ObamaCare Ruling: Pure Fraud and No Due Process
The ObamaCare mandate was enacted as a penalty flowing from Congress’s Commerce Clause power. It has been upheld as a tax flowing from Congress’s power to tax-and-spend under the General Welfare Clause. As the dissent sharply demonstrates, the contention that the mandate could have been enacted as a tax is frivolous. Meanwhile our country, trillions of dollars in debt and rapidly sinking further, desperately needs a debate about the limits of Congress’s power to tax and spend for the general welfare.
Madison — correctly in my view — thought the General Welfare Clause (which is in the preamble to article I, section 8 — it is not a separate, enumerated power) was simply an affirmation that Congress had the power to tax and spend to achieve the specific grants of power exactingly set forth in that section. Hamilton, by contrast, argued that the General Welfare Clause was an independent (i.e., not restricted to the enumerated powers), open-ended grant of authority to the national government to tax and spend on anything that would support someone’s idea of the overall betterment of society. Madison rightly contended that Hamilton’s interpretation would defeat the purpose of enumerating Congress’s powers — namely, to limit it to only these functions and no others. It would also usurp the rights and authority of the states and the people, in whom were retained all rights and authority not expressly assigned to the national government by the Constitution.
During the New Deal, under FDR’s court-packing threats, the Supreme Court adopted Hamilton’s view — enabling Congress to enact the New Deal, the Great Society, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and innumerable other programs for which there is no enumerated power in the Constitution. These programs are unsustainable and leading us over the economic cliff, besides intruding on the domain of state power. Had ObamaCare been honestly presented as a tax, or had the Court acted properly by striking it down as an illegitimate use of the commerce power and telling Congress that if it wanted to pass the bill as a tax it would have to pass the bill as a tax, our dire financial straits might have forced this much needed debate about the limits of congressional welfare power.
We have now lost that opportunity through fraud: fraud in the legislative action, and fraud in the judicial review. Due process would not allow this to be done to a criminal, but the Supreme Court has decided that Americans will have to live with it.
Now that it has been ruled to be a tax, isn’t the question of whether it was properly enacted as a taxation/revenue measure still a live issue. A conservative jurist wouldn’t attempt to answer a question not put to the Court. The Bush-appointee conspiracy against the poor, women, and minorities is off the election table. Now somebody needs to bring a suit questioning whether the revenue measure properly originated in The House. I think I know the answer. I think CJ Roberts does too.
“Now somebody needs to bring a suit questioning whether the revenue measure properly originated in The House.”
Exactly — but who should we encourage to bring this suit? Something has to be done to address this travesty.
Any citizen who doesn’t have HI and who’ll be subject to the IRS administered tax can bring it. Probably isn’t ripe until ’14 on those grounds, though. Maybe somebody with law education beyond my high school level can come up with some idea for a Republican AG with a little courage to bring something.
… a tax law passed via illegal process by congress does not need meet that standard. It can be challenged immediately. It is not an illegal tax… it is an illegal law on it’s face.
Article I, Section 7, Paragraph 1 says, “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”. Well, as you will recall, when the concurrent bill failed, the Senate pulled out a prior bill and “deemed it passed”. That bill originated in the Senate! It is an unconstitutionally passed tax law!
Yes indeed, but Roberts knows that. Worse, even if your criteria is declared null – and I think it shouldn’t – the bill the House did pass contained a penalty not a tax.
This leaves Robert one out. His decision writes that as far as the Government is concerned all citizens have performed their civic duty and they are merely charging a fee because if it were a penalty – his criteria for calling it a penalty – the person would have to have also been guilty before the bar of justice.
This is wrong. IRS penalties. They are penalties, the government imposes them every day probably in the thousands, and they arise due to a disagreement between the IRS and a tax filer. There is not even an implication of tax guilt. And as that is absent, it is quite clearly a penalty.
That is, Robert’s criteria is wrong – and he knows it.
By the way don’t think you can catch Roberts on his calling it a fee – arguing calling it a fee is denying it is a tax. You will lose that one. That is because a fee is like a tax. And it is.
Roberts has given us his criteria. We know something is a penalty because if it were a penalty the person would be guilty of something before the bar of justice. And since the person isn’t it isn’t a penalty.
Fine but wrong. IRS penalties. No imputation of any guilt. The government assigns penalties arising from a tax review that says you owe more in tax than your returns show. Not even a hint or suggestion on the part of the government that there is anything else in their decision to impose the penalty.
I am disturbed by what Roberts did, but in the long run, he may have done the best thing possible.
Galvanize the conservatives, independents, and provide the same clip that was used against Bush. Remember the Read my lips, no new taxes. Now the same can be applied to obozo, in multiple clips, and it should be devastating.
And with the law, now a tax, it can be overturned with 51, and as many have said, it is time to put more tea party members in congress that aren’t so concerned with being “nice” as with doing what they were elected for.
And when a taxpayer brings suit over this illegitimately passed tax the first court will cite the Anti-Injunction Act and we will have to wait until after 2014 to strat again. Roberts wiffed this one
Being that I am not a member of the bar or a politician I may be wrong, but, since it has been ruled a tax, it can be repealed with a simple majority vote. Chief Justice Roberts is sly as a fox. Who enacts and repeals taxes?….. Congress. And who controls Congress?
In November, if more conservatives are elected to the House and we take the Senate, this suicidal tax can be repealed with a simple majority. And if obama gets reelected, who cares? He’ll be like clintoon in 1994; neutered, irrelevant. Nothing to do but play diddle the intern.
I wonder how Michelle would react to that?
The problem is Roberts opened the door to allow congress taxing power for “inactivity”, which will allow congress to tax anyone for NOT doing what the government dictates.
What is worse about this is that even after 2014, when a suit is filed, the SCOTUS ruling regarding the application of Anti-Injunction Act can be used as precedent – the individual mandate was not a tax for the purposes of determining if the Anti-Injunction Act applied, thus a suit treating it as a tax is invalid.
Heads the government wins, tails you lose.
If I’ve managed to keep the several laswuits against Obamacare straight, this case just closed at the SCOTUS is the one where some twenty four states’ Attorneys General brought this suit. They all, along wiht about twenty six more, ought to file a new suit contesting the legality and enforceability of this bill on the basis it is a tax not lawfully consituted, and therefore null per Article One Secion Seven of the US Constitution.
Let ‘em try it and see how far they get.
Whol do you think you are, pal?
If this Tyranny continues, some of us won’t bother with the courts anymore and the death panels will look much different than the bill.
Wait a minute. Let’s read the Constitution regarding Congress’s power to tax. Sure, all tax bills have to originate in the House, but there is another limitation on the taxation power the Founding Fathers put in as follows:
SECTION 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
SECTION 9
. . .
No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
Though Lincoln and Congress put in place an emergency income tax, that apparently only the Northern states paid to help pay off the war bonds sold during the Civil War, the legal beagles after the War were quick to point out it was unconstitutional based on the quoted excerpt from Section 9 since income taxes, though direct, or capitation taxes, on individual citizens, are not proportionate to the census of each state.
Later, after the Panic of 1907, when John D. Rockefeller, James Stillman, JP Morgan and their buddies, including Rockefeller’s son in law, Senator Nelson Aldrich (whose first name would be preserved in the given name of the future NY governor and vice president, i.e. John D’s grandson) wanted to get the income tax back again, in conjunction with their creation of the Fed. Reserve System to provide the banking system a lender of last resort, in the course of their secret Jekyll Island meeting in 1910 they worked out the blue print of how to do it. Thereafter Morgan testified at the Money Trust hearings in Congress (the year before he died) where he came up with his famous quote that “all the bonds in Christendom are no substitute for [the] character” of the person seeking to borrow the money. Anyway, Aldrich and his buddies were probably behind the hearings, which may have been a sham to placate the public and to lay the ground work for the Federal Reserve, a private company running the US money supply (into the ground). They also got the Sixteenth Amendment to the US Constitution which reads:
AMENDMENT XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states,
and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Two things: If Congress could impose any kind of tax under the original Constitution, why would they need to amend the Constitution to get the income tax which in the 1880s or 1890s the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional [absent an amendment].
Second, if the Obamacare penalty is a tax (and it certainly is imposed on indivuduals and thus barred by Article 9) is it constitutional under the Article 9 limitation (proportionate to each state’s census) or the Sixteenth Amendment (a tax on incomes)? I would say definitely not under Article 9 (as a tax on individuals) and if you have no income and living off money lent to you by your rich sugar daddy or your real daddy (or mom) you would still be liable for the penalty if you were pulling in enough money and owned three houses you couldn’t or didn’t want to rent out and you did not want to sell. So how is it constitutional? Time for reargument to the Court or what? Why wait for 2014? It is a hundred years from 1912 is it not?
You are absolutely correct. Too bad you were not on the Supreme Court. We need more people like you in Congress. We, also, need some way to get rid of Justices that don’t uphold the Constitution.
“a tax”? I was under the impression that, the U.S. Constitution proscribes a direct or capitation tax unless, it is apportioned among the states, . . .
Contest the legislation as originating from the wrong house of Congress. Why not? And since this action would occur within the Romney administration (one hopes) Romney could borrow a page from Obama’s book and decline to defend the act.
Of course this could lead to the irony of judges or justices other than Roberts rejecting the suit because the payment in question is really a penalty, not a tax.
The fact that revenue bills can only originate in the House is an excellent point. John Roberts invalidated the law with his own tortured reasoning. State attorneys general can take this up with the court now that the mandate has been “deemed” a tax by Roberts. Perhaps someone with the stature of Andy McCarthy could start beating the drum on this point?
This may have been Chief Justice Roberts exact intention. By holding that it is only Constitutional if levied as a tax, he has hewed to the Hamiltonian interpretation of the General Welfare clause, as stated above. In other words, the FDR/New Deal mode of government remains intact.
Except of course for the small detail that the entire argument while the measure was being passed that it was not a tax, in any way, shape, or form. And of course, it originated in the Senate and White House, not the House of Representatives.
This makes it an illegally-passed “revenue bill”, which legally cannot be collected. That is, until it goes back to the House to be rewritten and passed correctly.
What Roberts did here was say to the Administration and its cronies in the legislature, “Go back to Square One and start over. Or else.”
The “or else” being that while they have a Draconian law on the books (which is one of their big dreams and no doubt gives them a near “O” just thinking about it), they cannot enforce it as it is. Because doing so would violate other Constitutional provisions, and the U.S. Code.
The hilarious thing is that neither celebrating liberals, or conservatives who want to tar and feather Roberts, realize just what a colossal defeat this is for Obama & Co.
Obama said he would never raise taxes on the middle class- and passes the largest tax increase in world history. He has been shown up for the lying, conniving, cynical con artist, narcissist, and megalomaniac he is.
And it has happened less than six months before the election.
If the Republicans do not use this in their campaign to unseat Obama, and take back control of both Houses of Congress, they will have proven that they don’t deserve to win. By virtue of being even dumber than the Democrats.
Unfortunately, over my lifetime I’ve learned never to underestimate the capacity of Republican politicians to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
clear ether
eon
Right on, eon. The new Republican slogan for 2012 just became: Repeal and Replace.
Those conservatives out there gnashing their teeth about the Robert’s decision haven’t been paying close attention. This will be a massive defeat, not just for 0, but also for progressivism in general. The Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause just had their wings clipped. A tax cannot originate in the Senate because taxes, by definition, generate revenue and revenue bills must originate in the Senate. So, in fact, Roberts carefully aimed a 12 gauge shotgun at this turkey and invited the Republican House to pull the trigger.
As you noted, the Republicans have a terrible propensity to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. Let’s see if they have the cojones to move on this one.
“A tax cannot originate in the Senate because taxes, by definition, generate revenue and revenue bills must originate in the Senate.”
I believe you meant to say that revenue bills must orginate in the House.
I disagree. I very much doubt Romney will now be elected. Obama’s just provided, no, given free healthcare to everyone in the whole country – at least that’s what’s going to be shouted from the roof tops. Heck, Michelle’s out there today saying everyone’s now got free contraception.
Obama can say, through the MSM, that if he’s elected again he’s got all sorts of other gifts to give to the masses. Have student loans? Obama can promise to write them off. Is your mortgage underwater? Don’t worry. The Feds will take care of it for you. Need a new car (a Chevy Volt, of course). He’ll give you one; and you’ll be doing your part too to save the environment by driving a low emissions car.
See how this works? What’s Romney going to do? Take away free healthcare from the people – the old people, the babies, the poor? He’s just a mean, ole White guy.
Bread and circuses.
