Free Republic

John Roberts is currently in position similar to Benedict Arnold after West Point. Keep in mind that Arnold was a hero to the Revolution, instrumental in a number of hard-won victories and severely wounded in battle. But in his mind Arnold struggled between the cause of American independence and personal recognition. In the end, in one fateful decision he joined his former foes. We are not in a shooting war and John Roberts need not fear the noose, but he does share a problem with Arnold. The Americans made Arnold’s name synonymous with treachery and the British didn’t trust him....

General Welfare Fraud: Roberts creates a tax loophole by Daniel Clark It’s fitting that the Supreme Court handed down its Obamacare ruling the same week that it threw out the “stolen valor” law against falsely claiming military decorations, because it has now enabled unconstitutional federal power grabs to go around masquerading as “General Welfare,” without any legal consequence. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his single-minded determination to save the Democrats’ health care law from its own terminal defects, ruled it constitutional by recasting the individual mandate penalty as a tax. Justice Antonin Scalia spent a considerable part of his dissent...

Chief Justice John Roberts recently struck another blow against limited government by creating a new, unrestrained power to use taxes to compel activity (even if the proponents of the tax insist vehemently that it is not a tax!). There's something tragic about a decision that says federal powers are practically unlimited, checked only by public opinion and the political process. There should be a large and healthy sphere of American life that is insulated and protected from political negotiation. But we cannot dwell on that tragedy. We have no recourse left but to engage and win in the political process....

General Welfare Fraud: Roberts creates a tax loophole by Daniel Clark It’s fitting that the Supreme Court handed down its Obamacare ruling the same week that it threw out the “stolen valor” law against falsely claiming military decorations, because it has now enabled unconstitutional federal power grabs to go around masquerading as “General Welfare,” without any legal consequence. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his single-minded determination to save the Democrats’ health care law from its own terminal defects, ruled it constitutional by recasting the individual mandate penalty as a tax. Justice Antonin Scalia spent a considerable part of his dissent...

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....

If your planning on celebrating Independence Day today, I would suggest you do so as if you were attending a wake. After all, every reason we used to celebrate it has been destroyed. All those who died to defend the flag have died in vain, and those still fighting must ask themselves what are they putting their lives on the line for. I suggest they are now fighting for a future of rulers of America that will be managing the decline. I used to celebrate the 4th of July by enjoying the freedom I was given by those who...

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...

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...

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts flipped late in the game on the Supreme Court ruling on "Obamacare" and ended up writing both the majority opinion and most of the opposing dissent, sources said Tuesday. Supreme Court experts described the move by Roberts, whose decisive swing vote to uphold President Barack Obama's overhaul of the failing US health care system, as unprecedented. The ruling on the reforms, Obama's signature domestic policy which aims to provide insurance to most of the 50 million Americans who lack it, was written in such a way that one can tell it was at first...

An Associated Press photographer finds Chief Justice John Roberts in Malta — where he's spending some time after the

The day after the ruling came down, this newspaper carried an article that explained Justice Roberts's decision this way: "By confounding charges that the court is too partisan, the chief justice might have earned sufficient political capital to move to the right during the next term, when the court will likely confront a host of hot-button issues, including affirmative action, gay marriage and the continued vitality of the Voting Rights Act." If earning "sufficient political capital" is simply a consequence of his ruling, Justice Roberts cannot be blamed. If it was the aim, however, and it led to his voting...

But judges are also not hired as political philosophers, Burkean or otherwise. Their legitimacy comes from a credible application of the law. And the outcome of the health care case came down to one point of law: Roberts' interpretation of the statute as a constitutional tax rather than an unconstitutional mandate. In his ruling, Roberts admits this view is hardly the most obvious one. "The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a 'fairly possible' one." The problem is that Roberts' interpretation is not fairly, or even remotely, possible....

(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...

There is no “silver lining” to last week’s lawless and illegitimate decision by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and the other four commie liberals to uphold the unconstitutional individual mandate in Obamacare as a tax (something the Court is not supposed to be allowed to do—re-write a law). Any conservative who speculates that Roberts’ grossly wrong-headed majority opinion is somehow good for our side is pathetically grasping at imaginary straws. The fact is that this is perhaps the second-worst Supreme Court decision in American history, next to Roe v. Wade. The two decisions, while concerning very different topics, both...

Please feel free to pass this on...I sent it to SCOTUS lackeys as there is no direct email address::

Mark Levin was on with Neil Cavuto earlier today talking about the decision from Chief Justice John Roberts last week and Levin’s point toward the end was the idea that Supreme Court Justices need term limits, especially if they are going to act political like Roberts did last week. Clearly Roberts caved to pressure of the leftist media and academic types and chose to rule in a political way instead of on behalf of the constitution and the country. Levin also said that we should forget about the mandate being a tax and go after Obamacare on the substance of...

"It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices," said Chief Justice Roberts in summing up the Court's upholding of Obamacare (at 10:25 in the ABA transcript).  Wrong. It most assuredly is the job of the Court to protect the people from their own political choices when those choices violate the Constitution, and if the Court fails to do this—if it instead decides that it should stay out of contentious political issues in order to remain above the fray and keep its neutrality from being questioned—then it has to find some way to read the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, I got a note from a friend of mine, former prosecutor in the Department of Justice. Over the weekend we were e-mailing back and forth, a bunch of us, just appalled at all of the so-called conservative intelligentsia. We're trying to find silver linings here, and some of the most peculiar things were being said in support of Justice Roberts' ruling. We were beside ourselves. We were asking ourselves, "What is so hard to see about reality here when it hits you between the eyes?" And my buddy sends me this note. He said, "I wish...

Don't be fooled by the false praise being heaped upon Chief Justice John Roberts by the mainstream media and its favorite go-to legal commentators. Jeffrey Toobin, no less, of the New Yorker and CNN, lets the cat out of the bag--they are celebrating Roberts's opinion in the Obamacare case, even though they know it is a total farce: In the end, of course, Roberts did uphold the A.C.A. as an exercise of the constitutional power to tax. Frankly, that argument is not a persuasive one. As the conservative Justices wrote in their joint dissenting opinion, taxes are enforced contributions to...