The Roberts Opinion

[Geee]

National Review:

In 2005 I was asked by the Bush administration to assist Judge John Roberts during the Senate confirmation process for his nomination as chief justice of the United States. Over several pressure-packed days, and throughout the confirmation process, I felt I got to know him fairly well. I found him to be one of the most brilliant, thoughtful, and humorous people I’d ever met. Those qualities don’t always go together. It was clear he was going to be a major right-of-center voice on the Supreme Court for decades to come. So it is with a great deal of personal interest that I have considered his opinion in Sebelius and the commentary that has followed.

The chief justice is a good man, whose record over the whole of his career will probably be a good one, perhaps even a great one. However, I do not agree with this opinion. I believe the dissent got it right. I am well aware of the fact that a conscientious judge must sometimes rule in a manner that he personally disagrees with. But the majority opinion appears to be a result looking for a rationale, which is the antithesis of what I ever thought would be the approach of John Roberts. One of his new admirers described his opinion as “incoherent but brilliant.” That’s the most depressing thing I have read in a long time.

There is rampant speculation as to why Justice Roberts rendered the opinion he did. To many on the left it is believed that he was looking out for the Supreme Court as an institution. Liberals made it clear well in advance that if the Court struck Obamacare down they would attack the Court as politicized and illegitimate. They now say that the chief justice “put the country first” by the “clever” means of rejecting the government’s central Commerce Clause argument and instead achieving the same result by relying upon the federal government’s power to tax, an argument that was seen as peripheral at best by all the lower courts that had considered the issue of constitutionality. The same is true with regard to the litigants.

Advertisement

Some on the right say that Roberts has actually hurt Obama’s chances for reelection; that he has undermined Obama’s constitutional rationale (the Commerce Clause), restricted his ability to pay for Obamacare (giving states the right to reject the Medicaid provisions), and hung a big tax albatross around his neck during an election year (holding that the mandate penalty is a tax).

There may be some truth to all or part of this speculation. The problem is that none of these considerations are an appropriate basis for deciding a lawsuit. Cases are still supposed to be decided upon the law and the facts before the court. This may seem a mundane point in a discussion involving institutional and national salvation, but it’s true nevertheless. An umpire does not concern himself with the outcome of the game as he is calling balls and strikes.

[Draggingtree]

July 03, 2012

Roberts the Coward

 

—Ace

 

If he wanted to demonstrate the Supreme Court was apolitical, he shouldn't have bowed to political pressure. Right?

Last Friday on NPR, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne said something very revealing about why Chief Justice John Roberts decided to affirm the constitutionality of ObamaCare. The remarks proved even more enlightening when we learned for a certainty from peerless Supreme Court reporter Jan Crawford that Roberts did indeed change his mind a month after voting it down with the conservative bloc.

“I think Justice Roberts in this case saw . . . the attacks that [the high court] was facing from lots of people — including me, I should say — were just going to escalate,” Dionne said. This was a problem for Roberts, the pundit surmised, because Dionne & Co. were raising doubts about “the legitimacy of the court, which has already been called into question by decisions from Read More http://ace.mu.nu/archives/330677.php#330677

[righteousmomma]

The Roberts opinion is nothing less than an intellectual, political and moral scandal.

 

 

Sadly we the people are all agreeing.

Rush, btw is reading excerpts from the Obamacare bill as I type. SCARY!!

[SrWoodchuck]

There is wild speculation all over the internet about the reasons for his abrupt change, regarding his decision. Among other things.....he had a fall at home [from a boat dock] that resulted in a brain seizure......he was photographed with two other men, while admiring a food dish [result=he's gay]....he and/or his family were threatened with harm [the same thing that shut Willy Jeff up about Obozo's qualifications, during the Shrillary/Obozo Dem contest-they killed Willy's best friend & then talked Chelsea].

 

We are stuck with the decision. It is up to us. November, or......the end of our Republic/Civil War.

[Pepper]

SrWoodChuck

 

Only brain damage can explain such a *(^%&$ up decision. There were four people now in the minority who make more sense than he did.