“The hilarious thing is that neither celebrating liberals, or conservatives who want to tar and feather Roberts, realize just what a colossal defeat this is for Obama & Co.
Obama said he would never raise taxes on the middle class- and passes the largest tax increase in world history. He has been shown up for the lying, conniving, cynical con artist, narcissist, and megalomaniac he is.”
Eon, I agree. These are valid points that you make but are they of enough significance to influence many would be Obama voters to vote for Romney? Liberals of my acquaintance have spent their lifetimes lying to themselves about their political philosophy. Just today we are informed by Juan Williams that the contempt citation against Eric Holder is “political theater” even though the evidence suggests that the AG has lied repeatedly. Maybe I run with the wrong crowd but it seems to me that my friends, family, and acquaintances fall into one of three categories. Liberals who lie to themselves, conservatives who are mad as hell, and others (the majority) who have no idea what is going on (which they usually dismiss with “it’s all so complicated and just politics” or just plain “huh, I dunno”).
Also, we have the factor of weak congressional leadership especially in the person of the Speaker who most probably couldn’t identify and nobody pays any attention to. If Romney were to try to aggressively drive home the points that you make Boehner and the Republican leadership will probably apologize for his remarks. I certainly agree with you “snatch defeat” observation. I give the Democrats their due. They would destroy a sitting Republican president with the ammunition that you identify.
I hope everyone who understands this will talk it up…so far I have had absolutely no luck in persuading my husband (the rest of my family has switched its brains off and vote anti-Republican no matter what the Dems do) that Roberts has with malice aforethought opened the way to get rid of the monster. And reinforce the separation of powers which the demagogue finds inconvenient and that are absolutely necessary if we want to remain semi-free.
Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli said yesterday that, on closer reading, the decision wasn’t as bad as peoples’ initial reaction.
And that in 100 years, yesterday’s SCOTUS decision will be seen as a good one.
I really don’t care if this decision is actually subtle and clever and whatever.
I haven’t got 100 years to wait.
Obama said he would never raise taxes on the middle class- and passes the largest tax increase in world history. He has been shown up for the lying, conniving, cynical con artist, narcissist, and megalomaniac he is.
Many here are quite satisfied that Obama is now doomed to resounding electoral defeat as a result of just having his Obamacare mandate deemed a tax, despite his incessant declarations that it was NOT a tax and that he would not raise taxes on the middle class.
Well, I wish I could be as confident as you are that Obama will now be defeated. Here in Ontario (Canada), a fellow named Dalton McGuinty ran for the office of Premier (equivalent to governor) of our province in 2003 as the leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario. The only promise he made in his entire campaign was that he absolutely would NOT raise taxes. He came into office with a strong majority. Within weeks of being elected, he started raising fees for anything and everything. He insisted these weren’t actual tax increases to such things as income tax or the provincial sales tax so that he was keeping his promise. The media hammered at him on this and soon got him to admit that the increases were the equivalent of tax increases. Having made this confession, the media let up on him and the other parties made little if any effort to capitalize on McGuinty’s huge embarassement. McGuinty continues to be the Premier of this province to this day even though hardly a soul doubts that he was lying through his teeth (with deliberate and pre-meditated malice before the fact) when he promised to hold the line on taxes. He’s won two further provincial elections – although this last one by a narrower margin than the others – and certainly hasn’t had the decency to resign over his blatant dishonesty about raising taxes. The fact that his government has had frequent scandals over corruption during his time in office has not weakened the Liberals sufficiently for the other parties to win the elections.
Now, we could discuss theories on how McGuinty managed to be re-elected but I doubt we could come to any irrefutable conclusions. The fact is that, as a wise man once said, “a week is an eternity in politics”. In other words, however bad something you do stinks up the universe, it tends to all blow over in due course. The only question is whether the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare will taint Obama sufficiently to hurt him badly in the November election or will it have blown over (or been successfully spun) by then.
With Dalton McGuinty in mind, I am not as complacent as you that Obama will be badly damaged by the Supreme Court decision. I truly wish I could be more positive that Obama was decisively crippled (politically) by the decision….
Why on God’s green Earth would he do something with this intent?
“Oh, I know! I’ll pass it so that it can fail once passed and create terrible precedent while I’m at it! BRILLIANT!”
He couldn’t even define what kind of tax it is. He had to twist himself into logical knots to even make the argument. And what’s more, some of the analogies are HORRENDOUSLY flawed.
The cigarette analogy in particular is incredibly incoherent. He likens it to the ability to tax cigarettes because of behavior. You behave a certain way, you have to pay for it. That’s all well and good, except that in this case, the roles are reversed. To use his analogy, you are “taxing/penalizing/whatever” the person who DOES NOT buy cigarettes.
Let’s carry this to a logical conclusion using a different analogy to produce the same result:
1) Congress passes a law that “penalizes” any citizen who is not a practicing Christian.
2) That law is challenged under the 1st Amendment (as it should be)
3) Gets to the Supreme Court, and they rule that “a penalty on a person’s religion or lack thereof is in violation of the 1st Amendment, and must be struck down. However, in this instance, it is reasonable to look at this as a tax. As has been stated by prior Court precedent, the powers to tax are wide ranging, and thus, the law, rewritten/reinterpreted (as I just rewrote it from my little bench here, which I have the power and indeed the duty to do under Court precedent) to say that we are simply taxing anyone who is not a practicing Christian is Constitutional under the tax code. Thus, this new law I just wrote stands up to Constitutional muster, and is deemed passed. Anyone who is not a practicing Christian will now have an additional tax enforced by the IRS when they file every April 15th. Thank you and God bless!”
Does this work? Is this brilliant? We can’t touch the judge who did it. No, there will be no throwing him out of office. And the lawmakers, well, they have plausible deniability “It wasn’t a tax!”, so they aren’t really liable for it. And the best part is that we get to celebrate the upholding of the 1st Amendment as a great victory! Because under the 1st, the law was struck from the books! However, under the tax code, it can stick around…
At this point, you have a bill enacted as law that was voted on by no one, written and enacted by 1 man in the judiciary, and no accountability anywhere to be found. In short, it’s Constitutional to tax/penalty non practicing Christians.
Is this not a ridiculous argument to make?
No, it isn’t.
I completely agree…the man has been a marxist in capitalist clothing all along. We’ve been played like a fiddle. I fervently hope that somehow this is all somehow part of God’s plan (in the same way that omlettes are made with broken eggs).
Exactly what I was thinking, if you can tax unlimitedly why not tax speech? how about demanding that we all take a loyalty oath, and if we refuse,,,a steep tax will be imposed..now which is it..1st amendment or the taxing power? Thank you Roberts,,,it will take a 100 years to get out from under this ruling, This has been the most damaging ruling in our nations history
This is only a defeat for Obama and company IF (and that is a big IF) we can defeat him in November, and take sizable majorities in the House and Senate (at least 60 in the Senate). My goal is to impeach the five justices who voted for this travesty of legal reasoning by John Roberts, on the grounds that they are accessories to a Constitutional fraud, and because they all violated the judicial oaths they took when they were sworn as Justices of the Supreme Court. We thus need as big a margin in the Senate as possible, to insure the chance of conviction after Romney becomes President.
I know that means defeating ALL of the 22 Democratic incumbent Senators running. But now the climate has changed even more dramatically than before. We, the people, must make it possible. We, the people, must EVISCERATE the Democrats politically and reduce them to a rump party just like voters did in Ireland and Australia to its Democratic Party-equivalents.
But does this not open the door for Congress to tax inactivity it deems should be taken by the citizens, such as which car to buy, what vegetable to buy?
Harry Reid took an unrelated bill already passed by the House, deleted its contents and inserted the Obamacare bill to get around that problem.
So, say: Harry Reid’s from Nevada, right? Now, is he actually from Reno or Vegas?
You ask: What’s the difference?
Well, it’s like this: One place you go to get divorced from your wife, the other to get divorced from your money.
See? – No difference!
Really? – In Vegas you could also get money. In Reno, your wife’s gone for good + your money!
Though penalty and tax may be functionally equivalent, it is merely coincident that they are in this particular case. Legally, they are quite different, in any and every case. — So Robby fed his own perfectionist ego and became in the process an activist judge who rewrites law to suit his sense of …whatever! The unforeseen (and unforseeable) consequences of this rash act will be with us for a very long time. A curse upon Roberts, his “good” intentions, if any, be damned!
The answer to this problem is two fold.
First Congress needs to impeach all five of the Justices who helped commit this fraud on the Citizens of the Nation. Then we need to Impeach Obama for his actions of not following the Constitution and the laws thereof.
Then we need to Force a Constitutional Convention where ‘we the people’ can rewrite our Constitution and truly ‘form a more perfect union’ as specified by Article V of the existing Constitution.
Under this Constitutional Convention we can fix Congress, fix the SCOTUS and handcuff the POTUS and restrict the Federal Government to its rightful place in the scheme of things, in other words chain the bureaucrats so they can never ever again corrupt our Nation.
Once again the States will be in charge of themselves by the citizens thereof. Each state will own and control all of their lands and resources, not the fed.
ANWAR will belong to Alaska, there will be no more National Parks or National anything execpt in Washington DC, for that is the only land according to the original Constitution that the Federal Government can own. All other land belongs to the State once that State is Chartered.
If you are tired of seeing the Federal Government and the Potus continually screw up this nation then we must restrict their ability to do it. We are now at the abyss and we can fall into it or we can back up and take a new path. The back up is the Article V that our ‘Founders Wrote For Us To Use’ and it was written exactly for this reason, ‘to stop out of control bureaucrats and traitors.
I brought up the unconstitutional passing of this law when it was first passed- and was widely derided as being ignorant. Now, suddenly, the idea is in vogue. Even if not a tax- IT IS STILL A REVENUE BILL.
So, why wait? The House doesn’t have to wait. The issue has never arisen before, and the house can fix it.
Resolved- since OBAMACARE(Insert bill # Here)is a revenue bill that was written entirely in the Senate, its subsequent passage and signing into law was unconstitutional. This House is not bound by unconstitutional actions taken by prior congresses. Therefore, we hereby decalare that Obamacare (insert bill #) is null and void in its entirety. Further, this declaration need not be reviewed and passed by the Senate, nor signed into law by the President- our action alone nullifies the unconstitutional passage. The Secretary of HHS is hereby instructed to take no actions to implement this non-existent law. No monies allocated to any agency are to be used to implement this non-existent law.
Boom. Done. The Senate and President will have a fit. It’ll go stright to the Supremes. Their ruling would either affirm the House action, or make them laghingstocks as they twist the PLAIN WORDS of the Constitution. The American people aren’t stupid- they can read. It’s why the majority know the bill itself is unconstitutional, despite the Supreme’s ruling. trying to say it was passed in a Constitutional manner won’t pass the smell test- the supremes wouldn’t make laughingstocks out of temselves.
Question is, does Boehner have the balls to do it?
Are you listening, Boehner (or one of his aides)?? A simple majority vote is all it would take to stop this thing cold.
Indeed. This thing is so mired in doo-doo, it should be rich fodder for lawyers for years. “Deem and pass”? What the hell was that?
Your point is also excellent.
Another thing is the nature of a tax vs. a penalty. How can you tax a continuously changing group of very specific people on the basis of their not doing something? What kind of “due process” does that entail?
Well, there goes another trillion in legal fees.
Constitutional Convention, anyone?
Just remember to bring your rifles.
This is precisely the kind of game-playing which erodes the judicial branch’s legitimacy. At some point a Constitutional Convention resolution will start circulating among state legislatues, and one of the proposed amendments will likely be a version of: “All federal judicial offices are elective on such terms and conditions as Congress may enact.”
Spoken like somebody who knows absolutely nothing about government! Do you want the idiots who elected Comrade Obama to elect the delegates to a Constitutional Convention?
Art, it sounds like you don’t trust the people of America to protect their own freedom. Tell us how you’d rather trust the Supreme Court to do so given this ruling.
geez, talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater!
the Supreme Court is made up of humans, and sometimes humans are wrong. Roberts was seriously wrong on this one, and that’s why we all have to work very hard to elect Romney.
but electing Supreme Court justices is a reeeeeelly bad idea.
rulierose,
How can it be any worse than what we’ve got? Andrew McCarthy has it wrong – the majority in Rasul v. Bush made up the facts and law to reach the result they wanted, while ignoring contrary precedent. That example has become very widespread. A lot to most federal, and many state, benches do the same thing these days.
So it doesn’t matter what the Constitution says anymore. These tryants in robes make up whatever they wish to achieve their results. Roberts here is no different than Kennedy in Rasul v. Bush.
