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I think we’re writing essentially the same thing. The Obama administration says the mandate is a penalty (even though they defended it before the SCOTUS as a tax). Congress called it a penalty. Roberts ruled it’s a tax. Like you wrote, a duck is still a duck even if someone says it’s a snake. (I wonder if a duck is still a duck if everyone knows it’s a snake, but that’s another issue entirely).

Roberts seemed to make the argument that legislative wording aside, constitutional interpretation cuts to the heart of what a bill does, not just what it’s called. As I recall, he claimed the mandate couldn’t be a penalty because it didn’t have criminal penalties, the IRS couldn’t enforce it the same way as other penalties, etc.

I’m not really defending Roberts so much as saying I think I under what he was getting at. I personally find the four conservative justices better, because they took the bill at face value. Even if the mandate really is a form of income tax, Congress passed it as a penalty. Should the SCOTUS uphold the right of Congress to deceive people in the bills it passes? The whole Obamacare fiasco is one deception layered on another. The whole thing is sickening.

Even if the US Constitution is null and void except for the favored few: abortionists and sodomizers, let’s not forget ANY of these expansions can be eliminated. Just because the SCOTUS says regulating interstate commerce means telling people they can’t grow their own wheat on their own farm for their own use, Congress doesn’t have to do so. The behemoth can be rolled back if we win elections. All Roberts did was prove the SCOTUS doesn’t have our backs. We must win elections.