Place Your Predictions - National Federation of Independant Business v. Sebelius - This Decision Will Determine Whether The Revolution Should Start Now!

[Robert Campbell]

A similar take, in somewhat more polished language, from Sean Trende:

http://www.realclear...bit_114646.html

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

One of the Volokh conspirators noted, earlier today, that the Scalia dissent consistently refers to Ginsburg's mostly concurring opinion as her "dissent." Indeed it does.

The hypothesis was that when Scalia drafted his opinion, Ginsburg was one of four justices dissenting from the decision of the other five, and that Roberts then switched sides, possibly during a conference in May.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Robert and Mikee:

I can understand the desperate attempts to "spin" the incoherent Roberts writings on this decision as a brilliant "gambit," thinking long term" etc.

That is bullshit. He had the chance to kill this viper and re-establish a strict view of the Constitution and he failed.

Now this nightmare will destroy thousands of businesses over the next two (2) years. Wreck a countless number of individuals abilities to make their own decisions on their health care and transfer massive power to the IRS to intimidate individual citizens and businesses.

That's just for starters.

Additionally, Roberts' completely unimaginable writings on the Arizona case last week ended, as Scalia noted, to a position that we can no longer refer to a State as sovereign. No original state would have signed on to this Constitution.

Finally, we are now completely in the hands of Romney, Boehner and the Rino's to save the Republic...which means, it is over.

Now how does everyone feel about a Strike?

Adam

Post Script: Is Roberts the new Souter light?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I feel like looking around to see if there is an effort to make a new constitutional amendment prohibiting "individual mandates."

I already don't like mandatory taxes, but at least the government taxes some kind of wealth that has been created. The "individual mandate" concept, even as it sneaks in under the Supreme Court's weasel equivalence of "tax," is a literal step toward slavery. The government now owns you just for being, irrespective of anything you produce or earn. It's only a tiny piece for the time being, but it exists. That's not good.

I watched Romney's reaction. He said he wants to abolish Obamacare if and when he gets elected. But it's for all the wrong reasons (too expensive, government between patient and doctor, yada yada yada). I suspect that he, if elected, will keep some version of this government ownership of the citizen concept alive as he trashes Obamacare.

Michael

[Selene]

Correct Michael.

He is the owner of the mandate "conceptually" and all his protestations of it being different because it was a State mandate rings hollow.

Intellectually and emotionally he is a limited statist.

This is a disaster.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Adam,

I think Erickson and Trende are onto something. This doesn't mean that we should approve of Chief Justice Roberts' behavior.

I can see how Roberts may be playing some kind of game, but I can't for the life of me see why he thinks it's worth playing. Either in terms of the internal politics of the Supreme Court, or in terms of the external politics.

OK, so in this opinion he's prepositioned a bunch of borrowed material that he might use the next time the Commerce Clause comes up.

And he's taken one step against Federal coercion of state governments.

And he's curried favor with the Obama regime, or gotten the Democrat-media complex off his back for a few months, or whatever.

In return, he's stretched the notion of a tax beyond recognition. He's turned the individual mandate into a tax for the purpose of licensing Congress to impose it—and into a non-tax for the purpose of denying that the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 could apply to it.

See Part II of Roberts' opinion, on the Anti-Injunction Act. I'm no legal expert, but I know farting and tap-dancing when I see them.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Adam,

I think Erickson and Trende are onto something. This doesn't mean that we should approve of Chief Justice Roberts' behavior.

I can see how Roberts may be playing some kind of game, but I can't for the life of me see why he thinks it's worth playing. Either in terms of the internal politics of the Supreme Court, or in terms of the external politics.

OK, so in this opinion he's prepositioned a bunch of borrowed material that he might use the next time the Commerce Clause comes up.

And he's taken one step against Federal coercion of state governments.

And he's curried favor with the Obama regime, or gotten the Democrat-media complex off his back for a few months, or whatever.

In return, he's stretched the notion of a tax beyond recognition. He's turned the individual mandate into a tax for the purpose of licensing Congress to impose it—and into a non-tax for the purpose of denying that the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867 could apply to it.

See Part II of Roberts' opinion, on the Anti-Injunction Act. I'm no legal expert, but I know farting and tap-dancing when I see them.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

Absolutely correct.

I want to re-read that section tomorrow when my rage has subdued, but your senses are correct.

He actually had to reach for the non-briefed issue to justify this law as constitutional. This tax dodge is extremely similar to the bait and switch job that the government's attorneys employed in the 1930's to squeeze Social Security into law. This blurring of insurance and tax was used then and here it is again.

It is astounding.

Adam

[Robert Campbell]

Adam,

I think Roberts may actually have handed Obama, Reid, and Pelosi a "Satan sandwich." They all swore that the individual mandate wasn't a tax, and now—alakazam!—it is.

But even if this was his intent all along, he's resorted to casuistry and manipulation to accomplish it.