The only protection we have for our freedom is us, not them. This decision merely makes it that obvious. So the judges should face the voters in elections, and show us by a lifetime of work that they will respect our vision of the Constitution and not their own.
As a practical matter, political legitimacy comes from the public will, and the federal bench has shown by its lack of respect for the Constitution, through decisions like this (and I’ve practiced in California, i.e., in the 9th Federal Circuit since 1977) that they are no longer legitimate. They’re just tryants in robes.
Maybe so, but so are lifetime appointments. The 22nd Amendment was passed because Roosevelt demonstrated that Presidents could no longer be trusted to limit themselves to two terms in deference to the wisdom of George Washington, and thus needed to be bound by law to prevent them from becoming tyrants who hold onto power for decades. The 28th Amendment should recognize such wisdom also applies to judges and limit each judicial appointee to 18 years in office, such that (assuming no deaths or early resignations) each Presidential term will see two Supreme Court nominations.
48% think the O is the best thing since sliced bread, and you would trust them to protect their freedom? Where’d planet earth go?
We should remember that all political legitimacy actually proceeds from the ultimate ability and will to use deadly force. This and this alone may be the sole recourse.
The one thing that makes the Amendment Process less than Ideal is the Need for an Amendment to begin in the Senate.
Oh wait a minute, when that rule was written Senators were selected by the State Legislatures, not a popular vote, so it was far easier for a the States to call for an amendemnt that addressed their grievences.
Maybe We The People need to work to remove the ammendment, that allowed the Senate to be elected by popular vote and thereby beholden to their party rather than their state, rather than change the Constitution. Back to the original intent to put the States back in control.
I would also like to go back to part-time congress-critters. People who had real jobs and livlihoods outside of DC. I’m sick of full-time politicians – with every damned one of them being lawyers.
Rip the A/C out of those buildings and you’ll see a mass exodus starting in June.
Tom, while I appreciate your frustration, I have been proposing, for some time, another remedy for judicial legislation: a Constitutional amendment to create the power of nullification. To wit: “Any decision by any federal court may be nullified by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, or by a vote of three-fourths of the states.” This remedies the lack of checks and balances over the judiciary, which is currently the supreme branch of government.
Surak,
I’d go along with 3/4 of the state legislatures being able to overturn Supreme Court rulings, but that raises the question of what replaces the ruling, particularly if the Supreme Court has the same people. Now if overturning a Supreme Court decision also entails removing all the Justices from office, that might work.
But my point that, if 3/4 of the state legislatures can agree on something like you propose, that same 3/4 can also call for a constitutional convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. As an inside-the-judiciary matter, we need to end life terms for federal judges, if only to allow the federal judiciary to discipline itself (i.e., remove judges for cause) and involuntarily judges who no longer are competent due to their age.
So limiting federal judges to a single 12-year term might be worthwhile too.
But I feel the federal judiciary is plain broken. Its judges at every level now just reach the result they want, then make up the law and facts to justify it. And there is no review from such decisions by the Supreme Court. This is a particular issue regarding separation of powers, as Andrew McCarthy has noted. Those guys at the very least need to be elective.
Given that the Supreme Court has violated separation of powers concerning the President’s war-making power (Rasul v. Bush is a particularly egregious example of the majority ignoring past precdent to reach a desired result), they have become a direct threat to the American people. Who will do the dying if the Supremes get it wrong. Them that do the dying should be able to choose who gets the power to make them die unnecssarily.
So we desperately need an elective Supreme Court. That way the public can select justices based on their lifetime record of caution concerning life and death decisions in national security matters.
IMO, and this is very much hindsight, the Supremes went over the edge here in Roe v. Wade and everything since then, including Rasul v. Bush and this tax atrocity by Roberts, shows how the Supremes progressed from being a little bit pregnant to delivery of Rosemary’s Baby. Stare decisis is ignored. They make stuff up now, as McCarthy notes of the due process violations in Robert’s tax opinion.
Life terms give them so much power they’ve been corrupted, and IMO have inflicted irremediable damage to the federal judiciary’s legitimacy. The Supreme Court at least should be elective. Given how bad the 9th Circuit has become, I feel the entire federal bench should be elective.
“I feel the federal judiciary is plain broken. Its judges at every level now just reach the result they want, then make up the law and facts to justify it.”
Including looking to other nations and their laws, I’m afraid.
http://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/viewspeeches.aspx?Filename=sp_02-07b-06.html
This is the best take I have seen on this judicial and intellectual atrocity. Congress has now gained the ability to mislabel new taxation schemes for the purpose of deliberately confounding the people they are supposed to represent. Does anybody really believe that the Democrats didn’t understand that this wasn’t taxation under a different name from the very beginning? This dolt Roberts and the four reflexive Libocrats have just legitimized that fraud and even enshrined it as a precedent for future perfidy. But isn’t this just the most overt sign of our times? Isn’t this really the Age of Fraud?
In 2008 I put up a website called “The Obama Files: Notes on the Ongoing Fraud.” I wasn’t connected with any site so it was just one guy with a lengthy and very unattractive blogspot page and since no one came I gave it up. But isn’t that the very theme of this President and this age? The fraudulent loans that led to the housing crisis, The actions of the Wall Street hedge funds masquerading as commercial banks so they can pass off their toxic assets onto the backs of the taxpayers? The credit card industry with it’s teaser rates that turned into shylock rates if you were late one day on one payment. “Reality TV” which has taken over the airwaves, the “news media” which has degenerated into a soviet like propaganda machine for the Democratic Party. Young people being conned into debt servitude in their early 20′s with promises of “careers” they will never see… you all know I could just go on and on.
And what do we have in the White House if not Barack Hussein Gatsby. A conscienceless charlatan who sold himself as “The Uniter” of the Divided States of America and is really nothing other than an affirmative action race baiter with delusions of competence. Even the budgetary math of the government and Federal Reserve is like some long lost chapter from Alice in Wonderland. Please somebody on this site, take the idea and run with it. Keep an ongoing log of the daily instances of systemic fraud which passes for government in our corrupted and deranged age. You will be doing the future, and even the present, a great favor by simply cataloging this ongoing avalanche of corruption as it metastasizes into the Mother of All Meltdowns.
3. maccB – is your website still up?
This is the best analysis of what occurred today. Thank you.
Fraud … frightening term to be using re SCOTUS.
I was myself thinking earlier today that the Court had no authority to just “change” the law — but rather could/should have sent it back to Congress with the suggestion that they change the “mandate” to “tax.”
Even still, if it were a “tax” — it would be a penalty for “not” doing something — which is the opposite of what all taxes have been heretofore.
So, even if they do call it a tax, it is still nothing but a pentalty.
Justice Roberts … what’s with him? It’s easy to understand where the Liberal Justices are coming from, but Roberts … he’s a mystery.
I can’t help wondering if he’s made his decisions based on fear.
Fear that if Obama wins re-election, the power that he will have (not having to concern himself about re-election again — and with a Democrat Senate — no chance of impeachment for anything he might do) …
If he wins re-election, and the Court had struck down Obamacare, judging from his overall behavior, and most recently giving the finger to the Constitution and Congress re the EPA, and Prosecutorial (Priorities? was it?) re immigration, etc., etc. … there’s no telling what vindictive behavior he might engage in against the Court.
Perhaps he would have even (or might still) — at least attempted — to increase the number of Justices as FDR did, appointing several more of his own to the Bench. Maybe Roberts was afraid of what vidictiveness — what could happen to the Court if Obama wins re-election.
I’m not excusing him for what he did, but, if Roberts saw this as the only way to protect the over-all integrity of our government (rightly or wrongly), maybe then it is more understandable. If it wasn’t for this reason — then there really is no excuse at all.
Repealing the law? Could Romney just DO that? I don’t know what percentage of Congress it would take to do that.
Here’s what I’m hoping he was doing: a rope-a-dope trick. By declaring the mandate a tax and upholding it as such, Roberts just legitimized taxing abortion, and imposed no limitations on how high such an abortion tax could be set. He has thus made it legal to tax abortionists into bankruptcy, thereby ending all legal abortions in this country even though Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. Then, overturn the law on either religious freedom grounds (Catholic Dioceses et. al. v. Obama), or on some new challenge that the tax law was not validly passed or that the law conflicts with the Roe v. Wade decision. And there you have it: uphold Roe v. Wade, but defang it by putting the abortionists out of business, and get rid of Obamacare in at most another two or three years.
The thing about it is that the Supreme Court is not just some super-sized version of a Court of Appeals. Most of the time, it is sufficient for the Court to function as if that were the case, but at certain times, it seems to me that it has a greater role to play at the Constitutional level than that, and is not bound by rules intended to govern the processes of lower courts.
I think that Roberts saw that this is one of those times. It is true that the Congress did not frame the mandate penalty as a tax, but what it did pass was, in legal consequence, a tax, and four other members of the Court agreed. While a lower court might not have authority, Constitutional or otherwise, to do step outside the rules and consider this, it seems to me that the SC could reasonably have that authority.
In effect, what Roberts did was stop the dangerous to liberty expansion of the Commerce clause, bring Constitutional clarity to what was actually done by Congress, and send the case to the electorate to ratify or reject “Constitutional Obamacare” in the upcoming election. This strikes me as the wisdom of Solomon.
“but what it did pass was, in legal consequence, a tax”
But, it’s not a tax. It’s clearly a penalty for “not” doing/buying something.
Congress can now pass a law, for instance, that demands that everyone who drives, drive an electric car — or pay a “tax” (penalty) if they don’t.
Examples can go on and on.
You may not agree that it’s a tax, but the SC says it is, and there’s an end on that.
And while you are theoretically correct about the electric car, any such attempt will be seen as a tax from now on. Roberts has effectively prevented the Dems from disguising any future taxes as “mandates” or other such euphemisms. This decision is going to dog the Congresscritters for years.
That might be true if liberal judges respected previous Supreme court verdicts. The moment another liberal is added to the court the new found respect for the Commerce Clause will be tossed aside. You have to realize progressive/fascists don’t care about the Constitution. It is an impediment to their mission to enact Socialism and bring ‘Social Justice’- which is more important to them than a document written by a bunch of dead white guys. Have you forgotten Ruth B. Ginsburg advising some foreign students not look to the US Constitution as an inspiration for their laws?
That’s all very well and good, but Roberts’ declaration that the mandate’s tax was not a direct tax is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and opens the door wide for Congress to concoct future atrocities structured the same way, commanding the activities or face additional personalized taxation. The Constitution (Article 1, Section 9) specifically prohibits direct taxation; that is the reason why there could be no income tax without the 16th Amendment.
The real problem we face now is this: we can vote out bad Congresscritters and an incompetent president, but we are STUCK with the members of SCOTUS, worse than anyone trapped in a bad marriage: this really is till death us do part (unless they resign first). I hope and pray that if Romney wins, Roberts resigns. He is a disgrace to the position he holds.
I have the highest respect for our Founders, but they got the Supreme Court wrong. Instead of making positions on the Court lifetime appointments, they should have imposed term limits, say 10 or 15 years.
Supreme Court justices absolutely need to be outside the political elective process, but there was no need to appoint them for life.
In effect, what Roberts did was stop the dangerous to liberty expansion of the Commerce clause, bring Constitutional clarity to what was actually done by Congress, and send the case to the electorate to ratify or reject “Constitutional Obamacare” in the upcoming election.
In my non-lawyerly opinion, Roberts didn’t stop anything. One way to find out is to replace a conservative Justice with a Leftist.
My take: if an Obama-appointed Leftist majority arises on SCOTUS, they’ll make Roberts get their permission before he can use the bathroom…unless he “evolves”.
What’s Solomon’s take on the dangerous to liberty expansion of the taxing power?
What is left of enumerated powers now?
From now on , evoking the Bill of Rights against government
overreach will be about a useful as lighting a candle to St.
Sebastian to ward off bubonic plague, or worshipping a statue
of Kali against the smallpox.
Actually, I’m beginning to think that worshipping the Statue of Kali to ward off Smallpox may be more effective.
At least you can hit someone over the head with the statue. We have no recourse against the SC. Except maybe revolution.
Civil War, its preparation and the threat, is now part of our agenda. To WAR! Defeat the Obamunist tyrants!
If we have the White House, Congress and SCOTUS perpetrating fraud, have we any other choice but open, in-the-streets, gouge’em-in-the-eyes revolution?
Perhaps through the cartridge box, rather than the ballot box, the regressives/liberals/leftists will learn that America will not surrender to their morally anchorless, anti-individual tyranny?
