Apparently Chief Justice Roberts went over to the dark side. Philip Klein tweets:
The bottom line from the dissent:So there were 4 votes -- including Kenndedy -- to strike down all of Obamacare. But Roberts saved it.
Scalia/Kennedy/Thomas/Alito dissent calls decision "a vast judicial overreaching."John Hayward comments via Twitter (older tweets at bottom):
You are now the property of the State, which can levy a special tax against you, if you don't spend your money as ordered.Husband tweets:
Remember, Obama didn't just lie about ObamaCare being a tax. He LAUGHED at the idea, on national TV.
Prognostication winners: those who said the ruling would be both a win and loss for Obama. His tax hike on the poor survived the Court.
Shouldn't a law be judged on what it actually says - i.e. "mandate" - rather than being rewritten by justices to keep it alive?
So the Court just changed a law nobody read to tell the authors what they really meant.
Hey, Obama voters! Your boy just hit poor and middle class Americans with the biggest TAX in history!
So statists can claim anything isn't a tax, to get it past voters, then the Court will change it to a tax later.
So basically, the Court rewrote a clearly unconstitutional law, in direct opposition to the statements of its authors, to keep it alive.
Yeah, pretty much what I thought. Goodbye, Constitution, it was nice knowing you.
So Obama lied, said O-care's not a tax, but SCOTUS says it is. Thanks for voting for this guy, chumps.
Hope you all have invested in broccoli.I'll probably add to this throughout the day.
Q: When is a tax not a tax? A: Never! B: When it's convenient C: When we say so. D: All of the above. And vice versa.
SCOTUSblog: Kennedy says: "In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
And the noose grows that much tighter. It is so much more comfortable this way! Less nasty freedom to stress us.
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Souter-ed!
ReplyDeletelololol you sound mad
ReplyDeleteJill,
ReplyDeleteTried to comment a couple of times. nothing came through. Here is my latest. Once my blog is up and running I'll link to you.
Things aren't as bad as you think.
This is one of many of my comments on different sites. Read Krauthammer's piece.
Topdog-
It doesn't matter what they are called, a tax is a tax. Social Security tax is tied to income, but it is NOT an income tax. If it were the "lockbox" lie would have never existed in the first place.
Neither is the point. Now the Left is going to have to eat their lunch of taxing everybody IF the Right gets its act together and renames Obamacare Obamatax.
As some of you have already figured out. The Supreme Court has ruled, under Roberts' decision, this is a tax. That makes it applicable to all other tax regulations, limits, appeals etc.
A "mandate" was new law and soundly rejected. The Left tried cute and got slapped down. I think Roberts did a good job trying to navigate an unwinnable situation.
Don't get me wrong. If I were him, I would have kicked it out so quick people would have wondered if we had heard it at all in the first place. But I'm stuck Constitutionally pre-Teddy Roosevelt in my way of thinking what the government can and should be allowed to do.
So don't confuse my empathy (I understand why he did it) with sympathy (I agree with what he did). When I chased bad guys for a living I understood why they killed, raped and robbed from their twisted mental perspective. It made it easier to catch them. But I arrested and prosecuted them for their crimes as I did not excuse their behavior.
Roberts did what Roberts did because he was trained and believes in a certain role in the overall process. In this I agree. Do we want nine people parsing and choosing what laws they like based on their view of whether or not it serves their personal preference? (Judicial activism)? Or do we want judges who will say, as bad as this is it is constitutional but we STRONGLY urge all of you to stop allowing your elected representatives to commit acts of stupidity and abuse.
Roberts knows what this is. He also knows it isn't his job to, as Ron White so aptly put it, "You can't fix stupid".
That is our job and it starts now and ends when we can feel secure in knowing big government loving, corrupt, spoiled career politicians no longer inhabit either party.
Just my opinion.
Roberts did us a favor by exposing the lie. We need to start calling Obamacare Obamatax right now.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-supreme-court-gives-conservatives-a-consolation-prize/2012/06/28/gJQAWyhY9V_story_1.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-why-roberts-did-it/2012/06/28/gJQA4X0g9V_story.html
And another comment. About how the SP maneuvers around stupid laws offered up by corrupt politicians.
ReplyDelete-Remember Citizens United. Congress (because of that idiot McCain) passes a law that is so stupid and wrong that it was thought it CANNOT survive SP scrutiny. GWB signs the law, and I think also stated openly as much.
However, the SP let it through! The people who wrote it were shocked and disappointed. The ruling was very similar. “You can elect people who do stupid things and make bad laws. But it is NOT our job to clean up their messes. It is the voters.” Hello 2010.
However, the SP waited until a victim was created by that bad law, heard that case and threw the law out. Why? That is the way lawyers are taught to act nowadays. It started back in the sixties where the RULE OF LAW was considered god-like and the only thing holding the society together. Morality was subjective, Justice is subjective, Law is the LAW.
(Ironically, the reason they took this route is because of the lawsuits that drove religion and morality out of society- but a discussion for another day)
As I remember, and I could be wrong, the whole “in and now out” process killed any possibility of the Congress pulling such stuff again.
Judo.
I think Roberts has a longer plan. Either this pisses off people and the old Big government guard catches it in the shorts in 2012. Or Romney repeals it with new majorities OR the States rebel and the SP rules they can (a very interesting scenario and supported by the other ruling) OR at some point harm is done to a State or a person and that interest is back in front of the court and the court rules on that harm- killing the whole thing.
Just pondering.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/06/28/im-not-down-on-john-roberts/
ReplyDeleteErick Erickson's piece. Well done.