Yale Law School I had a translator at my side, and I shall now hand down my judgment of the Court's decision on Obamacare, which all sensible Americans have abstained from reading in its entirety including B....

Caroline Horn�@CNHorn On @CBSEveningNews, @cbsjancrawford says Romney told her Roberts' opinion seemed political, not based on Constitution.

The wily House minority leader put everything on the line to pass the president’s health-care bill, remained confident it would survive legal challenge—and was proved right when the Supreme Court largely upheld it. Among her first phone calls were her husband (“Sweetie, we won.”) and Vicki Kennedy, Sen. Ted Kennedy’s widow, telling her, “Now Teddy can rest.” Ted Kennedy had long been the inspiration for health care as a right, not a privilege, calling it “the cause of my life,” and Nancy Pelosi, in her role as the first woman speaker of the House, had made it happen. Rushing to...

One of the most common mistakes made in political reporting is to assume that average voter is following the daily news cycle as closely as we are. He or she isn’t. The latest poll numbers from the Pew Research Center on the Supreme Court’s decision on President Obama’s health-care law are (yet another) affirmation of that fact. Forty-five percent — yes 45 percent! — of respondents in the Pew poll either didn’t know what the court had done in regards the health care law (30 percent) or thought that the court had rejected most of the provisions of the law...

The Obama administration granted more than 1600 waivers over compliance with parts of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court ruling that the individual mandate is a tax will not affect the waivers, as they dealt with what kind of insurance people have, not whether they have it. The ruling, and the waivers, point us directly to the disaster that awaits the country unless the PPACA is fully repealed. (snip) What happens on January 1, 2014? That's when the state-based exchanges are supposed to be up and running, allowing federally subsidized insurance to supplant the policies getting waivers....

As promised, Romney has folded on ObamaCare too, although had I wagered money on the timing, I would have thought that he would have lasted at least a week. But apparently the revenue curve from stupid, imbecilic suckers giving Romney money in the wake of the SCOTUS decision fell off hard enough that the Romney people felt that it served no more purpose to perpetuate the repeal charade. I hope every single one of you who gave that forked-tongued jackass money feel the full shame and embarrassment of your own gullibility and obtuseness. This slackjawed sentimentalism WILL BE THE DEATH...

If you have any doubts that Justice Roberts was wrong just listen to Mark Levin....He's ready to fight the Revolution again...... Now Mark isn't what you'd called subtle....when he gets upset he let's it all hang out, and that is why I love him......that's how I get....I scream and yell and vent against the enemy bambi and his criminal accomplices in the Senate...... But I can assure you, if bambi care had been killed, Mark Levin wouldn't be mounting the attack he is......an attack we really need to win John Roberts saw that America hated this law and bambi and...

I wondered about this on the afternoon of the decision. It stands to reason: If, as most everyone believes, Roberts initially assigned the majority opinion to himself and then ended up flipping at the eleventh hour, the four conservative dissenters would have had to scramble to come up with an opinion of their own while handling the rest of their caseload. (Roberts authored no other opinions over the final two months of the term so he and his clerks could conceivably have drafted something new from scratch late in the process.) The easiest way to do that would be to...

Here's the CNN clip: http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/02/dnc-chair-tells-cnn-health-care-is-a-penalty/?iref=allsearch From her mouth: "It's not a tax". The Internal Revenue Service would be the “easiest enforcer” of penalties against those who refuse to comply for those who fail to not pay the tax that isn't. “This is a penalty that will be assessed on the tax return if you choose to roll the dice and make us all pay for your being irresponsible and increase all of our health care costs...“We’re not going to tolerate that any more in America. You have to be responsible and you have to pay a penalty if you choose...

Thank you, SCOTUS. This Obamacare ruling fires up the troops as America’s eyes are opened! Thank God. This proves to be such an unsettling time in America as we undergo the fundamental transformation that Barack Obama promised he would do to us if elected. Obamacare was dealt in deception and confusion by flooding the public with an overwhelming amount of conflicting “rationale” via thousands of pages of unread legislative detail, which is the radical left’s M.O. Obama promised the American people this wasn’t a tax and that he’d never raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000. We now see...

July 3, 2012 Romney Campaign Declaring Cease Fire on Health Care Posted by Staff In the aftermath of the Supreme Court health care ruling, the early conventional wisdom was that an unfavorable health care ruling at the court would be good for Republicans politically, even as it was a serious policy setback for conservatives. But that's not shaping up to be the case. Mitt Romney, after giving a brief statement decrying the decision, has been virtually silent on criticizing the health care law. He's been on vacation and his campaign has been giving off clear signals that it doesn't want...

Welcome, America, to the British NHS. That may not be what you were promised when your president first dreamed up Obamacare. But the National Health Service is what you’re going to get all the same. I did warn you about this, four years ago in my (depressingly) prophetic book “Welcome to Obamaland: I’ve Seen Your Future and It Doesn’t Work.” I noted, for example, that your future president had grossly underestimated the costs of socialized health care. I warned that though he said at the time that it would cost between $50 billion and $65 billion, it undoubtedly would cost...