Have you tried the jury box yet? Violence must be an absolute last resort. As Roberts himself put it, the Second Amendment is a doomsday provision for when the government refuses to stand for election, refuses to abide by the result, or the elections are so blatantly fraudulent so as to be the functional equivalent of refusing to stand for election, and the courts are unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
And the 2nd amendment has been used in the United States as intended- look up Battle of Athens.
There are no other examples in American history I know of, except for the revolution itself, and the Civil War (or if you prefer, the War Between the States) if you want to count the civil war as a 2nd amendment overthrow attempt.
Remember Obama’s SOTU whereas he was belittling the SCOTUS, to their faces no less whereas Roberts looked to be the most ruffled by Obama’s candor.
Lo’ and behold, Roberts now licking Obama’s boots.
Sadly I believe this is the shot of adrenaline the Illiberals and delusional ‘Progressives’ needed.
Let’s not forget the many senior citizen’s who are not Obamabots and dislike his many bunglings though overwhelmingly love their Medicare, Social Security, suhweet pension from their public sector union and the many other unsustainables/ caveats they’re accustomed to.
The Left will speak of Uhbamacare as being, ‘Modeled after Romneycare’.
Have those same people looked at or considered the gargantuan bite in Massachusetts’ budget Romneycare takes since being implemented a short time ago?
Now it’s gone national..?
Ideological suicide, full steam ahead I’m afraid.
John Roberts today gave Republicans the best chance to win in November they’ve ever had. He put ObamaCare on a kid’s tee and is inviting us to knock it to smithereens.
Roberts stopped the expansion of the commerce clause.
Showed Obama to be a bald faced liar when Obama told Obama’s lawyer before the supremes to argue it as a tax. But previously on TV Obama keep on telling the people it was a penalty, not a tax. Many frequent liar miles Obama accumulated. Now Obama doesn’t know what to call it. But the Republicans do. And will. And Americans hate taxes.
Roberts made Obamacare the issue, something Mitt can dig his teeth into and folks can understand. A general need of jobs isn’t the campaign lighting rod that ObamaCare is.
Obama didn’t even want to discuss ObamaCare during the election; now John Roberts is forcing him to.
Roberts, as they say, threaded the judicial needle.
Right you are. Beyond that, Roberts preserved the institutional integrity of the court. Just think what would have likely happened if he had sided with the dissenters: The USSC would have been accused of being an “activist” court with the political ramifications on a level of those that followed Bush vs Gore.
I think some in here need to spend a little time thinking this thing through. Albeit at first I was disturbed by the decision, not so much now as I see how this decision has laid bare the Big Lie Obama & the Democrats have been telling us all along. I would imagine that it’s all going to be uphill from here. Obama is toast & so are the Democrats.
Don’t calculate your juvenile poultry before the process of incubation has completely materialized.
Heretofore, I thought the readers of this blog to be reasonably intelligent. I change my mind after all the magical thinking on display today. Roberts is a traitor. Obama has been boosted into re-election and tyranny is the outcome. No one in Washington today obeys the law any more. Pretty soon they won’t even give it lip service. We are living through revolution and going down quietly.
Roberts stopped the expansion of the commerce clause.
————————————————
As a point of fact, he didn’t. The Commerce Clause is as subject to abuse today as it was the second before Roberts read his decision.
All the comments aside make no mistake, freedom in the USA died yesterday. History tells us that there comes a point in the life of a free society when it is impossible to regain that which was lost. All the rosy speculation about how this is a win for the GOP because now they have an overarching campaign issue is seeing through rose colored glasses. The takers now outnumber and can outvote the producers and this is what Obama and the progressives have banked on. John Roberts, with this decision, became one of the pall bearers of liberty.
All the comments aside make no mistake, freedom in the USA died yesterday.
Not totally. Illegal aliens still have “the Blessings of Liberty” in that they don’t have to buy health insurance and aren’t hit with any
penaltytax, but still get primo health care if they show up at a hospital. So, Benedict Roberts just changed the preamble of the Constitution a little bit to read, “and secure the Blessings of Liberty to anyone but ourselves and out Posterity”. What’s a change of a few words between slaves and their master all-powerful govenrment? At least the illegals are freeI want to try to get into this “silver lining” mode that so many other “conservatives” are adopting …
Freedom is not dead so long as it lives on within the hearts of men. This fight is not over yet. If you’re going to give up, then sit down and shut up, lest your complaining weaken the moral of those still fighting. Go home and lick your wounds.
You often hear said that one big reason Roe v. Wade remains an open wound is that the Supreme Court in 1970 was hopelessly out of step with the mood of the country at the time, and still is.
Well, Roberts’ fantasy inventions yesterday trump all that: he’s so far out on a limb that he’ll be hounded forever. The attempts at rationalization on his behalf are unacceptable to many, even disgusting, and implausible to many more. The real casualty here is the rule of law. Slowly, often with barely a whisper, the ‘consent of the governed’ — up front in the first sentence of the Declaration — is being withdrawn.
Really, would you have it any other way? It’s the ultimate rejoinder to tyranny, including the tyranny of the legal profession. We need a clean slate, and soon. Fortunately, there are many roads forward.
If there are no limits on what the federal government can do, who cares whether that unlimited power is justified through the Commerce Clause or the power of taxation? We should be accustomed to hearing the Obama administration lie to us, but it is a shock to hear Chief Justice Roberts lie to say that a penalty is a tax just for the purpose of upholding an otherwise invalid law.
Roberts must have had Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in mind when upholding ObamaCare: “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.”
Robert’s decision is a joke and so is he. However we know he is not a mental case or someone lacking in intelligence. So why did he participate in this trechery? The job of the court is to determine constitutionality of laws. Obamacare is an outrageous over reach and should have been shot down-pure and simple. Roberts engaged in a politically correct affirmative action decision so as not to embarrass our post racial first black president. He provided cover for the revisionists historians who will now also render praise for Robert’s legacy. If he had not done this, the liberal media and the liberal professors writing the second chapter of this sordid story would have crucified him. So once again the name of affirmative action, roberts gave them what they needed–a little lift because this poor black man needs a hand up not a hand out. How ironic that this is coming from a man like roberts.
Yes, why did he particiate in this trechery? Maybe he always was a liberal, maybe he got threatend, intimidated??? Maybe he is just weak, he wrote some convoluted legal mumbo jumbo to get rid of it, and go on vacation.
How can anyone in his position write such slop? First it looks like he is going to say its uncontitutional, then he goes the other way to protect the integrity of the court???
Hey, you’re supposed to defend our consitution, not the court!
Remember? WE, THE PEOPLE?
What if Obama is found to have been in office illegally? That is, he is ineligible to serve. Could not Roberts then declare that “Natural Birthed Citizen” is what “Natural Born Citizen” means, and thus absent any evidence of a c-section by Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama is indeed naturally born, unlike the leaders of the attack on Macbeth’s Castle.
Further be it discovered that Obama is not even a citizen of the United States, being that from birth according to the US Statute law of the time, or being that because Mr, Soetoro Jr, that is Obama, formally gave up his citizenship when being of age of majority he opted to become a Inodnesian citizen. Yet then, in that clear discovery of a discordant fact, could not Grand Justice Roberts declare that the X-Document (ie. The US Constitution) only says “citizen”, and that means just what it says on the prima facie of it, that being “citizen” and thus in this modern legal amorphism of “field” (viz the Arizona decision a few days of precedent earlier), Obama is indeed a citizen, albeit a citizen of Indonesia, and that the Constitution is clear that is exactly what he must be to be eligible. A citizen.
I hope I have not by sentence lengthening taxed the reader.
Brilliant! I like it, I like it!
So, according to the esteemed intellect of Justice Roberts, Congress cannot require me to buy health insurance but it can tax me if I don’t? What’s next? Congress taxing me if I don’t vote for Obama? Congress taxing me if I don’t buy a Chevy Volt? Congress taxing me if I don’t join a union? Congress taxing me if I don’t join Occupy Wall Street?
I guess I shouldn’t worry, Congress won’t actually require me to do any of those things… it will just penalize me if I don’t bend to the wishes of our lords and masters.
One more thing… It’s a shame we didn’t have this ruling a couple of years ago – it would have eliminated the senseless deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and one Border Agent in F&F. Imagine: all Congress had to do was pass an annual $5,000 gun tax. Congress wouldn’t dream of interfering with your right to bear arms, you’ll just have to pay the “Societal Impact Tax” for doing so. You want 2 handguns, that’s $10k per year; you want 5 guns, that’s $25k per year. It’s your choice to own the gun and pay the “Societal Impact Tax”, Congress is in no way confiscating firearms.
Absolutely right Chris. This is what bothers me about the decision, even more than Obamacare law itself. The government can penalize citizens monetarily even if it is outside their powers or outside justice to do so, because now it is considered a form of taxation.
Now that I’ve slept on it, I think the court made the correct decision. I’m not happy about it though. I also think there will be a bunch more lawsuits and so forth that will result from the decision. It’s not settled completely yet.
Another observation is that you have got to hand it to the Obama Administration and the POR Democrats for the shear evil genius of the ObamaCare Legislation. They played the ignorance of the American public like a fiddle. No question. I assume they worked out in advance exactly what the possible outcomes of their actions would be. I don’t think the vast majority of “the folks” (as O’reilly might say) are going to care one way or the other whether the mandate is a tax or a fine. They are tired of hearing about it. Most of the Democrats are going to be ecstatic that they “won” and the moochers won’t have to pay the tax anyway. That is, of course, unless it ends up being like FICA, which I believe anyone who works has to pay.
I think God did “Damn America”, he gave us Obama.
this is the most incoherent BS decision in history. I suggest you go back to sleep until you understand how pathetic and political this decision was. Start with the writings of the 4 conservatives and their overwhelming condemnation of this law in great detail and citing many precedents that roberts ignored. Roberts made up this decision and rather than interpreting the statute he re-wrote it to call a penalty a tax even though he could not define what type of tax it was. not to mention that the drafters, defenders, libs, and Obama themselves insisted that this is NOT a tax. There is no way to say that they got this right. It stinks to high heaven of politics.
It stinks, but I had to do it or barry would get mad at me. He’s so . . . butch.
An earlier poster stated, “What Roberts did here was say to the Administration and its cronies in the legislature, “Go back to Square One and start over. Or else.”
Why didn’t Roberts just say that, just send the bill back to be re-written? Why tweak it for them, defying separation of powers and upholding a flawed law, and effectively disgracing his own name in the process? Roberts must have been “gotten to” in some way. O has now significantly demonstrated his willingness and ability to reduce the power of our other two branches of government while increasing his power. Congress? “Do nothing, obstructionists, the Party of No.” The Supreme Court? “Just an appointed body.”
Obama has given us a glimpse of his cards as he starts to play his hand. His Dept. of Homeland Security will NOT enforce
immigration laws they don’t like. His Dept. of Treasury/IRS WILL enforce a tax law improperly passed in Congress because they DO like it. He and his appointees will chose which laws to enforce or not enforce. They’ve already been doing it for years. A nation whose laws are selectively enforced is a nation without Law. While we’re muddling around in the courts with our lawsuits, the IRS will be taking our money out of our paychecks before we even get them. I use the term “our money” loosely because pretty soon that will be an outdated concept.
Our best hope is for Romney to attack attack attack the huge ObamaTax on the middle class. Try to make Obama’s name synonymous with skyrocketing taxes. However, with the leftist media and the general ignorance of Obama’s supporters, I’m afraid that’s preaching to the choir. We must try though!
Holder will be fine. His case, like all others in which conservatives see significance, will muddle around in Congress and in courts for years while Obama goes about his merry business of destroying America unimpeded. The election will be stolen, probably
including stealing back the House. I suppose the Presidential term limit can then be “tweaked” and we’ll have Sultan Obama for life.
I know this sounds like doom and gloom and can be ridiculed, but it’s time to quit hiding our heads in the sand. The storm is coming. Forewarned is forearmed.
It definately should have been struck down in total – it had no severability clause imbeded. It was to stand or fall in total.
It would be easy to be down on a day like today. After all, the Supreme Court just ruled that I can now actually be taxed for doing nothing and that the government can also tax me to force me to buy something too. Am I now going to be taxed to death because I do NOT own a Chevy Volt? And if Obamacare stands, will I be taxed because I don’t weigh a certain amount or I don’t maintain the right temperature in my house all year round? So you can see why so many Americans are down in the dumps today. Well, there is one thing the Supreme Court, Obama, and any of the toads on the far left can’t take away from us, and that is our fighting spirit. The same spirit that brought farmers out to fight the British Army at Lexington and Concord and at Bunker Hill is definitely within us today. Count on it. Americans do NOT take things sitting down. Obama will hear from us in November when, with one, earth-shattering voice, we will throw that socialist out of office. You cannot erase over 200 years of free will. That will not be allowed to stand. Keep your eyes on the prize and get everybody you know to vote in November. We’ll show this fraud in the White House what a REAL mandate is, one that comes from us, the people.
