“Wow, well you’d better call them up and tell them that, since they apparently forgot and ruled on the case anyway”
Your sarcasm reveals a profound ignorance. The very fact that the case got to them means someone had standing on other grounds. Once it’s there they rule, like I said, based on a presumption of constitutionality. Like in the NFL, where the call on the field stands unless incontrovertible evidence shows otherwise. Any old excuse will do. So long as it could be viewed as a tax—and Roberts’ language was that weak—it passes muster.
Which isn’t to say it was a legal tax. That issue wax deferred. All he said was that it could be seen as a tax, and left it at that. It remains for future complaintants to get them to rule on whether the mandate penalty/tax is proper.
“Just nobody bothered to cite the 10th amendment when making them”
They don’t have to. Like I said, it was superfluous in the first place. And the commerce clause arguments of the dissenting opinions were pure 10th amendment even if they didn’t say so. You have to understand that in addition to the Constitution and precedent, there is the way lawyers talk and judges hear. They just don’t talk about the 10th amendment much anymore. Which is not to say its logic doesn’t still inform arguments.
“So you win in Make Believe Supreme Court”
Look, I realize when SCOTUS rules people abide. It gets the say, and people treat it like the law. But does that mean I can’t talk about them being wrong, even? Anything but silent acceptance and moving on is utopian fantasy cloudcuckooland talk?
“conservativism applied to make-believe worlds”
Yeah, you’re all about the hardnosed reality. Just the facts. Might makes right, so we better get back the might. Pointless comparing life to something outside the here and now, like how the Constitution is actually written, or my thoughts which don’t fit conventional opinion enough to win us the next election, or the past, or any kind of philosophy. Bunch of nambypamby pansyass thinking, is all that is. Give me facts, not thoughts.
You’re like a human adding machine. But you know what they say? Junk in, junk out.
But does that mean I can’t talk about them being wrong, even?
Of course we can. And you're right that we should.
My only point is this: to what end? As far as I can tell, these legal assaults on the Obamacare tax are not in the offing because that is, for now, a legal dead end.
When it comes to nullification, who is going to rule on that? Unless there's another Supreme Court that I haven't read about, then nullification is not going to fly. If the SC law passes, is Nikki Haley going to stand in the doorway of insurance agencies and prevent people from buying insurance or something? How is this going to work?
In understand the value of protest actions -- I really do, but what are we going to do in substance? What about my suggestion that we* formulate a market-based alternative and use that to get an Obamacare exemption? If we did that, there would be no conflict with the law. We would use Obamacare's own provisions to render it irrelevant.
* By "we" I mean those among us with the chops to formulate health care policy.