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The ruling is ineffable.

What really happened here…?

Last Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts much to the consternation of conservatives, and (allegedly) his four likeminded bench mates, jumped ship and made the liberal bloc the majority in deciding a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

Lost in the wailing and gnashing of teeth, are several key starting points. The first is the nature of a lawsuit. An injured party does not walk into the court and say, please kill this law. Specific arguments are made and defended. In this case the two chief arguments were against the individual mandate, and the Medicare provisions. The Medicare provisions in essence told the states, to implement Obamacare or lose all of their Medicaid funding. That issue, which has gone little reported was ruled Unconstituional by a 7-2 majority…..

Now, this particular ‘do as we say’ mechanism has long since been a favorite cudgel of the Federal Government to force states to do everything from raising the drinking age, to enforcing all manner of Federal edicts, like Section 5 of the Voting Rights act, which requires a handful of states and other jurisdictions to get approval, or “pre-clearance,” from the U.S. Department of Justice for all changes to voting and election laws. (Think Voter ID).
Several of these issues including the Voting Rights act will come before the court in the next term.

Second, the 5 conservative justices all ruled that Congress clearly has no right to use the infamous Commerce Clause as a catch all justification to legislate against the American People, and any clear thinking about conservative angst over decades, should make any discussion of how important that is, redundant.

Now, the Individual Mandate, where the Chief Justice sent heads spinning. For the Year this Bill was debated, (If you can use that term logically when it was rammed through by a monolithic majority party), they used the term Penalty to the exclusion of the word Tax, for all the obvious reasons. The Chief Justice departed from any logical reasoning by determining the “Penalty” to be, in fact a tax, and thus declared that as Congress does have the inherent ability to levy a tax, the Court having a duty to read a bill to be Constitutional, if there are two opposing readings, used that fallacy to do so.

Now, the ACA is ruled Constitutional in terms of the Individual Mandate being a method of taxation under Congress power to Tax. Yippie Democrats. It’s here that we need to start looking at what was actually said, to see where this is going and why…

Let’s start with the inherent beauty of it…As described byTom Scocca of Slate Magazine Thursday, June 28, 2012

“In 2005, Sen. Barack Obama spoke in opposition to Roberts’ nomination, saying he did not trust his political philosophy on tough questions such as “whether the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to speak on those issues of broad national concern that may be only tangentially related to what is easily defined as interstate commerce.” Today, Roberts did what Obama predicted he would do.”

Now, having done that, he could have remained with his right leaning colleagues, struck the bill down, and gone home. But in all probability the Medicare part would have gone 5/4 as well. Picture starting to get a little clearer?

Continuing the Chief Justice writes that it is possible to view the Penalty as a Tax, and used that rational to join the liberal bloc for a 5/4 split in favor, so the Bill stands. He goes on to further say that “The Court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act Under the Constitution, that judgment is reserved to the people.”

So, What Really Happened Here?

The Chief Justice in short order, set up a long play on instruments long used by the Federal Government, moving long term governance rightward.

He then proceeded, with laser like accuracy proceeded to punish the left wing cabal, that as been attempting to delegitimize the court since Bush v. Gore…by calling the President signature accomplishment, a Tax heading into a tense election campaign, which has several effects.

A. Sent the White House and it’s Campaigner in Chief into panic mode, as evidenced by this Sundays news shows.

B. Started shoveling money into the Presidents opponents campaign..4.6 Million in the day following the ruling.

C.In a closely divided Senate, there are 21 seats being contested in 2012. Only 3 are being defended by Republicans, and every Democrat voted for Chief Justice Roberts and President Obama’s tax increase.

How’s that going to play on Main Street ?????

It seems the Chief Justice does not like Liberals very much. And he appears to be much smarter and slyer than they are.

The one last thing being overlooked, is that like the Medicare issue, they could have argued that the bill should stand without the Mandate but it’s clear SCOTUS would have let the bill fall by killing the mandate.

Lost in all the sturm and drang, is the fact that 43 Catholic and Small businesses have a bevy of lawsuits winding their way back through the Federal Courts, to SCOTUS, on the HHS mandate, which violates the Religious Freedoms protected by the First Amendment.

If SCOTUS was going to scuttle the bill, over the Individual Mandate, what’s going to happen when the coverage dictated by the mandate gets to them? I don’t think that’s hard to predict.

(And ironically, the Chief Justice took time to point out that it was not the Courts job to protect voters from a bad bill. Expect to see that line used against the 2010 Congress next)

Chess Anyone..?