Also keep in mind that the Revolutionary war was not over until the Loyalists were driven out of the country.
My choices are a) buy a certain (bulky) bundle of broccoli at a certain (high) price, or b) pay a tax. My choice to purchase other bundles of broccoli is foreclosed/made uneconomic. Isn’t this a kind of taking?
Yes it is ! — They’re good at taking – and faking. Cash, right off the top of the stash. And oh, Kobe beef, all round. And, was it 100K+ for Peelyasee’s liquor stash on her AF flights home? Think it was ! And, oh, the fuel; campaign flights on AF1: that cash could probably keep a million Central Africans from starving for a year, maybe longer. A million and a half buckaroos for Moochelle’s WH staff, was it? There’s another 100thou CAfricans for a year, or longer! That’s if they don’t eat too much. Not to worry, they’ll stay slim. No one wants to look like HER! — Let’s face it. Nobody needed to tell us Obamacare was a fraud. All we needed was a look at the frauds who wrote it, or sponsored it. Didn’t need Roberts for that. We did need him to confirm our knowledge, officially. So that we could ditch it. Officially. Legally. Well, he failed, but we will not! “Chief Justice”, my foot. LOL. (Probably “Cherokee Chief” Justice, like one of those other “Haaarvard” frauds! All PC, all AfA, all FRAUDS. “Good Housekeeping Seals of Approval”, anyone? No, thanks!)
I lament any expansion of taxing authority being that the rent seekers are soon to be a majority; this decision seems to make it easier for them to enforce their will.
Is it not equally as dangerous that it was a 5-4 decision on the question of the commerce clause? One more Liberal Justice and Congress will further its powers via that clause. There is not much good news here, despite what Will, Trende and Krauthammer are suggesting.
Simply put, the court IS the federal government.
We are truly delusional if we believe the court is somehow against the growth of the federal government or in any manner has the goal of decreasing its power.
Why would the court vote to decrease any power or wealth the federal government seeks to garner to itself?
We expect libs like Ginsberg to lie, obfuscate and distort because we know they do not live in reality. Their sick minds twist reality daily. They themselves do not know what is real for they ascribe to a world view in which reality itself is just a construct they can manipulate at will.
Welcome to that club John Roberts. May your name live in infamy.
As a natural born citizen, I have come to realize that I am a legal alien in my own country.
But but but…”illegal” is the new “legal” so where does that leave us “legals?”
Too bad for you that said you were legal, oldguy.
eon,
“Obama said he would never raise taxes on the middle class- and passes the largest tax increase in world history. He has been shown up for the lying, conniving, cynical con artist, narcissist, and megalomaniac he is.”
Yes BUT: The rats and rabble they own will not give one stinking damn about this point. It won’t even register. Their are no longer enough of ‘us’ to fight this. We have lost and America is gone.
Frankly, this ruling is worse than if the law was upheld as a mandate under the commerce clause. At least any future mandates would require 60 votes in the Senate. The Supreme Court has set the ultimate legal precedent that a penalty for failure to adhere to a mandate is a tax which can be passed with a simple majority in the Senate. Mandates with a penalty can now be inserted in budgets and be passed through reconciliation.
Cession is now the only valid course. Mere rebellion will not work. The drones will pick off any small bands. Whole states must secede. It will be passive. No armed conflict is necessary. The military will not obey orders to invade. We can put the union back together in short order. The capital should be moved to Kansas or Oklahoma. The dark blue states can be starved into compliance.
The title to this piece says it all.
If all the folks lauding Roberts’s ruling as one of the great Machiavellian stings of our time happen to be correct, then we’ve got a Corleone as America’s sitting Chief Justice, and that is an even graver issue than that presented by the current occupant of The People’s House.
Furthermore, I am one who thinks that the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States of America ought to ring throughout the land with same simplicity, clarity, and truth that grace our founding documents, and that the demonstrated ability to reason and craft such rulings should be the sine qua non for admission to its offices.
The impact of Clinton’s example to the youth of our country has done incalculable harm on an unimaginable scale to a culture that was already staggering against the ropes. The last thing we need is a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to deliver the coup de grace.
Like others posting here, I was more than a little stunned by the ObamaCare decision and Justice Roberts part in it. Upon reflection, I am warming to this interim outcome. It would seem Justice Roberts’ focus was or became spiking the Commerce Claus Cannon, without becoming the central election issue. The liberals, on the court, came up with the fiction that it was a tax all along. Now Obama dares not call it anything but a new HUGE TAX. Now the ALL Democrats are forced to defend how this sausage was made! They have a no upside issue. He made it clear without openly stating, “If you want this law changed, you must change both the administration, and the Senate, by an overwhelming margin!”
Avoid frontal assault on fortified positions.
“…the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process.”
But non-citizens do. And violent criminals are afforded more rights than law-abiding business owners, farmers, home-owners.
This cannot end well; it’s as if it’s purposefully being structured so it cannot end well.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Affordable Care Act explicitly states that there will be no punishment for those who do not pay the penalty for failing to obtain insurance. Therefore your entire premise is wrong. But now things have changed. If it’s a “tax” and not a penalty, then people have to pay or there will be repercussions with the IRS. Roberts has outed Obama and Congress. Hey, guess what–he’s a pretty smart guy.
So if there’s no punishment for not paying the penalty, then I can simply ignore it on my tax return? As one who is currently without health insurance, my first line of defense is to minimize my withholdings to ensure that there is no refund for the IRS to tap.
If the penalty is the only ‘tax’ not paid, does that mean the IRS can’t come after me for non-payment or for filing a ‘false’ return?
Nope, sorry Pat.
The IRS need only to take it to court, and if it ends up with me on final appeal, you’ll pay, with penalties.
You wouldn’t say the Obama administration is known for law-abiding or statute respecting behavior. The violent rhetoric directed towards the court if it were to have made the ‘wrong’ decision is an example of the mindset behind this lawlessness. If the court had disallowed the mandate its likely the administration would try to enforce it anyway (despite the ruling) by the original statute or a different mechanism. Its possible that the Obama administration threatened the court or Roberts himself in some way (perhaps by telling him what they were going to do if he gave the ‘wrong’ answer) – admittedly speculation but considering the character of our country at this time don’t put it past them. This would cause a constitutional crisis with the executive and judicial branches at odds. Perhaps Robert merely chose the prudent but not very brave road of giving the government what it wants when it has the upper hand.
At a certain point there will be blowback if efforts to overturn the law are protracted. The Health care and insurance industry need above all else stability. Insurance companies and hospitals have to make decisions based on long term predictions and are likely to hold back or make mistakes if they cannot.
The public may see this as a “case closed” scenario even if the law is unpopular.
What I find so pugnatious is that Roberts and SCOTUS found a way for states to be exempt from some of this monster bill, but we the taxpayer have to capitulate and be endentured to it. So in many ways we the people are obligated to pay our taxes with no representation or redress. This is what totally sucks about this bill.
Does this decision turn on the personality and character of John Roberts, about whom we had prior hints of his view of the court and himself as chief justice and the criticism the court took in the wake of Bush v. Gore ?
The guy who goofed up during Obama’s swearing in, the individual who may have taken to heart Obama’s not so oblique attempts at intimidating the court?
People are aghast at such momentous decisions resting on 9 individuals with known and fixed interpretations of the size and extent of the role of government in Americans’ lives.
Here it comes down to one single individual.
I hope they have fun implementing this piece of sh!t and the 5000 or so new IRS agents hired to collect the penalty find their task insurmountable.
Listening to left-wing radio, I heard rage and fury.
He did indeed out their tax scheme.
Roberts clarified the issue, reigned in the stealth ‘Commerce Clause’ expansion, and preserved the role of the court.
He passed the hot potato back to electoral politics. To us.
We vote for legislators; it’s not the Court’s job to reform health insurance, elect presidents, or overturn the duly passed laws of 46 states (Roe v. Wade).
We all joined the national union benefits plan yesterday.
(Public) unions sell overpriced insurance and a pension plan, that they may rob the vast fund pools to enrich themselves and elect fellow mafiosi.
Now we can all pay dues to reelect Democrats forever.
Step two will be the simple removal of two words from the Social Security act.
“Under 65.” You’re now on the union pension plan too.
Watch your savings become ‘guaranteed annuities’, administered by captured overseers- as were the mortgage market, banking, Wall St., commodities such as agriculture, pharma, minerals, metals, energy, and insurance and medicine today. CEO’s pay protection to survive and thrive under ‘state guidance’; public-private partnerships were called ‘Corporatism’ by Mussolini. Certain sectors grew fat and rich enough to control our economy and politics on government contracts after WWII. Well, it did lift the boats.
Back to you, voters.
well stated Andrew
the ease with which Roberts lies and cheats the American public. He is on par with the liars Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Bohoner.
If there isn’t a clean sweep of these criminals in November (if there is an election at all, honest or otherwise and I suspect it will be dishonest if it occurs).
The rule of law died when obama claimed victory in 2008.
Conservatives think they can debate and dialogue a fix are delusional.
I find it laughable and sad that people like Charles Krauthammer make excuses for the progressive/liberal/marxist Roberts.
simple put the simplest answer is correct …both the Arizona ruling and the obamacare ruling show that Roberts is a marxist (or just a useful idiot, it really doesn’t matter).
HOW could any intelligent man think that those two ruling were constitutional.
evil is all I can say that the American people have for government …pure evil.
I find it laughable and sad that people like Charles Krauthammer make excuses for the progressive/liberal/marxist Roberts.
Waiting to hear Krauthammer’s take yesterday, and it was uncharacteristically obsequious and meek.
AGREED …MEEK AND INCORRECT.
krauthammer’s only “brave” moments are when he proves himself stupid slamming sarah palin
What, you think he wants to end up like that judge in Tucson?
Judge Judas
Americans to Roberts: “Et tu, Brute?”
Roberts justified Obama and the Dems favorite fraud confidence game of “bait and switch.” The same hustle went for the Porkulus, Cash for Clunkers, and Shovel Ready Jobs. Roberts clarified the definition of “individual mandate” and then went a step too far of legitimizing the lie rather than making the POR congress pay for their misspoken phrase.
It’s almost like GWB put Clinton on the court – the constitutionality of Obamacare depends on what the definition of a “tax” is. Going forward can we stop calling this health insurance since the essential features of insurance are eliminated by the act. The group coverage and payment companies are essentially government sponsored enterprises not unlike Fannie, Freddie, AMTRAK or the USPS.
The irrefutable soundness of Madison’s view is made plain by any attempt to give a specific meaning to that portentous phrase the general welfare:
1. Can that be the welfare of a select few?
2. Or must it be the welfare of a majority, as Congress sees it?
3. Or can it only be the welfare of all Americans?
Case 1 is indistinguishable from robbery under color of law. Case 2 runs into problems of evaluation: How does Congress determine that majority, or who belongs to it, in an objective fashion? It would seem that neither can sustain the burden of the phrase.
Case 3 is the interesting one. For after all, what federal action would qualify as indisputably in service to the welfare of all Americans? Exactly and only the common defense — i.e., the protection of the United States and its denizens against invasion, expropriation, and extortion — which is addressed by the enumerated powers that follow the taxation clause.
Thoughts?
…don’t think the communist worry about your points.
this never was about anything but control.
My thought is…
In all these subtle interpretation games we play with framers’ intent, none of those individuals could ever have imagined the games people would play with their straightforward, common sense language.
A game? What game? The language needed fixing, that’s all.
Not exactly about obama care, but it is about the dems and thier plans and results:
Sorry this is so long, but well worth the read:
10 Poorest Cities in America and how did it happen
City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level
1. Detroit , MI 32.5%
2. Buffalo , NY 29.9%
3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8%
4. Cleveland , OH 27.0%
5. Miami , FL 26.9%
5. St. Louis , MO 26.8%
7. El Paso , TX 26.4%
8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2%
9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1%
10. Newark , NJ 24.2%
What do the top ten cities (over 250,000) with the highest poverty rate all have in common?
Detroit, MI (1st on the poverty rate list)
hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1961
Buffalo, NY (2nd) hasn’t elected one since 1954
Cincinnati, OH – (3rd) since 1984
Cleveland, OH – (4th) since 1989
Miami, FL – (5th) has never had a Republican mayor
St. Louis, MO – (6th) since 1949
El Paso, TX – (7th) has never had a Republican mayor
Milwaukee , WI – (8th) since 1908
Philadelphia, PA – (9th) since 1952
Newark, NJ – (10th) since 1907
Einstein once said,
‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’
It is the poor who habitually electDemocrats ..
yet they are still POOR.
