Roberts' Trojan Horse

self | 10/19/2013 | LS

[LS]

Few people are as unpopular on the right at Chief Justice John Roberts. He is viewed as having legitimized Obamacare. But did he?

My understanding of the "leiu" (the law, according to Inspector Clouseau) is that for a suit to have merit there must first be a harm. Keep that in mind.

Matt Sissel currently has a suit against Health and Human Services on appeal claiming that Obamacare, since it was ruled a "tax," in fact violates the Constitution's origination clause that all tax bills must originate in the House. According to Andrew Kostler at the Heritage Foundation, the concept has merit.

The difficulty, he argues, is that often courts don't want to get into the legislative one-upsmanship. However, Sissel's case will come up for review soon.

According to Kostler, the Origination Clause was breached. It was first introduced on in the House as a resolution called the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009." The House passed that measure, but the Senate used it as a vehicle for a health-care overhaul. The House bill in the Senate was "gutted almost entirely" and retitled the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," passed in 2009.

If the appeals court rules in Sissel's favor, he could obtain an injunction.

Personally, I think a real case will await the first imposition of a real tax penalty or fine in January which would generate a new, possibly stronger case. If that occurs, Roberts could very well have been admonishing conservatives to get on the stick when he said that it wasn't the Court's job to correct bad legislation and may have been winking and nodding a message: "you have the means right now to stop this once I deemed it a tax and no one objected."

It will be interesting to see where this path leads.

[freebilly]

It's a Pox.

Fortunately there's Obamacare for that....< / sarc >

[mad_as_he$$]

Larry, I respect you and your work. However, you are just wrong on this. The Federal government is broken beyond belief. You would be correct if there was still a basic functional ability left. Also, Roberts isn’t that crafty.