[nerdgirl]

For anybody still wondering "WHY DID THIS MAN DO THIS!!!" This article from 2007 gives you all of the explanation you'll ever need. Like it or not, this is who Justice Roberts is, and always was. For better and for worse...

[Pollster1]

Roberts will never make a worse decision than the one we saw last week. To bankrupt this country, trample individual freedom, and expand federal government power without apparent limit with a single vote - that’s an accomplishment that will never be topped.

[nerdgirl]

Sorry this got posted twice, back button problem.

[Paladin2]

"In particular, Roberts declared, he would make it his priority, as Marshall did, to discourage his colleagues from issuing separate opinions. “I think that every justice should be worried about the Court acting as a Court and functioning as a Court, and they should all be worried, when they’re writing separately, about the effect on the Court as an institution.” "

So, Roberts went off and wrote his own RobertsCareTax opinion while the two factions also wrote their own dissenting opinions?

Good job John.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Ah - the old “Reaching across the aisle” in other words. How very special.

[Timber Rattler]

Yep, lots of warning signs in this article.

If that CBS News report from earlier today is accurate though, he pretty much through his much cherished collegiality with Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito out onto the rubbish heap.

[afraidfortherepublic]

[rurgan]

Roberts did this because it is a socialist/statist/marxist. Same Reason Obama, Pelosi, Reid did it.

[Paladin2]

Interesting article, thanx for posting.

[Paladin2]

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Pure idiocy!

He is supposed to defend constitutional principles and nothing else.

[tflabo]

misChief inJustice John Robs US.

[uncbob]

So if the reports are true why did he change his mind

[MrBambaLaMamba]

Since his appointment every opinion delivered by Roberts has been in support of the Federal Government and the granting of additional power to the feds.
He is, was and will contiue to be a government lawyer, why is everyone surprized?

[Liberty Wins]

Maybe we would get more common sense out of the court if they had to live outside the beltway, each six months in a different state.

Wake up, guys! You’re living in Cloud Land.

[reasonisfaith]

If this is true, then Roberts doesn’t understand the proper function of procedural acts relative to those of substance.

This is a moral failure as well as an intellectual one.

[Bratch]

by contrast, closely divided, 5–4 decisions make it harder for the public to respect the Court as an impartial institution that transcends partisan politics.

Unless they're decided in favor of the Progressives.

[Kryn-Man]

Roberts is traitor to freedom and the constitution. Bush really F##ked up!
There is no way the government should come between me and my relationship with my Doctor.

[sourcery]

Having now studied the Roberts opinion, I will say this:

He correctly applied existing precedent where it existed. He fudged on the one issue where there was no precedent—and failed to discuss that at all, actually. On that, see below.

Existing precedent is wrong. Very wrong, in several different ways. But most fundamentally and importantly, it's wrong with respect to the original intent of the requirement that indirect taxes must be "uniform."

That requirement was originally intended to make the requirement of the principle of the rule of law that the laws must apply to everyone equally apply very explicitly to indirect taxes. And the dodge now used to get around that—writing different rules into the civil and criminal laws and non-uniform rates or duties into tax laws, so that "the same" law applies different rules to people in different situations—is invalid on its face. Doing that makes the uniformity and "apply equally to all" principles effectively powerless and meaningless.

Roberts didn't say what type of tax Congress had unintentionally passed. What he did say is that it wasn't a direct tax that had to be apportioned among the States. That only leaves two possibilities: excise tax or income tax, since the tax clearly is not an impost or duty.

So pleadings that might work would be the following:

1. It can't Constitutionally be an excise tax, because those can only be imposed on events that occur, not on ones that don't, based on the late 18th century definition of excise. I have found no case law that contradicts that definition, and Roberts cited none.
2. An income tax, by definition, has to be imposed on income. Not having bought something is not reasonably classifiable as income.
3. If it's not a new income tax, but a modification to the existing one, then what combination of tax credits and deductions would produce the same tax owed in all cases? How complex do the changes to the income tax code (that produce the same tax owed in all cases) have to be before the level of ridiculousness embodied in the assumption that this is what Congress intended becomes so high that it "shocks the conscience" and so requires that the Roberts' decision must be reversed? (assuming the rules don't turn out to be simple--I haven't looked at that yet)

[spunkets]

So Robert's mentor is Barney. Figures...

[Popman]

Wow....what a great and insightful article....

Thanks for posting it....

-——Marshall’s example had taught him, Roberts said, that personal trust in the chief justice’s lack of an ideological agenda was very important, and Marshall’s ability to win this kind of trust inspired him. “If I’m sitting there telling people, ‘We should decide the case on this basis,’ and if [other justices] think, ‘That’s just Roberts trying to push some agenda again,’ they’re not likely to listen very often,” he observed. -——

At least now I understand why he threw American under the Obama bus....his personal legacy