PLEASE read the ENTIRE commentary!
I don’t buy it. Roberts has redefined the ability of the govt to use taxation as a means of social engineering while doing nothing to limit the commerce clause. His ruling is an unmitigated disaster.
All of this spin is ridiculous. He screwed us. There's no two ways about it.
Read it. Still do not see the upside. Americans, for the most part, don’t think in legal terms. The do, however, understand taxes and the connection with their ability to pay there bills and feed their children. This is a power grab by the government to garner the unlimited right to tax you for anything they please and in this case they are making a new army of IRS agents.
As far as the commerce clause goes, I’ve read several other legal opinions which inform me that this ruling will in no way affect the courts power to use it to justify future rulings.
This was the wrong decision period for whatever good intentions Roberts might have had. He could have still cut down the Commerce Clause and ObamaCare. Now the Republicans have to clean up this mess and does anyone REALLY think they’re capable?
And Roberts gave Congress the power to regulate everything we do or say or think by axing it including the power to regulate what we buy by taxing it or by taxing the act of nonbuying of something the Congress wants you to have, like maybe surveillance cameras in every room of your house with two way communication. Combine that with the Financial Reform power of the government to suck money -in any amount at any time for whatever reason the government decides to use- out of your bank account.
Nuts.
The insane Tom Lantos said it best:
“At least Admiral Boorda had the decency to commit suicide,”
False! not one court in the country is going to rely on this dicta. It was not a finding and has absolutely no weight.
By Thomas Sowell:
Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness.
President Bush 41 epitomized these betrayals when he broke his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge. He paid the price when he quickly went from high approval ratings as president to someone defeated for reelection by a little known governor from Arkansas.
Chief Justice John Roberts need fear no such fate because he has lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court. But conscience can be a more implacable and inescapable punisher — and should be.
The Chief Justice probably made as good a case as could be made for upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare by defining one of its key features as a “tax.”
The legislation didn’t call it a tax and Chief Justice Roberts admitted that this might not be the most “natural” reading of the law. But he fell back on the long-standing principle of judicial interpretation that the courts should not declare a law unconstitutional if it can be reasonably read in a way that would make it constitutional, out of “deference” to the legislative branch of government.
But this question, like so many questions in life, is a matter of degree. How far do you bend over backwards to avoid the obvious, that ObamaCare was an unprecedented extension of federal power over the lives of 300 million Americans today and of generations yet unborn?
These are the people that Chief Justice Roberts betrayed when he declared constitutional something that is nowhere authorized in the Constitution of the United States.
John Roberts is no doubt a brainy man, and that seems to carry a lot of weight among the intelligentsia — despite glaring lessons from history, showing very brainy men creating everything from absurdities to catastrophes. Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.
One of the Chief Justice’s admirers said that when others are playing checkers, he is playing chess. How much consolation that will be as a footnote to the story of the decline of individual freedom in America, and the wrecking of the best medical care in the world, is another story.
There are many speculations as to why Chief Justice Roberts did what he did, some attributing noble and far-sighted reasons, and others attributing petty and short-sighted reasons, including personal vanity. But all of that is ultimately irrelevant.
What he did was betray his oath to be faithful to the Constitution of the United States.
Who he betrayed were the hundreds of millions of Americans — past, present and future — whole generations in the past who have fought and died for a freedom that he has put in jeopardy, in a moment of intellectual inspiration and moral forgetfulness, 300 million Americans today whose lives are to be regimented by Washington bureaucrats, and generations yet unborn who may never know the individual freedoms that their ancestors took for granted.
Some claim that Chief Justice Roberts did what he did to save the Supreme Court as an institution from the wrath — and retaliation — of those in Congress who have been railing against Justices who invalidate the laws they have passed. Many in the media and in academia have joined the shrill chorus of those who claim that the Supreme Court does not show proper “deference” to the legislative branch of government.
But what does the Bill of Rights seek to protect the ordinary citizen from? The government! To defer to those who expand government power beyond its constitutional limits is to betray those whose freedom depends on the Bill of Rights.
Similar reasoning was used back in the 1970s to justify the Federal Reserve’s inflationary policies. Otherwise, it was said, Congress would destroy the Fed’s independence, as it can also change the courts’ jurisdiction. But is it better for an institution to undermine its own independence, and freedom along with it, while forfeiting the trust of the people in the process?
Is-this-guy-on-DRUGS!!!!!!!??????????????????
Oh good, Roberts restricted power on the Commerce Clause....he opened the FLOOD GATES on the tax clause!
Wait till the environmentalists figure out that they can REQUIRE us to buy electric cars, solar panels, etc.
It’s exactly this type of conservative intelligensia thinking that got us Obamacare! Maybe if the intelligensia spent LESS time fluffing their egos and trying to act like the smartest people in the room and MORE time fighting for the freedoms this nation was founded upon we wouldn’t be in this position.
The Supreme Court just declared us all serfs - how is that a win????????????
He punted when he had the ball with first and 10 and a completely open field in front of him. That kind of play is usually good enough to get one kicked off the team.
This type of thinking is exactly why we have Obamacare....
It was "too smart by half". Meaning a halfwit trying to sound intelligent.
This guy actually thinks that the Pubbie sare going to get 60 seats this election? He is smoking some powerful stuff.
What Roberts was supposed to do is determine whether the law was constitutional. If he did anything else, then he violated his oath of office, to the country’s great detriment.
I fear that he was somehow convinced that the credibility of the Supreme Court would be undermined if he did his job. The left would have said “how can it be that nothing Obama is doing is constitutional?” or some variation of that. If Roberts had some idea of “compromise” on his mind, or of “saving his political capital for bigger fights,” then he has totally destroyed his credibility. He has shown that he can be rolled by a few nasty editorials from the New York Times. The other side will just pass twenty horrifically unconstitutional laws, and then plead with Roberts (through the media) to be “non-partisan” and allow at least a few of them.
To me, Roberts seems a very, very weak and craven man.
References to Pontius Pilate seem very appropriate.
I take Mark Levin understanding of this Roberts POS over this moron tooth fairy understanding any day. There is no good in this decision there is no limitation on the commerce clause and new limitless taxing powers implied. This article isn’t worth wiping Roberts ass with.
If you really want to understand this matter dial into Mark or hit his web. You can down load the last few days of his program.
This guy writes this stuff one week after Obama kicked Arizona in the butt. Does he think the feds can't play hard ball with the States in countless other ways?
It is not John Roberts' job to place items on the political table. It is John Roberts' job to correctly interpret the United States Constitution.
It's inarguable that he failed to do this. Calling any part of this monstrosity Constitutional is an open-handed slap to the face of any of the Framers.
Vivat Imperialis Washington