Thank you, Justice Roberts

/not

[Casino67]

http://moelane.com/2012/07/03/48-hours-later-jan-crawfords-explosive-unverified-supreme-court-allegations/

 

This is another opinion about the CBS story. For some reason I can't cut and paste any of it.

 

Moe sees some problems with the story and lack of identified sources.

[Pepper]

Thanks, @Casino67

 

Interesting read, here too

[Valin]

Thanks, @Casino67

 

Interesting read, here too

 

FYI

 

Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court

Jan Crawford Greenburg

 

 

 

 

Long story short I (And Rush) believe her

[righteousmomma]

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, on Friday, when I opened the program I told you I felt sick, and I spent the next two hours explaining why I felt sick. Today I'm scared. I'm a combination of angry and scared. Because if this CBS report from Jan Crawford is accurate, and I happen to believe that it is, she cites two sources, she doesn't name them. But I happen to believe that her report is true. Let me summarize it for you. That the chief justice did indeed cave to left-wing media pressure. And, by the way, this does lend credence to the notion that Obama was told. I'll explain how. Just a wild guess on that. She doesn't get into that in the story.

 

 

 

RUSH: Just to tell you about Jan Crawford Greenburg, remember when Clarence Thomas' great memoir came out? I think she did the profile for him. Now, wait a minute. That was 60 Minutes? I know she did something. Was it ABC? I don't even know. She did a report, and it was very fair on Clarence Thomas' book and his life. She's wired in there, not just on him.

 

RUSH: It was Jan Crawford Greenburg. She's separated from Greenburg now. That's why it's just Jan Crawford. But I remember she used to cover the Supreme Court for PBS. She's a lawyer herself. I'm telling you all this as a means of helping you to decide whether you want to accept her report Sunday on CBS as accurate or not. This is what I remember. She did an eight-part interview with Justice Thomas when his book came out, and she traveled all over the place. I remember I was a guest at a Nebraska football game in Lincoln. Dan Cook, Mr. Nebraska, Kathryn and I were there, and unbeknownst to me, Justice Thomas was there. He's a huge Nebraska fan. I ran into him. We were doing a tour of the field before the game, and Jan Greenburg was there doing a profile of him for his book, eight-part interview.

It was fabulous. It was profoundly fair and she established that he is his own man and all this talk about how he's just a Scalia clone was blown out of the water. It was an extremely well-done profile. She has deep connections with a lot of people inside the court. So when she says that she has a couple of sources, I think people are tending to believe her report simply because she brings the experience and credibility to it. Jan Crawford.

[pollyannaish]

I am withholding judgement on this for a bit. There has to be more than we know in this yet. I'm uncomfortable piling on Roberts until we see a little more of this election.

 

Something IS going on. But what...I can't put my finger on yet.

[Draggingtree]

Forbath Lost Me At ‘Laws To Redress Want And Inequity’

 

Posted on | July 6, 2012 | 1 Comment and 0 Reactions

by Smitty

 

American Power links the Grey Lady soiling herself with Commie tripe. Lots of good analysis from Mr. Douglas, but I went non-linear in the second paragraph:

The Supreme Court is again putting up constitutional barriers against laws to redress want and inequity.

Never mind about the Supreme Court actively putting up barriers. The SCOTUS is chartered to interpret the existing barriers, and when it goes putting up resistance to government expansion, the SCOTUS frequently resembles a punctured prophylactic in its retention capability.

But what’s this folderol about “laws to redress want and inequity”? Really? You can legislate away envy? Inequity? We’re assuming (a) a rational comparison function is attainable, and ( somebody reliable can broker it. But our government doesn’t tax, budget, or spend in a remotely forthright way. Thus, Forbath cannot be Read More http://theothermccain.com/2012/07/06/forbath-lost-me-at-laws-to-redress-want-and-inequity/

[Draggingtree]

DNC Scientists Disprove Existence of Roberts' Taxon

 

WASHINGTON DC - Jubilant scientists at the DNC's High Speed Word Collider (HSWC) announced today they have conclusively disproven the existence of Roberts' Taxon, the theoretical radioactive Facton particle that some had worried would lead to the implosion of the entire Universal Health Care System.

