The Roberts Opinion: It's Not All Bad

Townhall.com ^ | 6/29/2012 | Kate Hicks

[zeugma]

The biggest problem with the ruling, is that Roberts ruled for something not requested of the court. The administration was not making arguments about the law being constitutional because the 'mandate' was a tax. I can't tell you how many times I've seen supreme court rulings where the justices essentially say "well, if such and so had been brought up, we could have ruled on it, however since it was not, we cannot."

Further, I believe there is legislative history with the act, whereby it's status as a tax was specifically rejected by congress. Roberts totally abandoned his role as a justice and assumed facts and arguments not tendered.

I still haven't made it all the way through the ruling, concurrance, and dissents yet, but I'm not really impressed with it so gar.

[Kevmo]

“[A]ccording to the Government…the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. ”
***So it is a tax on the poorest of the poor, those who cannot afford to buy healthcare. We should call it the poor tax.

[gdani]

His ruling killed the commerce clause

It did no such thing. What makes you think it did?

[Kazan]

Now, Romeny has the rallying cry and significant momentum, 3 months before the election That is the best thing about the decisions (and ONLY thing keeping me sane this morning)

So, you're putting your trust in the man that gave Obama the blueprint for Obamacare and packed the courts with liberals in Massachusetts? That is evidence that you have lost your sanity already.

[Kazan]

John Roberts is not a “traitor to his philosophy.” He is not a liberal. He is, above all else, a very strict originalist,

It's hard to take the rest of the column seriously after reading that.

[Kazan]

That is why we must vote for Romney

Why? So, he can replace Obamacare with Romneycare? Or replace Antonin Scalia with another Roberts or David Souter?

[Mr. K]

wtf is wrong with you?

are you not capable of holding a discussion without resorting to name-calling?

[BuckeyeTexan]

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

[katiedidit1]

Absolutely! it was rewritten to include a tax as a way around the interstate commerce clause. Roberts killed us and is a sob in my book. I don’t care how anyone spins it..facts are facts.

[SoFloFreeper]

Uh huh.

[Lady Lucky]

Post of the day!

[raccoonnookkeeper]

Some of it is not bad because it’s downright TERRIBLE!

[SoFloFreeper]

Thanks. I thought it appropro.

[rwilson99]

It’s a new tax... based on income.

Elections have consequences.

[norton]

I respect your opinion.

But keep reading,

The only lemonaide is that Romney now has a cause to rally the troops behind.

Roberts apparently placed image before principle and did contortions to make it work.

He/the court could go that far to approve Obamacare only a week after bending over to determine that formerly sovereign states don't have the "right" to enfore federal law within their borders.

[betty boop]

Remember—[Roberts] never said it was good policy, and in fact made it clear that he feels otherwise. What he did was invalidate an unconstitutional argument [i.e., Commerce Clause reasoning that would obliterate any distinction between "active" and "inactive" market participants] in defense of the policy, thereby banning it from future use, and then uphold a bad, but not unconstitutional statute, because it adhered to a permissible exercise of power. Congress passed a tax, he says, and it’s a bad one, and he doesn’t like it, but that doesn’t make it impermissible.

And thus Chief Justice Roberts drew the limit to Congressional exercise of its powers under the Commerce Clause. In short, Congress now must acknowledge the free decisions of individuals WRT whether they want to participate in any "market," in this case the "healthcare market." It cannot just lump all citizens into some abstract "market" and then compel their participation in that market. This is a huge recognition and defense of individual liberty against encroachment by the federal government. This is now a SCOTUS precedent that must be followed by all lower courts, and also by all members of the Executive and Congressional branches of government.

The Obama Administration's main defense of the ACA was appeal to the Commerce Clause. It argued that all human beings, simply by breathing, were already participants in the "healthcare market," and thus their behavior in that market was subject to legislation and regulation.

Roberts drove a stake into the very heart of this line of thinking. In the process, he upheld the idea of individual liberty under law that is the very heart of our constitutional order; and he snuffed any concept of the American body politic that sees human individuals as anonymous, inconsequential "'atoms" in some abstract Mass Man....

In short, the whole idea of the "General Will" takes a big setback, and the Will of the People, successfully defended here, steps out into the full light of day....

[Anyone wanting a "backgrounder" on the General Will vs. Will of the People issue — representing the basic, mutually-opposed ideologies of the French and American Revolutions respectively — can perhaps find a helpful retrospective here.]

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts for this pivotal ruling. And thank you for turning up the heat on His Satanic Majesty by forcing him to "call a spade a spade" — the individual mandate is, pure and simple, a relentlessly regressive TAX, one that largely will be paid by middle-income and poor individuals and families.

And thus the Chief Justice comes about as close as good manners and protocol can allow to calling out the POTUS as a LIAR.

On the other hand, somehow I get the sense that Roberts was implying that he'd just as soon leave "political disputes" to the "political branches" of the government — that is to We the People themselves, and their representatives in Congress.

Of course, the political Left wants all policy disputes resolved in the courts, because they can't otherwise get what they want out of We the People and their representatives in Congress.

What Roberts may have suggested is that SCOTUS' mission is to construe and apply constitutional law, not to resolve political disputes. For that's what elections are all about....

Thank you so very much, dear Servant of the Cross, for the ping to this outstanding article.

[C. Edmund Wright]

I am afraid you are very very wrong. The ruling did not really kill the abuse of the Commerce Clause - moreover - the tax based ruling did not have to be part of that ruling. Sorry, Antonin Scalia, Mark Steyn, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh - oh, C Edmund - just a bit weightier than whoever this little Townhall chick is.

[betty boop]

Sigh....

We seem to be having a basic "problem of communication" here....

How on earth do you expect anyone to take your "argument" seriously — when you don't bother to explain it? If you have a problem with anything I wrote, please show how it is invalid, based on your analytical logic and experience.

You can't just swagger into a civil public debate and begin the defense of your argument or point of view with the statement — "The ruling did not really kill the abuse of the Commerce Clause" — by asserting that my analysis is "very very wrong." Which is simply to dismiss what I was saying, evidently from your POV that I must be a moron if I disagree with you or Rush or whomsoever.

I listened to Rush's show for one hour yesterday, and didn't catch a hint of your problem. Of course, it is a three-hour show; so maybe I missed the explosive part — that SCCJ Roberts rolled over and died for progressive causes in this ruling.

Or maybe Rush never said any such thing.

Anynoot, in a civil public debate, at this point it is incumbent on YOU to show the defects of my reasoning, which is based on logic and direct experience.

At least, those would be the "rules" in the world I live in.

To put it crudely, in civil debate, ad hominum attack is not a winning strategy. At least, not in the world I live in.

[xzins]

This is a huge recognition and defense of individual liberty against encroachment by the federal government.

My dissent.

Roberts did no such thing as uphold "individual" liberty.

He said that the Fed can tax you and not your neighbor for what you are not doing. That, Sister, is insane.

Betty, you don't like cars, so we’re taxing you, but not your neighbor, for being a transportation deadbeat who makes it necessary for us to run trains. That doesn’t seem to pass the equal treatment requirement to me. Contrary to the argument in this article, it says that you are NOT free to abstain from behavior based on your personal preference. The government isn't ordering you to buy a car under a mandate; it's persecuting you until you do. Some Liberty.

[Revolting cat!]