Chief Justice Roberts, You Fox You

The American spectator ^ | 7-5-12 | R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

[afraidfortherepublic]

WASHINGTON -- I have a headache. I imagine you do too, if you have been trying to interpret the legalese employed by those legal sages who have pronounced on Thursday's Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. I would rather read the lyrics of a thousand rap composers than the anfractuous language of one legal sage.

Thanks, however, to Professor E. Donald Elliott of the Yale Law School I had a translator at my side, and I shall now hand down my judgment of the Court's decision on Obamacare, which all sensible Americans have abstained from reading in its entirety including B. H. Obama and the vast majority of denizens of Capitol Hill, including N. Pelosi. Some of these worthies even admitted as much. It fell to nine heroic souls garbed in black actually to read the law and to Chief Justice Roberts to write the decision for the exhausted majority.

As a result of his prestidigitation with prior precedents and with the famously vague English language, critics cannot dismiss Chief Justice Roberts as hyper-partisan. His fellow conservatives are highly agitated by his decision. His usual opponents, the Liberals, celebrate him. The Chief Justice dodged the bullet. I think you can call him crafty, as Chief Justice John Marshall was crafty all those years ago when he wrote the decision for Marbury v. Madison. Roberts' decision, the decision of the majority of the court, accomplished three things.

Firstly, it reiterated two earlier holdings of the Court that ended the expansion of the commerce clause. The expansion of the federal government's reach under the commerce clause is no longer a grave threat to limited government. This offends certain Liberals such as our friends at the New York Times. Well, you win some and lose some, indignados.

[Tublecane]

“Speculation is that Roberts decided as he did to avoid the perception that the Court has become partisan. In this he failed, just that Conservatives now see it as partisan, with Roberts having flipped to the Liberal/Dem side.”

Yes, but I think we all know that conservatives don’t count. Leftists dominate academia and the legal industry, and therefore control “mainstream” legal opinion. They also dominate the beltway, as if I have to tell you, where Roberts works. The chief justice was interested not in the general public’s perceptions but in political correctness.

[Gaffer]

Which is why our illustrious Nancy and her able Democrat Representatives had to actually vote on the legislation and then wait to find out what was actually in it.

I read once what group was actually responsible for writing the legislation, but the group actually had no included authors that one would think were elected officials. There is a powerful mismash of special feather-bedding interests contained in the law. It will take decades to decode.

[The_Reader_David]

Remember in this thread, we’re discussing the possibility that Roberts ruled as he did not to save the SCOTUS’s reputation, but as a sort of rope-a-dope move against the left. If that’s the case, my theory holds.

It also holds if Roberts is actually a strict constructivist and simply conscientiously decided that the objection to the mandate was unsustainable because the “penalty” has the form of an income tax (with minimum and maximum amounts) waived on persons engaging in certain behavior and post-Sixteenth Amendment Congress can levy such taxes (and waive them in exchange for certain behavior — think ‘tax deduction’, ‘tax credit’).

Sure the “story” will be that Roberts caved to conservative pressure. So what? The “story” now is that he caved to leftist pressure (at least around these parts).

[MikeNJ]

It is possible that Chief Justice Roberts voted to uphold Obamacare as a result of either blackmail or a credible physical threat to himself or his family.

Given the stakes involved, and the amorality of the stakeholders, neither of these possibilities are beyond credibility.

If so, he did what prisoners-of-war sometimes do when making statements after torture. They say things in a way that makes it clear that they are under duress and do not believe what they say.

Similarly, Roberts could have been sending a coded message through the irrationality of his decision, that, despite his vote, he did not believe Obamacare was constitutional, while at the same time sabotaging his own decision in subtle ways.

[altura]

Sorry, but around here it’s hard to distinquish dripping sarcasm from oozing stupidity.

[Del Rapier]

Trying to explain the actions of a man with no convictions as part of a grand ruse,is nice but it doesn’t change reality.It is an easy approach to take,given the world we live in,it is fairly painful in the long-term as it becomes harder and harder to justify that individual’s actions.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

Worthless, inaccurate analysis that completely disregards the government’s brand new power to tax inactivity — what you don’t buy, what you don’t do.

No discussion that this power to tax inactivity is NO WHERE granted in the Constitution.

Tyrell = epic fail, moron, no credibility.

[nerdgirl]

Well said, as usual :)

[iceskater]

OK. So, I’m not a lawyer. You may be right.

I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about with your reference to the ‘infamous and evil Footnote Four from US v Caroline Products’. Please enlighten me. Or will it send me over the edge again? The Obamacare decision has about done me in.

[BuckeyeTexan]

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

[Alberta's Child]

All good points, but there are a few things that muddy the comparison between auto and medical insurance.

1. At a bare minimum, auto insurance simply covers the driver's liability in the event of an accident. Drivers have the option of securing additional coverage for collision, theft, etc., depending on the value of the vehicle.

2. An auto insurance company has a reasonable degree of certainty when it comes to pricing a policy for those things that are comparable with a medical policy: loss or damage to the vehicle. An insurance company can accurately establish the risk for a policy for a $30,000 car, for example, by knowing that their maximum exposure in the event of a total loss is $30,000 (and is likely to be much less, as the value of the car declines over time). There is no such certainty in a medical insurance policy.

3. It's true that people use their medical insurance to "pay for every damn thing, from dollar one at the clinic to spinal surgery." There is no parallel to this in auto insurance, because auto insurance doesn't cover routine maintenance. However, imagine an auto insurance policy that not only covered major losses due to theft, accidents, etc. -- but also covered mechanical failures? Under this scenario, auto insurance would be very similar to health coverage ... and you could be damn sure that insurance companies would insist on covering routine maintenance such as oil changes.

The real issue here is that "health insurance" isn't really insurance at all. It's basically a pre-paid health care plan that has turned into a large racket in which the whole point of the game is to figure out how to get someone else to pay for the things you can't afford yourself.

[Alberta's Child]

Thanks! :-)