I ran into a prominent conservative member of Congress Friday night just before the huge storms moved through Washington. He was, he said, far angrier on the day after the Supreme Court Obamacare decision than he had been the moment he learned Chief Justice John Roberts had joined the Court’s liberal bloc to uphold the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare. He didn’t resort to histrionics or profanity, but he was spitting mad — and his anger was growing, not diminishing. A short time later, I saw another conservative lawmaker who said much the same thing. And yet another...

At least 15 governors have indicated they will not participate in the expansion of Medicaid under the healthcare law, striking a blow to President Obama’s promise of broader insurance coverage. Before Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling, states had the option of either increasing their Medicaid rolls or being penalized by the federal government. The high court struck down that offer as unconstitutional. Governors still have a financial incentive to participate in the expansion of coverage for low-income people, since the government will foot most of the bill through 2016. But the decision is also loaded with politics, particularly for Republican governors...

(snip) ...“Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress,” he (Roberts) said on Friday, according to news reports. “It seemed like a good idea.” The chief justice was correct to anticipate a level of fury unusual even in the wake of a blockbuster decision with vast political, practical and constitutional consequences. The criticism came from all sides. And it was directed not at the court as whole or even at the majority in the 5-to-4 decision. It was aimed squarely at him. (snip) Professor Yoo, the former Bush administration official, said her report (referring to Jan Crawford's book) appeared...

I was just on the Glen Beck show on GBTV and had occasion to note that Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in the Obamacare case was familiar to me. It turns out that Roberts adopted a similar activist rewriting of the parties’ arguments in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District v. Holder. Most people just call it the “MUD” case, but it provides some clarity about what happened last week in the Obamacare ruling. In MUD, a small utility district in Texas was challenging Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional. (Shelby County Alabama and Texas are currently doing...

Amazing what happens while your internet connection gets wiped out, isn't it. Today's breaking news is that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts originally voted to strike down the mandate in Obamacare, but then changed his mind and sided with the liberal members of the court. Or so CBS reports. 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...

Some of the least successful chief justices, Roberts suggested, had faltered because they misunderstood the job, approaching it as law professors rather than as leaders of a collegial Court. Harlan Fiske Stone, a former dean of Columbia Law School, was a case in point. Stone “was a failure as chief, because of his misperception of what a chief justice is supposed to be,” Roberts said, gesturing to the justices’ private conference room through an open door of his office. “It’s his desk out there that is separate from the conference table, and he … sat at his desk, and the...

What? The former Speaker is saying ObamaCare is a penalty, not a tax, that is enforced by the tax code...or something. Gregory: Is it a tax? Pelosi: No no, no no. Pelosi: Right, ObamaCare Is Constitutional Under Taxing PowerIs this what Pelosi meant by "passing the bill to see what's in it?" The Supreme Court saw what was in ObamaCare, ruled it a tax, and she, along with top White House officials, are saying it's a tax. It is very clear the Democrats have their talking points together. And yet, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is accusing Republicans of being...

CBS News broke a huge story on Sunday's Face the Nation concerning the Supreme Court's Thursday ruling on ObamaCare. According to Jan Crawford, CBS legal and political correspondent, Chief Justice John Roberts was initially going to strike down the individual mandate requiring citizens to buy health insurance, but changed his mind over the objections of the conservatives on the Court (video follows with transcript): CBS News: Roberts Initially Wanted to Strike Down ObamaCare Mandate But Changed His Mind NORAH O’DONNELL, SUBSTITUTE HOST: We're going to start first with Jan because you've done some reporting. The big question was why did...

In 1832, the threat of nullification by States that opposed tariffs on imported goods came close to bringing about a civil war. Thirty years later as cries for the abolition of slavery reached a fever pitch the War Between the States would begin. Today, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that found that the Affordable Health Care Act—Obamacare— is constitutional and thereby the law of the land. Republican Governors are lining up to say they will not obey it. Not only has President Obama and the Democrat Party imposed an enormously unpopular law on the nation, they have...

Prominent Dems including White House chief of staff Jack Lew and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly argued in recent days that the fee for not buying insurance under the health care law is in fact a penalty and not a tax. They got support from an unexpected quarter on Monday: the Romney campaign. Mitt Romney's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown that he agrees - the fee is a penalty and not a tax, as the Supreme Court ruled last week. "The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court," Fehrnstrom said. "He...

Obama administration and states move forward to implement health care law Administration makes resources available to help states implement Affordable Insurance ExchangesHealth and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today a new funding opportunity to help states continue their work to implement the health care law -- the Affordable Care Act.  When the law is fully implemented in 2014, the affordable insurance exchanges will provide people and small businesses with one-stop shops to find, compare and purchase affordable, high-quality health insurance.  Today’s announcement makes more funding available to build all models of affordable insurance exchanges available to states. HHS also...

Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Obama health law on Thursday, I have received a number of messages from listeners and readers arguing that because the Justices found the individual mandate was a tax, it was unconstitutional, as that plan didn't start in the House. "Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution states that 'All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House,'" is what the Constitution says, these readers argue. They go on to say that since the mandate was added in the Senate, and not in the House, the entire plan should have been found unconstitutional....

Not A Tax Increase? Video ad A conservative advocacy group closely aligned with the Tea Party announced a $9 million swing-state push against President Obama and the healthcare law. The announcement by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is largely funded by the conservative Koch brothers, comes one day after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the vast majority of the law in a major coup for Obama. "While we are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court ruling," AFP President Tim Phillips said in a statement, "this is far from over." The group's push is worth $9 million, according to a...

With Chief Justice John Roberts’ unthinkable decision to uphold Obamacare yesterday, all focus now shifts to repeal for conservatives. In order to repeal Obamacare, two things must happen: Republicans must retake the White House, and they must retake the Senate. Contrary to popular opinion, Republicans don’t need a 60-vote majority to ram through an Obamacare repeal – as Ken Klukowski pointed out yesterday, “The only way to stop Obamacare now is with a one-page repeal bill that must be passed by the House and Senate. Because it would reduce the deficit you can pass it with 51 votes as a...

Wow. How quickly the press changes their reporting. With the Supreme Court ruling yesterday upholding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), today's front section of the Detroit Free Press has the following headlines: "Hospital execs promise improved care" "Up to 500,000 more poor people will get coverage in Michigan" "Many find hope in ruling" "Many of law's provisions already proving popular" and a two-thirds page description of the law's consumer protections already in effect and those still to come. I was amazed. Why hadn't I seen such praises of the law before in the Free Press or other big media? How...

Top DNC staffers gloat over Obamacare, taunt GOP ‘bitches,’ ‘mother******s’ Posted at 10:59 am on June 28, 2012 by Twitchy Staff Patrick Gaspard @patrickgaspard "it's constitutional. Bitches."

When is a tax not a tax? When President Obama says it isn't, or when the Supreme Court says it is? Obamacare was sold on several fraudulent lines. The president knows the country doesn't want to pay higher taxes, given the deplorable way their government spends the money. And so the administration packaged it as something different. That's called bait and switch, which is defined as "an illegal tactic in which a seller advertises a product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product." And Obamacare, if it is not repealed, is guaranteed to be more...

The Obama administration on Friday threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill in part because it does not include higher health care fees for members of the military. “The Administration is disappointed that the Congress did not incorporate the requested TRICARE fee initiatives into either the appropriation or authorization legislation,” the White House wrote in an official policy statement expressing opposition to the bill, which the House approved in May. President Obama’s most recent budget proposal includes billions of dollars in higher fees for members of TRICARE, the military health care system, and is part of the administration’s plan to...

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process. Indeed, the Court not only upheld a fraud perpetrated on the public — it became a willing participant. The assessment charged for failure to comply with ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which requires Americans to purchase health insurance, was presented to the country by the administration and the Democratic Congress as a penalty assessed for lawlessness — i.e., for refusing to honor this new legal requirement. It was strenuously denied by proponents that they were raising taxes.

Three months ago, I quoted George Jonas on the 30th anniversary of Canada's ghastly "Charter of Rights and Freedoms": "There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself," wrote Jonas. "It's as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them." For longer than one might have expected, the U.S. Constitution was a happy exception to that general rule – until, that is, the contortions required to reconcile a republic of limited government with the ambitions of statism...

Conservatives won a substantial victory on Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John Roberts has served this cause. The health care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the Framers’ design for limited government. Conservatives distraught about the survival of the individual mandate are missing the considerable consolation prize they won when the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional... --snip-- When Nancy Pelosi, asked where...

In today’s deeply disappointing decision on Obamacare, a majority of the Supreme Court actually got the Constitution mostly right. The Commerce Clause — the part of the Constitution that grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states — does not authorize the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance. The Court, by a 5–4 margin, refused to join all the august legal experts who insisted that of course it granted that authorization, that only yahoos and Republican partisans could possibly doubt it. It then pretended that this requirement is constitutional anyway, because it is merely an...

THERE’S PLENTY to be said as a policy matter both for and against the Affordable Care Act, but it’s beyond reasonable debate that it complies fully with the Constitution...[Snip]... The one provision whose constitutionality is questioned is the individual mandate...[Snip] That mandate, too, is constitutional. Congress found that the cost of providing uncompensated care to the uninsured totaled $43 billion in 2008, raising annual premiums for the average family by over $1,000. Suppose Congress had required anyone who received medical care at public expense in 2010 to purchase insurance for 2011 or face a modest increase ($750 per year) in...

The Supreme Court's ruling in Obamacare v. the United States of America is yet another body blow to the U.S. Constitution's principle of limited government and the freedom tradition, but there is a major upside. Despite President Obama's opposition to an individual mandate when he was debating Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries and despite his postelection insistence that Obamacare's mandate does not constitute a tax, his lawyers insisted otherwise, and the Supreme Court bought it. So we have a law with enormous reach -- one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy -- having been fundamentally misrepresented to the American...

Axelrod spinning