Obamacare threatens to end John Roberts’s dream of a nonpartisan Supreme Court

The Washington Post ^ | 3/1/2015 | Robert Barnes

[Beave Meister]

The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature achievement on grounds that many had dismissed as an afterthought.

As long as Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is on the court, he will most often be the decider when the justices split along their familiar ideological fault lines. But, slowly and quietly, Roberts is the one trying to build its legacy. He sees it as somehow exempt from the partisan fugue that long ago enveloped Washington. Justice Stephen G. Breyer has worried that the public might see him and his colleagues as “nine junior-varsity politicians”; public approval of the Supreme Court is falling. But while all of the justices bristle at the notion of a political court, the eponymous head of the Roberts court has the most to lose. After all, its decisions cannot be respected if the court is not respected. “It is a very serious threat to the independence and integrity of the courts to politicize them,” Roberts said at his 2005 confirmation hearings.

[DAC21]

“We should have known he was a slime ball when he was confirmed too easy and too fast to have been Bush appointee”

The Dems knew he was a pillow biter and that he and the beard pulled some shenanigans to get his blond hair blue eyed South American orphanes adopted. He is compromised.

[dsc]

“Who, in your opinion, is strong?”

Well, Benjamin Netanyahu, but that’s neither here nor there.

I’m trying to think of someone, but...

At this point in the last election cycle I would have said Governor Palin, but it seems I would have been wrong.

How about Sheriff Arpaio?

[dsc]

“Bipartisan. I hate that word. I want partisanship. I want the conservatives to play hardball like the liberals do. Take every dirty nasty trick the liberals use and shove it right back in their faces.”

Absolutely.

Choosing to lose every contest for the sake of the “moral high ground” is idiotic.

Besides, bipartisanship is when the evil party and the stupid party get together and do something that is both evil and stupid.