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I believe someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Maybe Valerie Jarrett, Barack Hussein Obama and a number of other select individuals held a chanting session a la “Eyes Wide Shut”. It wouldn’t be the first time.
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Obama won the battle but Roberts won the war. Here's why:
The more I think about the Obamacare ruling, the more I like it. I think Roberts was brilliant. Consider what he did.
1. He took the Commerce Clause out of the equation. He said you cannot use the Commerce Clause to compel people to purchase a commodity, and to try to do so is unconstitutional. This undermines many prior decisions, like ones under the Commerce Clause that said a farmer cannot grow a particular crop even for his own use on his own land if that crop in general is a regulated commodity that is part of interstate commerce. Thus, he struck down the individual mandate as a penalty based on the Commerce Clause.
2. He took Obama’s campaign argument of an activist court away from him since this opinion was a liberal majority opinion. That is huge.
3. In doing so, Roberts removed the issue from being a legal issue to a political issue, throwing it from the courts back into the lap of Congress. He says it is not the Court's place to determine if it is good law, but just to determine whether it is constitutional.
4. He branded Obama and Pelosi and Reid and all the rest as bald faced liars. If you recall, Obama had an interview with George Stephanopolus (sp?) and George kept insisting it was a tax, not a penalty. Obama got very excited and over and over kept telling George it was definitely not a tax, it was a penalty, and would only be imposed if you don't buy health care. When it was debated in Congress, it was always debated as a penalty and everyone denied it was a tax, even though it looked and smelled like a tax. Everyone knew it never would have passed if it was presented as a tax. Landrieu and Ben Nelson would never have voted for a huge tax increase. In the actual language of the legislation, it is declared a penalty and not a tax. Nowhere in the legislation is it ever referred to as a tax. Then, in arguments before the Court, the Solicitor General argued it both ways. He said it was a penalty, and then argued it was a tax. Scalia chided him on it but the argument was what it was. The Solicitor General gave Roberts what he needed.
5. Roberts decided to write the decision himself, and the liberal justices did not agree with his reasoning - something he anticipated and led him not to let one of them write the opinion, and he removed the Commerce Clause from consideration (something Ginsberg did not agree with) and said it would be unconstitutional to try to do this under the Commerce Clause. That was the driving engine of the legislation and he took that completely away from Congress, and took away from them any future attempts to use the Commerce Clause for anything similar. Then he took away the penalty, and said that it would be unconstitutional to penalize someone for not engaging in commerce. At that point he could have simply sided with the others and ruled the whole thing unconstitutional. That would have put all the focus on the Court and gotten the liberals all stirred up to support Obama. But he didn't.
6. In a convoluted chain of reasoning, which does not really sound like something he would ordinarily do, he decided to uncover the stink for what it is. In spite of Obama and his minions arguing repeatedly that it is a penalty, not a tax, Roberts, arguing that it is the Court's duty when possible to keep a law passed by Congress alive, ruled that no matter what they called it and no matter how they couched it in the legislation, it has the nature and characteristics of a tax, not a penalty, and he ruled it is a tax. Again, dropping it back in Obama’s lap and Congress’ lap. He dropped a huge tax increase right into Obama’s lap, took away the Commerce Clause option, and then said that if States do not want to participate in the expanded medicaid, the HHS cannot withhold from the states the other Medicare/Medicaid money they are already getting, practically guaranteeing Romney will win. Obama has so many statements on the record about how he knows it would be bad to impose a tax in such an economic environment, and how he argued over and over that it was a penalty and not a tax, Romney has enough sound bites to last the whole campaign.
7. What Romney has to do now is explain clearly what he means by “replace” when he says he will repeal and replace Obamacare. Some provisions are popular with people, like coverage for pre-existing conditions; no lifetime limits for certain conditions; keeping your health insurance as you move from company to company, etc. He will also have to include tort reform (which Obamacare does not, taking care of his lawyer buddies) for if he does not do this, medical expenses will never be brought into control; and allow national marketing of health insurance instead of state limited marketing. How he deals with people who are not now covered, or how he deals with illegal aliens, are things that will have to be thought out very carefully, as well as how to pay for it. Engineering a very robust economy could go a long way to address these issues.