“You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up
by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man
by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage
by taking away people’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them,
what they could and should do for themselves.”
Abraham Lincoln
Excellent post.
More from Abe:
Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be
maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as
a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and
you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts,
not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert
the Constitution.
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all
the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Sez who?
Excellent! Can you provide the source/link? I want to use this as a reference.
Well, this is what you get when you put lawyers in charge of the country. Even the good ones are consumed with gaming the system, whatever the system happens to be at the moment.
Nobody should be surprised that Roberts turns out to be a statist. Lawyers are nothing if not master liars.
But I’m ok with the ruling. I have a hunch that Patrick Henry didn’t spend much time whining that the courts in England weren’t being reasonable about the rights of the colonists.
We should treat this the same way. Either we want to hand over our life, libery and happiness to a bunch of corruptocrats whose aim is to loot the country, or we don’t. Our decision.
And btw, Romney is only marginally better. He’s the only non-violent path at the moment, and we should run with him for the moment. But as somebody on one of these forums said yesterday, what kind of justices do you think he will appoint….the Roberts type or the Clarence Thomas type? The answer is obvious.
The only choice in this November’s election is between one weak man who is actively and overtly working to subvert the American Constitution and another relatively weak man who would at least find himself constrained somewhat by that Constitution.
These days, you’ve got to have something of the egomaniacal showman to even seek the Presidency.
The best & the brightest don’t run for this office.
Great article and some great responses that followed. Judging by the commentary, there are alot of informed and angry people out here. This is not over, it has just begun. The American Revolution began with a tax, maybe freedom’s lighting will strike again. It is said that when God wants to punish you, He gives you what you wish for. Obama and the Left got what they wished for, Dear Lord, let the punishment begin.
This is what happens when you have an intellectually lazy electorate who expect some else do the heavy lifting for them. In a democracy you deserve the government you elect. Roberts rational proves that judges are noting more than politicians in a black robes . Apparently he cares about his legacy more than the constitution or his country’s future. Hopefully this November all those who complaining get out of their chair and vote out all those lying SOB’s. As they say if you don’t care for yourself no one else will.
mad geek attraction in the sideshow of a two-bit traveling carnival, once his medications wear off.
I don’t know what Roberts was thinking but he got the ‘mandate’ declared a tax. So, now the House repeals said tax and challanges the Senate to oppose repeal. Not as final as declaring Obamacare unconstitutional but a good campaign tactic.
Thank you Mr. McCarthy, I wonder why there are people like Kagan and Roberts on the court and not you or Bork et. al. Just like the birth certificate issue or immigration, the left don’t believe they have to follow the laws they don’t approve of. And when the rule of law is not followed, the rule of anarchy and violence is not far behind.
I have health insurance, so I’m not going to be affected by the tax. What really cheeses me off is the tax penalty for renting rather than owning. People who own homes get huge tax writeoffs. I rent, so I end up paying higher taxes. The government is literally forcing me to own a home.
The homeowner’s tax break isn’t what you think it is. (The first time break that some homebuyers got in the last few years is an aberration.) When you rent, you call the landlord when something breaks. If you own a home and something breaks, like the heating system or AC, you call the repairman and you pay the bill. It doesn’t matter if you own or rent. Housing is an expense, any way you look at it. The tax breaks for buying are temporary. They go away as you pay down your mortgage. The reduced tax bill doesn’t cover the interest payments. Property taxes are another form of rent.
Owning and renting have different advantages and disadvantages. It all depends on what you want more. Owning a home isn’t cheap. What you save in taxes you spend in upkeep.
I understand the differences between owning and renting. In my area buying right now is just not cost-effective. However, the tax benefits for owning are significant — the cost of a mortgage can be roughly 1/3 the total purchase price of the house. What I don’t understand is the difference between a so-called tax penalty for not having health insurance and a so-called tax benefit paying mortgage interest. Why not say that get a tax benefit for having health insurance and a tax penalty for renting? The bottom line is the same.
Once he changed the legislation written in the bill, it became a new bill and needs to be resubmitted to the House for passage, otherwise it could be done all the time.
Not if I have anything to say about it, Bob.
..and you won’t have anything to say about it, John.
Laws are very complex and the Constitution is the most complex of all bodies of law. Yet, the Constitution is a much thinner (physically) than any book of laws.
Lawyers who graduate to the Supreme Court level already understand that the Law is about much more than mere laws. For a nation to be a nation of laws, laws cannot be blunt instruments but scalpels.
Consider what Roberts has done. He has confounded both Republicans and Democrats and all pundits and journalists who sail with them. He has confounded them to such an extent that nobody has yet understood what he has wrought. Republicans, after the fury of rejection has quietened, will begin to realise that a new path has opened up to definitively unseat Obama. Democrats, after the first flush of victory, will realise that they have just been handed a great big tree-trunk to carry to the elections.
Democrats, expecting the mandate to be overturned, were preparing a ferocious assault on “conservative judicial activism” which taken with the Bush-Gore verdict, would have gutted the Court and destroyed the three-pillar structure of governance. Now, to their utter surprise, they will find that they still have their mandate but will now have to levy the largest ever tax (for an inactivity) on the middle-class to make the mandate work.
Republicans will discover that, if they want to unseat Obama, will have to do it themselves and not have Daddy Roberts do it for them. Unseating Obama is a political, not a judicial task. Also, Obamacare will be even more of a mobilising issue for independents and conservatives than it was in 2010.
With this verdict, the 2012 elections have just become the Republicans’ to lose.
I agree with McCarthy. The CJ has participated in the unconstitutional screwing of America. I have failed to see ONE compelling argument to the contrary. Roberts had to make himself not only violate the Constitution, but sound insane in doing so. Roberts must be impeached when the candya$$ Rinos wake up!
Try it if you dare. I’ll declare myself incompetent. Who can argue about that?
Self-confessed incompetent men must be removed from office due to inability to discharge said office.
The four liberal justices who joined in Chief Justice Roberts’ majority were not champions of the “it’s really a tax” argument. They thought the mandate was fine, and would have been quite happy if Justice Kennedy had lined up with them and ruled on that basis. So apparently, only one of nine justices — the chief — was behind the novel (and legally specious) “it’s a tax” rationale. The four liberals simply used Roberts’ muddled “tax” argument as a vehicle for sustaining Obamacare — sustaining it on a somewhat bizarre analysis that hardly anyone thinks would survive objective legal scrutiny. In my view, this is a frightening precedent. One man, on the basis of an unsustainable legal theory, has changed our country, possibly permanently. And if Obama is reelected, the precedent set yesterday will help THAT man, with no effective Congressional or judicial oversight, change our country in ways we haven’t even had nightmares about yet.
One man, that’s right. Me.
You sound like Oliver Wendell Holmes was your hero, your idol !
JK – Thank you. Should of done a better proof reading job!
While I generally think that Roberts threw in the towel based on fears of government reprisals I do think there is another factor. I believe that Roberts was somewhat of a disciple of William Rehnquist. Chief Justices may determine who writes the opinion assuming they join in the majority. Rehnquist used the tactic of joining the majority but writing the opinion (and thus limiting its scope) in some controversial cases.
I believe he did this in Dickerson v. US (where the court invalidated a law that purported to strike down the Miranda warning requirement). Rehnquist joined the (if I remember correctly) 6-3 majority and the opinion – while it struck down the law – didn’t go as far as the court liberals would have wanted had they been able to write the opinion.
Rehnquist wasn’t the deciding vote in that case though.
America Will Survive even with the misjustive to millions of americans by the Supreme Court.
That is our fervent hope, but by no means assured.
I have something for everybody to consider by viewing this video on the decision by the Supremes!
Reality Check: If Healthcare Law Is A Tax Is It Now Invalid?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyLU9-VqVxY
I’m very disappointed in the Court. That 5 Supremes could read words that have meanings, and then vote to allow Congress to act in this way is disheartening. In the question of a limiting notion behind this new and novel interpretation of “taxation,” what now could stop Congress from imposing a tax penalty on the non-broccoli eater? None, that I can see. This is so clearly a penalty (fine) impost, and NOT a uniform and universal tax, that Congress seems to have the green light to legislate anything they want, so long as the penalty for non-compliance is a monetary fine collected by the IRS.
We need to repeal this awful law, and to control Supreme Court appointments over the next 4-8-12-16 years. Democrats are just bad for freedom and hostile to responsible, self-motivated people, apparently feeling no need to ever restraint Government giveaways.
The choice is so clear. Vote for Scott Walker, not Jerry Brown. Vote for Texas, not California. Vote for Republicans, not to become Greece.
In general, this is what I see. it might take 20-25 yrs. State rights go bye-bye. Same with SCOTUS as they can no longer protect our rights, so the trust erodes away. We will all be Californias as the Democrats will have every incentive to tax away and help out the unions etc. with no way for us to stop it. All power will be in Fed hands so expect more corruption in Washington as the states become less important.
As far as I can tell the threat that BO made to the court paid off for him. Also so many,almost all, took completely opposite stances on the issues. As a business owner I would suspect that someone was tampering with the people and their decisions because they can’t all change directions at once, by chance.
Yeah this is corruption at its worst.
Welcome to the USSA comrades. Wait, the soviets actually had a rule of law didn’t they? Who knows what the law is in this country? It is as shifting as the sands of the seashore. Constitution? What constitution? Are you serious? It depends on which side of the bed the justices(sic) get up on today.
I will be practicing the goose step today so I will be prepared. Heil Roberts and chairman 0!
Don’t forget also to practice raising your arm (right or left, doesn’t matter any more) at just the right speed and angle!
I bet Roberts received hundreds of credible death threats against him and his family from angry, violent Liberals hell-bent on winning by any means necessary. Roberts was cowed into submission.
Ginsberg should’ve been thrown off the bench for her assertion that the US Constitution wasn’t a good starting point for any country developing its own constitution. She violated her oath at a point where she should’ve been championing our Constitution.
Well, Don’t forget that Justice Kagan said that big changes could come in America because of her, so I wonder her play? Doesn’t matter, because I’m now convinced that we’re a doomed nation anyway and doomsday will not benefit the Supreme Court members either for the most part.
Roberts footnote in history will not be kind. he made a laughing stock of the impartiality of the supreme court. his ruling is convoluted, silly and just wrong.
not even from a political point of view.!
he tried to come off as a serious jurist. with snotamayor and keggan we expect those kinds of stupid untruthful rulings.
nice crowd to run with Roberts. who shall now be referred to as Benedict “Roberts” Arnold.
An INFERIOR, IMMORAL health care plan that NO ONE WANTS and CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY.
Massive spending as if there is no tomorrow. Fighting wars we have no money for. Massive borrowing.
The Massive giving away of BILLIONS of dollars every year to other countries, including the OIL-WEALTHY Middle East, Hamas-controlled Gaza and the Palestinian Authority organization who fill their war chests, build mansions and LAUGH all the way to the bank with FREE INFIDEL MONEY. Whilst in America, homeless shelters are filled to capacity; tent cities have sprung up all over the U.S. filled with desperate, jobless, homeless Americans.
Massive debt. The MASSIVE printing of paper money out of thin air to DELIBERATELY create out-of-control inflation. There is no question that the total DESTRUCTION of America’s economy is PLANNED. The results will be horrifying. In the once wealthy and great nation of America, millions of Americans will become destitute, hungry and homeless with no money or resources to help them.
Organic, non-GMO avocado, fruit and nut trees and berries must be planted in all of our nation’s cities’ and towns’ parks to help the many millions of Americans who will soon be in a desperate struggle to survive because of the frightening, highly destructive economic policies of our government.
Watch it. And weep for our great nation and people:
FALL Of The Republic – The Presidency Of Barack H Obama – The Full Movie HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8LPNRI_6T8&feature=player_embedded
Awesome One Minute video REMEMBER in NOVEMBER!
America Crossroads: Operation Hot Mic
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?feature=player_embedded&v=-Czo5Vf8KZs
From Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com:
Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision hands federal government unlimited power to force you to spend 100% of your paycheck on things you don’t even want.
Regardless of whether you agree with the fundamentals of
Obamacare, the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled the
federal government has the power to tax Americans into mandatory purchases of private industry products means an end to economic freedom in America.
Why? Because it hands the federal government the power to force the American people to buy anything the government wants or face tax penalties for refusing to do so. It is the equivalent of announcing a federal monopoly over all private purchasing decisions.
Thus, the government can force Americans to buy anything it wants by simply characterizing the forced payment as a “tax.”
