Posted on 06/25/2015 8:39:25 AM PDT by 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," ...
(Excerpt) Read more at huffingtonpost.com ...
It truly is SCOTUScare since SCOTUS should have decided Obamacare unconstitutional the first time imo.
All three branches of federal government are ignoring the federal government’s constitutionnally limited powers.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear.
Obama’s first directive after this ruling: “Find out how we can use this precedent to negate the word “twice” in the 22nd Amendment and GET ME ANOTHER TERM!”
Meanwhile the average American is barely aware of the importance of this decision. For the average American there are drugs to buy, EBT cards to trade for cash, disability payments to apply for, looting to be done.
Then shame on Roberts for choosing his own personal interests over those of the American people and their God given liberties.
“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.”
While this “ruling” is certainly a setback, it really doesn’t change the trajectory of SCOTUSCare, or the financial end of our country for that matter. There really isn’t any “ruling” that will stop what’s going to happen. I’d just like to have the collapse come sooner rather than later. SCOTUSCare is just a small part of the list of elements that are going to cause our financial collapse. My only hope is that the Ruskies or the Chinks don’t see it as a means to start a war with us. That’s my real fear.
King v. Burwell (2015) - The written law does not matter if the president wishes to interpret it differently from how it is written. The “Humpty Dumpty” decision.
Through the Looking Glass (1872):
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
It is no longer the Supreme Court. It is the EXTREME Court!
Are you referring to the rumor that there’s something fishy about Roberts’ and his wife’s adoption of their two supposedly Irish kids?
I had hopes that the Supreme Court would deliver a rational decision.
On the other hand, I’m glad that patriots are now seeing that the Supreme Court is as corrupt as the other branches. It took patriots long enough to wise up to RINO-controlled Congress.
scalia IS 100% CORRECT.
libtards dont know the CONSTITUTION or the LAW...
too much legislation from the bench whcih is UNCONSTITUTIONAL
ROBERTS AND THE REST SHOULD BE IMPEACHED.....
PATHETIC EGOTISTICAL WHO KNOW FULL WELL THEY ARE VIOLATING THE LAW...
WE NOW HAVE NO LAW IN THIS COUNTRY
AND THE TRADE LEGISLATION WILL MAKE OBAMA A DICTATOR....
GOODBYE FREEDOM, UNLESS THE PEOPLE TAKE ACTION
THIS COUNTRY IS A 100% CORRUPT BANANA REPUBLIC AND THE INSTITUTIONS ARE CORRUPT AND IT IS HEADED TO CONTINUE TO BECOME A SOCIALIST SHITHOLE.... WHAT A SHAME PEOPLE FOUGHT, SACRIFICED AND DIED FOR THIS CRAP...
WELCOME TO THE USSA COMRADE, WHERE THE SLACKERS, DEGENERATES,PARASITES AND INSANE LIBTARDS REIGN SUPREME...AND THE CRONY KICKBACK BOUGHT AND PAID FOR CROOK CALLED CONGRESS LET IT ALL SLIDE WHILE LINING THEIR POCKETS STEALING FROM THE TAXPAYERS....
Of the declared presidential candidates, Cruz is my top choice, with Walker in second place, and no one anywhere near those two.
What does this have to do with Scalia?
I would love to see Scalia run for president, or perhaps chosen by Cruz for VP since he’ll be 80 years old (so long as Scalia would stay on the court until President Scalia/Cruz could nominate his replacement). There is precedent, or close to it, with President Taft later serving on the Supreme Court. Also, he would be the greatest president in our history, a man who would say what needs to be said and who knows the minutia of government well enough to know how to restore the Constitution. Even better, I believe he could articulate his positions well enough to convert many low-information voters. They would listen to him because he expresses himself so amusingly, and they would be convinced because his reasoning is so powerful.
What made Kennedy turn his vote?
Kennedy was furious when Roberts turned on a dime on the first ObamaScotusCare vote, but now he sides with him ?
The dissent by Scalia is blistering.
The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act says “Exchange established by the
State” it means “Exchange established by the State or the
Federal Government.” That is of course quite absurd, and
the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so.
=snip=
Exchange get no money under §36B.
Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is
not established by a State is “established by the State.” It
is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits
to state Exchanges than to use the words “established by
the State.” And it is hard to come up with a reason to
include the words “by the State” other than the purpose of
limiting credits to state Exchanges. “[T]he plain, obvious,
and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred
to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the
exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an
acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v.
Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925) (internal
quotation marks omitted). 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.
=snip=
Ordinary connotation does not
always prevail, but the more unnatural the proposed
interpretation of a law, the more compelling the contex-
tual evidence must be to show that it is correct. Today’s
interpretation is not merely unnatural; it is unheard of.
=snip=
It is bad enough for a court to cross out “by the State”
once. But seven times?
=snip=
Does a State that refuses to set
up an Exchange still receive this funding, on the premise
that Exchanges established by the Federal Government
are really established by States? It is presumably in order
to avoid these questions that the Court concludes that
federal Exchanges count as state Exchanges only “for
purposes of the tax credits.” Ante, at 13. (Contrivance,
thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!)
It is probably piling on to add that the Congress that
=snip=
The Court’s next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery in-
volves other parts of the Act that purportedly presuppose
the availability of tax credits on both federal and state
Exchanges. Ante, at 13–14. It is curious that the Court is
=snip=
The Court has not come close to presenting the compel-
ling contextual case necessary to justify departing from
the ordinary meaning of the terms of the law. Quite the
contrary, context only underscores the outlandishness of
the Court’s interpretation. Reading the Act as a whole
leaves no doubt about the matter: “Exchange established
by the State” means what it looks like it means.
=snip=
otherwise ambiguous provision. Could anyone maintain
with a straight face that §36B is unclear? To mention just
the highlights, the Court’s interpretation clashes with a
statutory definition, renders words inoperative in at least
seven separate provisions of the Act, overlooks the con-
trast between provisions that say “Exchange” and those
that say “Exchange established by the State,” gives the
same phrase one meaning for purposes of tax credits but
an entirely different meaning for other purposes, and (let
us not forget) contradicts the ordinary meaning of the
words Congress used. On the other side of the ledger, the
Court has come up with nothing more than a general
provision that turns out to be controlled by a specific one,
a handful of clauses that are consistent with either under-
standing of establishment by the State, and a resemblance
between the tax-credit provision and the rest of the Tax
Code. If that is all it takes to make something ambiguous,
everything is ambiguous.
=snip=
SCOTUScare.
Perhaps the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
will attain the enduring status of the Social Security Act
or the Taft-Hartley Act; perhaps not. But this Court’s two
decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through
the years. The somersaults of statutory interpretation
they have performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medi-
caid] payments to the State” means only incremental
Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State”
means not established by the State) will be cited by liti-
gants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence.
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.
I dissent.
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