8. The tort reform issue is critical. Many OB/GYNs, for example, do not do that any more because of insurance costs. Most have to pay over a hundred thousand a year for their malpractice insurance, which is totally ridiculous. If tort reform is not included in the “replace”, nothing else will make much difference. It is the single biggest driver of medical costs, and it will only get worse.
James H. Dobbins, Ph.D., Esq.
http://yorked.podomatic.com/
http://www.dobbinscatholic.com/
Author of Take My Hand: A personal retreat companion.
If you're not ready to die for it, take the word freedom out of your vocabulary.
What is especially disappointing, and hard to understand, is why Roberts decided that he had to leave Obamacare in tact, and why he proceeded from that position and that position only. If he were really just concerned about the Court and its legitimacy, couldn’t he have tried the other path? Bringing somebody like Sotomeyer over to the conservative side? Seems obvious from this article that he really only saw 1 choice, which was to upload Obamacare. That is a bit curious, and will certainly lend itself toward conspiracy theories that somebody had something on him.
I am SO aware that the RomneyHaters here think he won't repeal Obamacare. I am betting he WILL repeal it--this law is THE MOST UNPOPULAR MASS LEGISLATION IN DECADES....last I saw, even 30% of Democrats don't like it...so let's quit watching these beltway know-it-alls (remember how they said the mandate would be killed? they got that wrong, didn't they?) and work to get a Republican House, Senate and White House.
Please.
(no offense to you kristinn...you're awesome.)
I am SO aware that the RomneyHaters here think he won't repeal Obamacare. I am betting he WILL repeal it--this law is THE MOST UNPOPULAR MASS LEGISLATION IN DECADES....last I saw, even 30% of Democrats don't like it...so let's quit watching these beltway know-it-alls (remember how they said the mandate would be killed? they got that wrong, didn't they?) and work to get a Republican House, Senate and White House.
Please.
(no offense to you kristinn...you're awesome.)
This means the liberals have a 5-4 majority no matter what.
Ginsburg/Breyer/Sotomayor/Kagan = liberal on everything
Roberts = Liberal on fiscal issues
Kennedy = Liberal on social issues
We’re screwed unless we replace some of these.
We all talked a along time about the end of America....we are there...all that is left as is hollowed out false veneer of the old to hide the new ruling power system
The courts rules as it is told from "above"
“Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold....”
More than ironic; unfathomable! Incongruous!
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There is only the people vs socialist/fascist DC...end of story. Wake-up and smell reality comrades.
Related: Solicitor General’s Third Backup Argument Is a Winner in Health Law Case
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/health_care_ruling
So what’s the bottom line of the silver lining?
My feeling is Kagan, Sotomayor and other leftists on the court were in Direct communication with obama / White House Operatives and lawyers during this past 3 maybe 4 weeks... they cooked up this Tax approach and kept after Roberts until they persuaded him... giving him the Commerce clause and presto ... Justices being influenced directly by parties to the case AFTER the Hearing - Mercy what has this nation come to... Take note this probably started after Kagan told obama of Roberts’ original decision...
I am generally much more positive than negative about GWB, but this may turn out to be his final major F-up. The original vote was a win, but Roberts got weak because he was worried about his court’s image. Roberts seems to be a fine judge, but he is proving to go wobbly. If Bush would have elevated Scalia to CJ and just nominated Roberts, we would have knocked this law out.
Someone got to him and turned him. Plain and simple.
Gthat is all I need to know.
And because Roberts is a coward who wanted to win a popularity contest he caved.
One of the most clear-cut examples of judicial political-activism we have ever seen; “We must uphold an unconstitutional law because we must not contradict the criminal conspiracy of the executive and legislative branches of government that gave it to us.”