Perhaps the worst side effect is that Obamacare isn’t really about health care at all. It’s about protecting a Big Pharma monopoly over medicine; forcing consumers to buy into a system that offers zero coverage for alternative medicine, nutritional therapies, natural remedies or the healing arts. It forces consumers to buy into a system of monopoly medicine of drugs and surgery…
http://www.naturalnews.com/036329_Obamacare_Supreme_Court_economic_freedom.html
I am fed up with the weasel wrangling. mr. roberts should have required ms. kagan to recuse herself for her blatant conflict of interest, and the rest of us should not have to be lawyers to figure out the implications of a ruling.
SNAP OUT OF IT!!! Obama and #ObamaTax can be DEFEATED! Do you want to be the whiner in “Aliens” or tell BFD OBAMA this on Nov. 6th: Yippee ki yay, M-Fu##er!!!
So, theoretically, since there are no constitutional limits to taxing inactivity to promote welfare and the common good, if it were passed by congress in a political process, however fraudulently, a Jizya poll tax is constitutional. For that matter, exorcising your right not to vote could be taxed: call it the failure to go to the poll Poll Tax, as contrasted to the unconstitutional southern poll taxes to keep blacks from voting. I suppose that means a get-out-of-the-draft poll tax used during the civil war, valued at about forty thousand dollars today, would be constitutional. Of course, the draft and that poll tax caused the violent New York draft riots. Obviously, since we have universal peace and goodwill among humans, no one is planing on a military draft with a forty thousand dollar draft tax exemption from the killing and dying for the beautiful people.
A parting word to you nitpickers.
I’m not covered by Obamacare, but you are.
And it’ll never be repealed, either.
And it’ll never be repealed, either.
———————–
You couldn’t be more wrong, John. It will be repealed….right after social security, Medicaid, Medicare, Roe v. Wade, etc.
In the meantime, we get to call it a tax, and try to make Obama look bad. Hurray, we win!!!
All of this hair-on-fire hysteria from CONservatives over a lame, tepid, business-friendly attempt at “reform” by Obama and the Democrats that will do little to reduce costs that make health care in America DOUBLE the per-capita costs of the next closest major industrial nation. And, the reason it doesn’t is that due to conservative resistance, single-payer health care – the most cost-effective solution – wasn’t even considered and attempts to restrain “free enterprise”. Obama even struck a deal with the pharmaceutical companies that gives them continued freedom to gouge Americans so that he wouldn’t have to face the unlimited spending they would have mounted against any attempt to restrain their continued gorging at the trough.
It’s particularly hilarious to watch the mind-boggling twists of logic from conservatives about the mandate considering using a mandate to force everyone to participate in the system originated in a right-wing think tank and was used by Rawmoney in Massachusetts. But, consistency is highly over-rated in the world of conservatives.
Meanwhile, America continues to be the only industrial democracy with a for-profit health care system. You’d think the vaunted “free enterprise system” that conservatives slobber over would have done something to reduce costs but America spends DOUBLE per-capita to the next closest country for medical care while leaving tens of millions of Americans without any coverage. There’s your conservative “solution” to health care using “free enterprise”. And, what they will do to solve this problem . . . . (wait for it) . . . NOTHING.
hundreds of millions of citizen slave workers will end up with fourth rate strictly rationed government controlled health care with long waits and indifferent “medical practitioners” in 6-to-a-room run-down rat trap health centers like in every other broke and broken socialist industrial “democracy” with its euthanasia for elders in vast numbers decided by bureaucratic death panels, without any review or appeals, while certain elite hand-picked favorite crony companies, illegal aliens, and other exceptions, including all federal and state employees, and members of Congress, and, don’t forget, muslims only, of course.
And, the reason it doesn’t is that due to conservative resistance, single-payer health care – the most cost-effective solution – wasn’t even considered and attempts to restrain “free enterprise”.
As Bawney Fwank said, this Obamacare deal is just the first step in destroying the insurance industry and coming to where all the Leftists really want to be, single payer, through the backdoor.
Couldn’t get it through the front door, you see.
Meanwhile, America continues to be the only industrial democracy with a for-profit health care system.
You’re probably not old enough to know OBI CON, that it is precisely government’s progressive interference in “healthcare” that has screwed it up over decades. Or to appreciate the difference between countries attempting it with much smaller populations (and it struggles mightily in both Canada and Britain, even France) and a huge disparate country of 310 million.
You don’t think medical practitioners should make a profit ?
So, if you were concerned about solving the problem of the U.S. having DOUBLE the per-capita costs of health care of the next modern, industrial democracy (Switzerland), what is YOUR solution given you don’t want single-payer (extended Medicare to all)? Ok, don’t worry because I won’t be holding my breath waiting for your answer. I would have been long dead if I’d waited for the Republicans who campaigned in 2010 against Obamacare with the promise of laying out their own plan (which, of course, they never did because they have no plan).
For DECADES, the U.S. has had a system that denies service to millions, forces many others with some form of insurance to avoid expensive procedures, cost more than ANY other system in the world, burdens states and the federal government with exorbitant costs, and has an expensive middle-man (the insurance companies) driving up costs and restricting or denying services but conservatives have done nothing. There solution and YOURS is more of the same . . . or NO solution.
And your laughable excuse is that the system would have been great if the progressives hadn’t “interfered” (what, by creating Medicare one of the most popular programs ever?). Wow, it must be something else living in a parallel, make-believe universe.
At least the Democrats have tried to fix this mess and have done so with insurance-friendly solutions. We should be so lucky to live in Canada whose system (if you knew ANYTHING about it) makes our’s look pathetic in comparison.
And your laughable (sic) excuse is that the system would have been great if the progressives hadn’t “interfered” (what, by creating Medicare one of the most popular programs ever?). Wow, it must be something else living in a parallel, make-believe universe.
Yes, sweet pea, but you’ll never get there.
Because you can’t.
Your brainwashing has been so thorough, you can’t even begin to lift your head above the muck of propaganda.
We should be so lucky to live in Canada whose system (if you knew ANYTHING about it) makes our’s (sic) look pathetic in comparison.
Canada’s shooting craps, along with Britain. People who don’t want to wait months (or decades) for certain procedures come south, if they can afford it.
Just as I thought, you know absolutely NOTHING about the Canadian system (except what the reich-wing echo chamber has told you and that you dutifully regurgitate). What a slobbering imbecile.
“For DECADES, the U.S. has had a system that denies service to millions”
Then how do you explain the fact that, going back to the days of Hillarycare, your glorious “progressive” Representatives and other Charismatic Cult Leaders have been unable to provide even one valid example of someone denied medical care in America because of inability to pay?
One helpful hint: even illegal aliens are provided care in any American E.R. without regard to ability to pay. Another hint: what does the fact that you are flat-out wrong in this case mean about whatever else it is that you think you know?
God, where do they find you fools?
Yes, emergency care is provided to those that make it there. Meanwhile, we have the worse overall level of health-care effectiveness of all industrial nations because most people avoid or limit needed care or it’s denied because of pre-existing conditions or they simply can’t or won’t spend the money for the costly American system. We are the ONLY country of all the major, industrial countries where you can lose your home if you become sick because of the expense of medical care. Nothing like this exists anywhere else.
That’s your status quo and that’s what the CONservatives have done nothing to improve while fighting every effort at improvement (with the same hysterical lies that they have used for years including back when Medicare was created).
Obijon: “Yes, emergency care is provided to those that make it there.”
Then you’ve just agreed with me, since anyone can get to an E.R…except you? I practiced E.R. medicine for nearly 30 yrs.. We are required to “evaluate” without regard to ability to pay, and then to in effect treat everyone – emergency or not – according to the “standard of care”, which of course we want to do anyway; and we saw to it that it got done, or at least I did.
So where’s the one example I asked for? Simply repeating the Progressive Cult’s dumb a** memes works amongst the Cult members, but it doesn’t cut it in the real world:
1] The vaunted Medicare program is near implosion. Now it has even Death Panels, IPAB, which will decide whether to treat you depending on your ‘value to society’, cost-benefit or otherwise.
2] The “medical bankruptcy” claim is largely a myth: what the “studies” did was really only to note how frequent medical debt was claimed in bankruptcies. The first “shocking”, Cambridge study found the average medical debt was around $11,500, which doesn’t cause anyone to go bankrupt.
I have consulted an infamous radio goo roo and have the definitive take on the ruling written by and issued by John Roberts yesterday.
1. As he mentions in the decision, Roberts was heavily influenced by the notion that the Court is under extreme pressure to examine every which way it can to find legislation constitutional as opposed to unconstitutional. He cites an Oliver Wendell Holmes case in this context.
2. In his capacity as chief justice, Roberts is/was acutely aware of accusations of judicial activism leveled against the Court. (against courts in general, for that matter)
Intent on avoiding accusations of judicial activism, Roberts bent over backwards to find this piece of legislation constitutional. He writes that it isn’t up to the court to ponder the quality or lack thereof of legislation duly enacted by the people. (I guess that includes legislation jammed through by backroom deal making and reconciliation against the expressed will of approximately 60% of the population.)
He basically had to re-write the legislation to find it constitutional and, ironically enough, engaged in extreme judicial activism.
The fact that this particular kind of tax bears no resemblance to Congress’ enumerated powers of taxation under Article I apparently wasn’t relevant.
The author doesn’t have to draw analogies with a narcotics versus stolen property prosecution. Roberts has given us his requirements for establishing when something is a penalty. Arguably that is in the power of a Supreme Court Justice.
His statement was that if a thing be a penalty then a person thus penalized would have to be guilty before the bar of justice for an unlawful act. Since that is not the case here, it isn’t a penalty. It is more like a fee, and a fee is close to a tax.
The problem is that isn’t even remotely true that for a person to be charged a penalty that they would have to be guilty of some unlawful act – or something close to it.
IRS penalties are an example. They are invoked because the government calculates you actually owe more in taxes than you calculated on your return. Unlawful acts, either specific, in kind, or in general, or in a sense do not play any role in how, when and why the government imposes a penalty.
Robert capacity to make picturesque caricatures has nothing to do with it.
What do you know about anything, stupid?
I’m Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and what I say goes, get it?
Do you have anything worth saying to say ?
Or are you just amusing yourself with snark and non sequiturs?
…the latter I would venture.
I say what I say. You’re the ones who do the rest.
Obamacare is clearly a case of forced sales, not a tax.
For Judge John Retards to have to go out of his way to lie to pretend it’s a tax, when it wasn’t even framed like it was ever supposed to be on in it’s own legislation, proves he’s a closet statist lefty gangster… but then, we already all knew that, when he opined, during his own nomination process, that:
“No one has any real individual human rights, except those afforded to us by the state! Whee!”
“No one has any real individual human rights, except those afforded to us by the state!
I have to assume that this statement is totally fictitious. If not, I’d like to know the source.
It might be one of those false urban legends.
In trying to verify it, I learned that Senator Obama voted against confirmation of his new best friend, pompously opining:
“I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. I do so with considerable reticence. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this reticence on my part proves unjustified and that Judge Roberts will show himself to not only be an outstanding legal thinker but also someone who upholds the Court’s historic role as a check on the majoritarian impulses of the executive branch and the legislative branch. I hope that he will recognize who the weak are and who the strong are in our society. I hope that his jurisprudence is one that stands up to the bullies of all ideological stripes.”
Nope, Barack, “majoritarian impulses” of exec. & legis. branch held the day.
Roberts ceded to you bullies.
What extraordinarily arrogant posturing and grandstanding by our greatest legal scholar and Chicagoan “guest-lecturer on constitutional law in-chief”. Am utterly overwhelmed by the sheer eloquence of his rhetoric! Did he use a teleprompter? Well, did he? — And Roberts “bowed” to such trash! Incredible!
With all due respect to Chief Justice Kennedy, what was he thinking when he referenced the Gibbons v. Ogden case in the Obamacare opinion? As evidenced by the two excerpts from Gibbons below which he evidently “overlooked,” he seemingly read Gibbons as “carefully” as the HoR read Obamacare before they passed that irresponsible legislation. And I predict that in the coming weeks that Democrats will not be able to reasonably defend key statements in Gibbons to justify the Court’s misguided Obamacare decision, a decision that possibly reflects the Article I, Section 8-ignoring stance of post FDR era activist justices.
The two key statements in Gibbons which cast serious doubt on the constitutionality of Obamacare imo are the following.
“State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress.” –Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” –Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
These excerpts from Gibbons should reasonably clarify for taxpaying voters that Congress has no constitutional authority to establish a healthcare related tax. Note that Article V requires Congress to first successfully petition the states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution which grants Congress the specific power to do so. In the meanwhile, government healthcare programs remain a unique, 10th Amendment protected right of the states as evidenced by RomneyCare.