"I think it's time to pop the champagne corks," said HSWC Director David Plouffe. "Then blaze some choom."

The landmark experiment in Quantum Rhetoric began early this week after legal particle cosmologist John Roberts published a paper in the Quarterly Journal of Tortured Logic that solved the long-debated Pelosi's Paradox in Universal Health Care Theory.

"Pelosi's Paradox states that in order to find out what is in a health care bill, it would have to be passed," explained physicist Steven Hawking. "But in order to be a law it would have to be constitutional, which means someone would have to know what was in it, which would mean it couldn't have been a bill in the first place. Think of Schroedinger's Cat, except with a lobotomy."

To solve the paradox, Roberts proposed the existence of the Taxon - an ephemeral, mysterious facton particle that in theory would allow the Universal Health System to be constitutional, without directly observing what was in it. DNC scientists at first cheered Roberts' findings, but it soon came apparent that it opened an even deadlier dilemma.

"If Roberts' Taxon were really to exist, and was woven throughout the Health-Government-Time continuum, the merest realization of it would create a giant black hole in Gallup Space and cause free healthcare reality to collapse upon itself," said Plouffe.

In order to disprove the Taxon, scientists at the HSWC devised a test experiment in their enormous CarneyLab bullshit accelerator. This test involved speeding a small mass of Facton - theoretically containing Roberts' Taxon - and smashing it at near-light speed against a flaming super-dense ionized clod of purified bullshit.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451eb3469e20176162eefd2970c-500wi

Schematic of experiment (graphic courtesy HSWC)

"It was a complete success," said Plouffe. "The collision produced onlyRead More

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2012/07/dnc-scientists-disprove-existence-of-roberts-taxon.html

[pinz]

I saw this at JustOneMinute [http://justoneminute...76163ecfbc970c] this morning.  It is a point of view that jibes with what I'm seeing.....

 

I have a couple of random thoughts about ACA-as-tax, and I wonder what other people think...

 

-- It's not that the ACA is a tax, but, in fact, it is a whole collection of taxes, as the Americans for Tax Reform list makes clear.

 

-- Each of those taxes has different effects on different people. Some will only be paid by high-income people. Some (many!) will only be paid by poor people.

 

-- I've come to believe over the last 10 days or so that Roberts is correct. The Court, by a 7-2 majority, removed the Fed's ability to drive the states into bankruptcy by forcing them to either expand their Medicaid spending or take away their federal Medicaid funding. Once that is gone, I think that it is true that all you've got left is a bunch of new taxes.

 

-- The taxes on people without HHS-approved insurance policies, and the taxes on their employers -- the so-called mandate -- are small change. As in every sleight-of-hand, the key is to watch the other hand. The key tax-hike here is the tax-law change which takes medical spending and imposes all sorts of new taxes upon it.

 

In the past, every new insurance-law tweak has been an incremental change. Even relatively big things like portability have resulted in insurance companies eliminating the policy features that the government doesn't want and selling policies that contain the features that the government does want. But I think that it is completely possible that HHS will lard up the "approved" policy structure with so much expensive stuff that it will be MORE expensive for companies and employees to buy the Approved Policy that to pay the premiums on very basic policies, AND pay the mandate/penalty/tax for not having (approved) insurance, AND pay BOTH the employer and employee social security tax and medicare tax on those premiums, AND pay state and federal income taxes on premiums. If that is true, the real tax money is not the piddling little "mandate" penalty. It's the social security, medicare, and income taxes on the insurance premiums. They have already done this for over-the-counter drugs by eliminating the ability to use MSA/HSA tax-sheltered money for them.

 

-- Important point to be demagogued. Ok, flogged mercilessly. Rich people don't pay social security taxes on marginal income. So Obamacare imposes a tax on the insurance premiums and healthcare spending of poor and middle class people while exempting rich people from the tax.

I think it should be known always and forever as the "BOTaxes."

[pinz]

That last sentence is my sentiment.  I'm still figuring out the formatting process.