Here Are The Best (Worst) Lines From Antonin Scalia's Raging SCOTUScare Dissent

Huffington Post ^ | June 25, 2015 | Ryan Grim and Dana Liebelson

[Zakeet]

Backers of the Affordable Care Act were treated to twin delights on Thursday: First, the law was upheld, so nobody will be kicked off their insurance by the Supreme Court. And second, the dissent was written by Justice Antonin Scalia who, when angry (which is always), has a penchant for literary drama.

"Words no longer have meaning," Scalia wrote in the dissent he read from the bench.

They might not, but that didn't stop Scalia from piling them on top of each other in an angry heap. Here are some of the choicest of his meaningless words.

[Snip]

"Today's interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of" ...

"We should start calling this law SCOTUScare."

"This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious -- so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it" ...

"The Court's next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery..."

"Pure applesauce ... Imagine that a university sends around a bulletin reminding every professor to take the 'interests of graduate students' into account when setting office hours, but that some professors teach only undergraduates. Would anybody reason that the bulletin implicitly presupposes that every professor has 'graduate students,' so that 'graduate students' must really mean 'graduate or undergraduate students'? Surely not.'"

"Our only evidence of what Congress meant comes from the terms of the law, and those terms show beyond all question that tax credits are available only on state Exchanges," ...

[Zakeet]

He nailed it!

Three more good quotes not included in the article:

1. “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”

2. “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.”

3. “And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”

[TexasCajun]

If words have no meanings before the Supreme Court, there is no longer rule of law.

[GraceG]

[GraceG]

[ If words have no meanings before the Supreme Court, there is no longer rule of law. ]

A VERY LARGE and VERY IMPORTANT Part of the Progressive’s Playbook is Language manipulation...

They who rule the language rule the men who are bound to that language...

[Fiddlstix]

Bump
To Read Later

[skeeter]

Purely ideological rulings totally unmoored from the founders writings are to be expected from the leftist goons on the court (that Hatch, et al allowed to worm their way on).

But what to make of CJ Roberts? That traitor to the Constitution pisses me off more than I can describe.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

I just finished reading his dissent. He’s a wise man among fools. But it’s clear we have lost the rule of law. Our federal government is 100% dysfunctional when two branches are over-reaching while the most powerful is asleep.

Pray for America.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

He is brilliant. Everyone must widely use the term SCOTUScare. It is perfect and will keep the point in everyone’s mind. That is all we get out of this so we had better use it.

[NorthMountain]

When a right to kill babies can be found to "emanate" from the "penumbra" of a "general right to privacy" unspecified anywhere in the Constitution ... there is no longer rule of law.

We have been living in an anarchic and corrupt kakistocracy since 1973.

[txrefugee]

The blackmailing of Roberts continues to pay big for thr Chicago Mafia. It is obvious W did not vet him properly before appointing him.

[VRW Conspirator]

bump

[allendale]

There is little doubt that Obama has some really nasty information about Roberts and has made it clear to him that it will be released if necessary.

[loveliberty2]

"I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes." - Abraham Lincoln

[knittnmom]

The only other place I’ve heard the term “jiggery-pokery” is in a Doctor Who episode - is Scalia a Whovian? :-)

[piasa]

I wonder if Roberts is a pedophile...

[tanknetter]

There are some silver linings to this ruling.

For example, if words no longer have meaning in Constitutional law, the Democrats who cheer this ruling no longer have any reason for griping about Citizens United, corporations being considered people, etc. While the ruling says our logic is wrong, it completely kicks the chair out from underneath a lot of their supposed “logic”

[garjog]

“The blackmailing of Roberts “

Yeah, he was blackmailed. He didn’t want his life ruined like Petraeus.

But we still lost 6 to 3.

Is it really over isn’t?

Have we lost the Republic?

[gaijin]

I guess some of the gay pictures of John Roberts must be super raunchy and there is also that little fact that he stole his adopted kids....

[grania]

Is Scalia indirectly saying that US citizens are going to have to take more extreme measures to save the US?

[uncitizen]

I’ll look for another place to read about this. Huffpo is mocking Scalia already in the title.