The Supreme Importance of the Court's Message

"I feel like Justice Roberts cheated on me," said a friend, half in jest, half expressing honest disappointment. Having once emceed a "Women for Roberts" press conference for C-SPAN back in the day, I heard a lot of similar sentiments in the wake of his penning the majority opinion for the Supreme Court decision that "upheld Obamacare," as many have put it.

But the whole of the president's health care legislation wasn't actually the question before the Court.

I was not alone Thursday morning, thinking about the man who appointed the chief justice, former President George W. Bush. Reading the majority opinion, my mind went to an April morning in 2008, on the West Lawn of the White House.

Welcoming Pope Benedict XVI on his visit to the capital, the president said: "In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that 'each of us is willed, each of us is loved.'"

"Elections matter," a friend and colleague said to me that day. It wasn't until recently that this idea started to become a palpable realization in the hearts and minds of many Americans. The "Fortnight for Freedom" observations called for by Catholic bishops were inspired by the encroachments of the Obama administration, which has stomped on the conscience rights of religious organizations in the name of its health care crusade. While accusing Catholics and other people of faith of imposing their views on the rest of the country, the government is using its coercive power to insist that everyone subscribe to its radical ideology, conscience be damned -- or pay a fee.

My friend's declaration about elections is the point of a line in Chief Justice Roberts' majority opinion: "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices." Translated for our political season: "This is what you elected."

The debate about the health care legislation has played itself out, as framed by the architects of the policy, as a "war on women" involving access to contraception and abortion. But the question before American voters is not the morality of contraception or any theological issue but something quite fundamental and universal.

"For the first time in the history of health care in the United States," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb. who led a recent bipartisan discussion of the law with other congress members, "this law would force Americans to choose to either obey the government or violate their personal convictions ... It is wrong ... and it is an affront to the very purpose of our government, derived from the consent of the governed."

This goes back to the very thing that the pope and the president talked about on the White House lawn in 2008: the value of human life and the future of freedom itself.

Once all of the dueling commentary, despondency and celebrations pass, I'd rally around what the chief justice said. His ruling wasn't an infidelity inasmuch as a nudge about staying awake and answering our civic calls.

Thank you for posting!

Indeed, the Chief Justice's seeming use of what someone called "pretzel logic" to arrive at this opinion may result in throwing the massive power grab disguised as "affordable care" back to "the People" who, according to Justice Story and all the Framers of the Constitution, are the "only KEEPERS" of the Constitution.

Whether "We, the People" are up to the challenge Roberts has delivered is up to us.

We must remember that the Source for the ideas underlying our Declaration of Independence and Constitution's limits on the power of those we entrust with power in government remains unchanged; therefore, the ideas essential to liberty are unchanged.

Back in March, my view of the Court's challenge was expressed on FR as follows:

"Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it." - John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams, 1777
What an awesome responsibility the Justices of 2012 have to Adams and the other Framers of America's Constitution "make good use" of the opportunity they have now to "preserve" freedom for future generations!
If they "do not," then history will record their action as a betrayal of the trust of all the brave men and women who have been willing to sacrifice everything for freedom's cause--from 1776 to now.
May they feel the heavy cloak of responsibility they bear for the freedom of those future generations, and may their opinions recall those ideas of individual liberty so beautifully articulated by the Framers of the Constitution they are sworn to uphold.
"On every question of construction, let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823, The Complete Jefferson, p. 322.

In reading the dissenting opinions of this week's rulings, one realizes that such understanding is alive in the minds of some justices.

Clearly, this opinion makes it obvious that a free people must recognize that the solution to the consequences of their bad political decisions lies in the corrective of frequent and free elections--not in any Supreme Court.

We must provide that corrective, insofar as possible, in November 2012.

Going forward, we must not tolerate the appointment of any more members of the Court who will "squeeze" new meanings which sacrifice the liberty of future generations for momentary illusions about the role of government.

We must not allow this decision relating to the Trojan Horse of "health care" take our eyes off the equally dangerous threat posed within that monstrous bill to freedom of conscience and freedom for religion.

The RNC had better hammer this until the elections. If this continues much further the people have nothing left to lose.

1. INCOME: The federal government has claimed the right to take 100% of our incomes through the income tax.

2. PROPERTY: The federal government has claimed it can take our properties through eminent domain to sell for government profit. (Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005)

3. MONEY/WEALTH: The federal government has claimed it can take whatever we have left in our pockets as a tax with this latest decision.

Therefore: You can earn nothing, possess nothing, and have nothing if the federal government calls it a tax.

What’s left to do but dissolve the federal government?

Absolutely agree, one day the people will wake up and praise the decision of Justice Roberts, as he has foiled any Democrat legislation that refuses to call fees, penalties,etc, as what they truly are, TAXES.

The proof that this is good is that Ginsburg wrote a dissenting argument on the Commerce Clause, for her to do that means WE WON. They wanted the whole enchilada, but Roberts put a stop to that once and for all.

Then he told us to go out and VOTE wisely, there lies our POWER, it's in our ballpark, and I see us winning the house, senate and the White House. Then repeal.

What Democrat wants to base his election on the TAX? Checkmate.

Some things never change. We are back to 1774.

In colonial times our judges were appointed by the King of England. The judiciary was an arm of the executive power and each judge served at the pleasure of the Crown. These imported lawyers were set above us colonials and in addition to being very well paid, were set in high society right up there with the royal governors.

Needless to say, the judges defended the King's prerogatives at every turn and it was useless to press “taxation without representation” claims in the King's Courts.

The ninth complaint in our Declaration addressed this abuse: “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of his Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.”

Our Constitution corrected these issues by creating an independent judiciary, judges who served during good behavior and beholding to no man, and allowing the President the power to nominate officers/judges but placing final consent with our Senate.

For whom do our federal courts work? Who/what do they defend? Our independent judiciary supposedly defends the prerogatives of the people as expressed in the Constitution, and not the personal prerogatives associated with a King.

But does our judiciary do that?

Whose interest does our judiciary defend? Those of the executive or those of the people as expressed in our Constitution?

I say we have reverted to 1774. The Arizona and Obamacare rulings prove our once independent judiciary exists to defend the interests of the executive/King/dictator Obama and not our Constitution.

It is time to take back that which we gave.

It was his foreordained duty to save us from the consequences of our voting. He shirked his duty.

Actually, what you say in sarcasm, I say in earnest.

Let us say someday we vote people into office who decide that, say, caucasian people are a blight and must be summarily executed.

Let us further say that part of the legislation declares caucasians to be 'unpeople' and thusly not protected under the Constitution.

Wind it forward. The first person to be 'sentenced' to execution appeals the case to the SCOTUS. Your sarcastic inference would have the SCOTUS say, "Hey. You elected these guys. You have no one to blame but yourself. CASE UPHELD."

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