So based on some glaringly loose threads concerning his “careful” review of previous case opinions in helping to decide the constitutionality of Obamacare, Kennedy may have given patriots a license to clean up all three branches of the Constitution-ignoring federal government.
THE MOVIE:
THE FICTITIOUS STORY OF president OBAMA CO STARS REID,PELOSI,HILLARY& MORE OUTSTANDING PEOPLE….
PRETEND YOUR SETTINGIN THE W.H. DRINKING COFFEE,TEA & BOOZE..TALKING ABOUT NOTHING UP COMES OBAMA, TALKING ABOUT H.C. & TAX’S. THE LIE’S GET BIGGER & BIGGER, THEY LAUGH OUT LOUD. AS president I CAN DO WHAT EVER I WANT, I NEED NO ONE,I BEEN DREAMING THIS FOR A LONG TIME IN MY HOMELAND. I’M TAKING THE U.S.A. DOWN, WAY DOWN, WE CAN TAX THE HELL OUT OF EVERY —- PERSON IN THIS DAMN COUNTRY. WE WILL START SLOW & BUILD IT UP A LITTLE @ A TIME, THEY WILL NEVER PICK IT UP, THEY LOVE ME IAM THEIR god…YOU KNOW THE REST OF HIS STORY.
Question for all of you, now that it is a tax, has any one looked into if HHS has the power to wave a tax due to all the waivers they have granted on this, are all the healthcare waivers now void?
Kudos, counselor.
You are mistaken on just one historical point, which is not altogether minor. Madison not only believed that the General Welfare clause referred to already specifically enumerated powers; he in fact believed it was an even further restriction of them.
To Madison, general welfare meant that Congress had, for example, the power to create post offices, but it could not create the Andrew McCarthy Post Office, which would be a post office that essentially benefited only you, your family and a few close friends and bill collectors, but did not meet the requirement that it benefited the general welfare of the people of the United States.
Otherwise, spot on. The ruling is a disaster.
there must be someone out there that knows LAWS. h.c. IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
THIS WAS BUILT ON LIES & CORRUPTION……….
Not 1 court will take up the eligibility challenge, Even Carter in California after he said what a serious issue having Obama usurp the Presidency, and then dropping it instantly. Do we believe there wasn’t some kind of threat to Roberts if the Obama Care law didn’t pass? I believe this president is hostile to this country.
Due process is only for a free people. Subjects are bound by the whim’s of their ruling class masters and will like it.
All praise Emperor Obama the bringer of hope and change…
“…bringer of hope and change…”? — More like “dope on the range”!
Re #16 STR “I suppose the Presidential term limit can then be “tweaked” and we’ll have Sultan Obama for life.”
And than some subjects (pardon me, citizens) will be selectively taxed as prescribed for in the sharia.
Sure, why not do the Russian thing…find a tax loophole that somehow allows Obama and Clinton to trade jobs every 6 years.
“Further, it shielded the political branches from accountability for raising taxes, knowing full well that, had Obama and the Democrats leveled with the public that ObamaCare entailed a huge tax hike, it would never have had the votes to pass.”
This is only one of several reasons why June 28, 2012 will be seen by future generations as the end of America as we know it. If Congress can pass any law they want, and the Supreme Court can later decide that they think it’s ok because it looks like a tax, then we are finished. Especially when, as in this case, they’ve set a precedent for upholding a ‘tax’ that A) was unconstitutionally initiated by the Senate, B) unconstitutional for being a direct tax vs an indirect tax, and C) intentionally passed in a way to purposely obfuscate the fact that it was in fact a tax.
In fact, the more I think about this, the more I conclude that Roberts has been one of “them” all along. The heretofore well-glued mask has slipped off. Game over. We’ve been coup-ed.
Mr. McCarthy,
Thank you very much for this article. Like you, I find no silver lining in this lawless ruling, but unlike you, cannot express the facts so eloquently.
For a few years now, I and many others have been calling for a constitutional convention. We have been marginalized, considered fringe. Now you might see what we saw. That it is inevitable that this has to be done to save the republic. The government has and will continue to resort to every trickery to promote its ends. A new chain must be smithed. Maybe a strengthening of the original will suffice. I hope so. But it must be done.
For those of us with an engineering bent, who are also politically aware, this has been obvious since the ’70s.
Once government has started to embrace fables to enact transfers of wealth, that government has lost touch with the people. Once unfairness is employed to undo unfairness, where can it all end but in disaster? Once nomenclature and legalese and the very definitions of words themselves are used to obscure the truth, instead of expose it, where does one turn for truth and justice?
Slavery was what caused the last civil war, and slavery is what will cause this one. When you steal the fruits of one’s labors at gunpoint to give to your friends, we have gone back past Magna Carta to William the Conqueror.
“Power comes from the barrel of a gun”.
They may well live to regret saying that. We were supposed to be past that sort of thing. It may be time to admit, we’re NEVER past that sort of thing. Never.
This ruling is nothing less than
The John Roberts Enabling Act of
19332012Points well taken; but it is a voluntary tax, quite easily avoided. I’m willing to bet that the author wouldn’t be subject to it. So, if you don’t like it, you can blame the Heritage Foundation, who, after all, came up with the idea,
Madison was highly educated and lived a life of service to his society, including Congressman, Secretary of State, and President, among many other positions (while his family plantation went to hell), and, despite many health issues, lived until a ripe, old age. 85, in fact.
Hamilton was a rake who was kind of a hothead, involved in all sorts of disreputable affairs, who died at Aaron Burr’s hand in a duel about his big mouth. He was 50 or so. He was a great soldier, bigger than life. Perhaps too big, in fact.
Which do you fancy the wiser of the two?
I think we now know.
I agree with this article completely. Roberts blew it. And he blew it not because he does not beleive in limited government, his comments on the commerce clause indicates he does. He blew it because he was too cowardly to apply that clear law to the case at hand, and instead caved to the Obama directed leftist campaign to threaten and undermine the legidimacy of the court.
As for this being some kind of master plan to get his commerce limits accepted, that is BS. The way to get his commerce limits enforced is to honestly apply them to the case at hand, and strike down the law. That would have established 2 very good precedents:
1. The court is serious about their comerce clause limits, and will stike down laws to enforce them.
2. If you want a law to be interpreted as a tax, you had better honestly call it a tax when you pass the law, and take the heat for the new tax.
As it is Roberts decision did establish 2 precedents, but 2 very undersireable ones:
1. Dishonest politicians can continue their fraudalent practice of saying something is not a tax, in the law and the debate, and then later claim it is a tax when it comes time to argue before the court. Roberts will cover for you and dishonestly rewrite the law, doing congresses job in the court, to make your non-tax a tax.
2. Concerted campaigns of intimidation against the legidimacy of the court work. Roberts will cave into that intimidation, and dishonestly rewrite the law for you, to get you the result you want, in order to be hailed as a moderate “statesman”.
Another thing about Roberts, his notion that it is the legislatures job to make sure laws are constitutional, and he is deferring to them, and the democratic process. The problem with that is if the legislature does not do their job, and passes a clearly unconstitutional law, and the court does not strike it down, then what good are they as a check on rogue gov power, they may as well be a rubber stamp. Further, Roberts did not even stick to his own criteria, of avoiding judicial activism, and not doing the legislatures job, because he rewrote the law, calling an illegal mandate a legal tax, and performed a legislative function in the court.
The only good side effect of Roberts cravenly dishonest decision, is we now realize that we cant depend on the court to restrain unconstitutional big gov, since even supposed conservatives are too cowardly, or too inconsistent, to enforce the limits they claim they beleive in. The only way it will be stopped is by us. We the people will have to throw all the rascalls out who passed this travesty of a law, and put in people that will repeal it. And if those people promise repeal, and dont vote that way (like some people are worried romney will do), we throw them out too.
The other thing we must continue to do is to put even more small government, original intent, constitutinalists on the court, so we have a 6-3 conservative majority. That way, even if one justice turns coward, we will still win. And having a 6-3 majority means they have company and are less likely to turn coward in the first place. And forget about judicial deference to the legislature, that just garantees a rubber stamp court, we must demand small government constitutional originalists, that will let good laws stand, and strike down bad ones. The right was wrong when they said the problem was judicial activism. Yes legislative deference is better than left wing judicial activism, but not much better. But when congress passes a bad law, judicial activism is right. The problem was having judges that beleived in a “living constitution” instead of judges that interpreted the clear original meaning of both the constitution,and the laws as actually written, not what the court may like them to be. By that criteria, even some of the right wing originalists go wrong some times, like when the conservative court said somebody growing pot on their own land, for their own use, never selling it, in a state where it was medically legal, were somehow engaged in interstate commerce. If you want pot banned, then ban it at the state level, where it is constitutionally allowed, not by falsely claiming something is commerce when it is not.
@Richard40: “I agree with this article completely. Roberts blew it. And he blew it not because he does not beleive in limited government, his comments on the commerce clause indicates he does. He blew it because he was too cowardly to apply that clear law to the case at hand, and instead caved to the Obama directed leftist campaign to threaten and undermine the legidimacy of the court.”
The question I keep asking myself is: Isn’t the whole thing even much simpler than we all think? — Like, if a law is found to be illegal (unconstitutional, in this case), then isn’t any provision which is a part of it and designed for the expressed purpose of compelling compliance, automatically just as illegal? Would that not have been sufficiently logical that nobody in his right mind could ever charge the court with “activism”, or not being impartial, too conservative? Was there any need of this “legerdemain” of redefining the penalty as a tax?
This cannot be a new legal principle, as over the last 2 centuries hundreds of laws must have been found wrong, and their associated penalties discarded at the same time as the offending law. Wasn’t all that Roberts had to do when he found the commerce clause an improper assertion of congressional powers, to then take the penalty assertion at face value, and call it a day? Isn’t that what it means when a judge is supposed to assume that a law passed by a legislature must be presumed constitutional? Words chosen by the legislature must be presumed to possess their common meanings? And, if neither obtains, then the whole thing is “out” for being “bogus”? As I understand it, there was no “severance provision” in this law, so that the penalty provision actually had to be taken at face value as a particularly intended part of the whole package deal!? If one key part of such a law is no good, then any other key parts go down with it?
So, actually, Roberts screwed up twice. First, he redefined the penalty as a tax. He got so involved with this, that: Second, in doing so he overlooked that this act inserted an implied severance clause where previously there had been none! Thus, the improperly parced legislation got itself piecemeal reactivated as a whole tax-law, whether properly or improperly passed as such remains to be seen! What a mess! As an engineer, I can only recommend the KISS principle! Only way to go.
That’s what we get for passing 2000+page bills nobody’s read, so we “…have to pass the bill to see what’s in it…”! My only take on this can be: On Nov. 6th, throw out every Dem in both houses who supported this “Late Term Abortion” of a legislative affront to the people. Make’em eat crow! Too bad we can’t do the same for Roberts and the other 4 liitle Obozos who thought this was OK! Or, can’t we?! Either way, not to forget the “Big Obozo” in the WH! The whole bunch of them need unemployment, post-haste!
I feel as though we all lost our freedom, even if Obama care is repealed, we still have this ruling hanging over our heads and our childrens heads,,,which gave away our freedom and gave all power to the Federal Government. A new seemingly unlimited power to compell us with taxes. Land of the free? I am very upset, what happened? It will take a 100 years to fix this, we lost our freedom….thats how I feel
Latest News: The most important man on Earth Tom Truong decided to grant the human free online college education from Harvard University & Princeston University to billions of people world wide. A few of his fans are currently enjoying it now. Go tell everyone. Enjoy his gift at coursera.org and edxonline.org and khanacademy.org
The article says that “[T]he dissent sharply demonstrates [that] the contention that the mandate could have been enacted as a tax is frivolous.” But the dissent says ‘The issue is not whether Congress had the power to frame the minimum-coverage provision as a tax, but whether it did so.” (Opinion at pages 17-18) The writer may want to read the dissent more carefully. Also, regarding the various posts about revenue bills originating in the House, please note that the dissent mentioned that only when arguing that it was evidence of the founders’ recognition that taxes are unpopular. If that requirement were a serious problem with the validity of this act, the dissent would have been all over it, and could have just said “Well, if the payment under this act is a tax in constitutional terms, then that provision is invalid because the bill did not originate in the House.” The reason that they didn’t is that the bill DID originate in the house. For elucidation, look for an article by Kelly Phillips Erb on Forbes.com, 6.29/12.
american eagle discount codes 20 off