Instead of reasoning by and ruling on the merits, which were damn clear in this instance.

Robert Campbell

[Selene]

Adam,

I think Roberts may actually have handed Obama, Reid, and Pelosi a "Satan sandwich." They all swore that the individual mandate wasn't a tax, and now—alakazam!—it is.

But even if this was his intent all along, he's resorted to casuistry and manipulation to accomplish it.

Instead of reasoning by and ruling on the merits, which were damn clear in this instance.

Robert Campbell

Robert:

This is being to clever by half.

This is precedent now.

Pelosi, Reid and the Peter Principle President could care less about hypocrisy.

They will just keep encysting the internal administrative state with rules, regulations, forms, protocols and civil service administrators that will continue the destruction of freedom on a daily basis.

I agree with you.

Adam

[Selene]

<p><p>My personal opinion, having listened to and read this man for years is that he is brilliant. He is difficult to listen to because he speaks so quickly and his mind is so precise, logical and knowledgeable.<br />

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Richard A. Epstein Guest<br />

<br />

Posted Thu, June 28th, 2012 12:05 pm<br />

<br />

<a href="mailto:repstein%20%20a.t.%20%20uchicago.edu">Email Richard A.</a> <a class="bbc_url" href="a class="bbc_url" href="<a class="bbc_url" href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/epstein" rel="nofollow" title="">http://www.law.uchic...aculty/epstein"

Taxation and regulation under the health care act

Chief Justice Roberts’ decision that sustains the individual mandate under the taxing power of the United States is filled with twists and turns that requires some words of protest. In the section of his opinion that deals with the Commerce Power, the Chief Justice accepts the view that Congress cannot regulate individuals unless and until they engage in some form of economic activity. He therefore accepts in full the arguments against the expanded reading of the Commerce Clause that were made by conservative commentators. He did so, as is his habit, without stopping a moment to analyze the enormous expansion in federal power that was ratified in Wickard v. Filburn, which authorized Congress to regulate under the Commerce Clause of the amount of wheat that a farmer could produce for home consumption. Big government, we shall have, but not that big, after all.

But when it comes to the taxing power all bets are off. Here the key statement that he makes is this: “it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income.”

With all respect, the point is little short of absurd. The earlier portion of the Chief Justice’s opinion noted the huge expansion in federal power that could arise if the government were permitted to regulate various forms of inactivity. What possible argument then could be put forward to say that the same risks do not apply to the expansion of the taxing authority to those same forms of inactivity, in ways that it has never been exercised before. The two examples that the Chief Justice gives are the tax on buying gasoline or earning income. Both of those are obvious activities that have long been regarded as acceptable bases for taxation. But not buying health insurance is not an activity.

I am not aware of any tax imposed on individuals for not buying gasoline and not earning income, or not taking a bath or not working in a home office. To allow this to stand as a tax is to accept the same kind of absurdity that was rejected in connection with the commerce power. Intellectually shabby, to say the least.

[Selene]

Judicial Betrayal

By Thomas Sowell

Betrayal is hard to take, whether in our personal lives or in the political life of the nation. Yet there are people in Washington — too often, Republicans — who start living in the Beltway atmosphere, and start forgetting those hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the Beltway who trusted them to do right by them, to use their wisdom instead of their cleverness.

President Bush 41 epitomized these betrayals when he broke his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge. He paid the price when he quickly went from high approval ratings as president to someone defeated for reelection by a little known governor from Arkansas.

Chief Justice John Roberts need fear no such fate because he has lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court. But conscience can be a more implacable and inescapable punisher — and should be.

The Chief Justice probably made as good a case as could be made for upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare by defining one of its key features as a "tax."

The legislation didn't call it a tax and Chief Justice Roberts admitted that this might not be the most "natural" reading of the law. But he fell back on the long-standing principle of judicial interpretation that the courts should not declare a law unconstitutional if it can be reasonably read in a way that would make it constitutional, out of "deference" to the legislative branch of government.

But this question, like so many questions in life, is a matter of degree. How far do you bend over backwards to avoid the obvious, that ObamaCare was an unprecedented extension of federal power over the lives of 300 million Americans today and of generations yet unborn?

These are the people that Chief Justice Roberts betrayed when he declared constitutional something that is nowhere authorized in the Constitution of the United States.

John Roberts is no doubt a brainy man, and that seems to carry a lot of weight among the intelligentsia — despite glaring lessons from history, showing very brainy men creating everything from absurdities to catastrophes. Few of the great tragedies of history were created by the village idiot, and many by the village genius.

One of the Chief Justice's admirers said that when others are playing checkers, he is playing chess. How much consolation that will be as a footnote to the story of the decline of individual freedom in America, and the wrecking of the best medical care in the world, is another story.

There are many speculations as to why Chief Justice Roberts did what he did, some attributing noble and far-sighted reasons, and others attributing petty and short-sighted reasons, including personal vanity. But all of that is ultimately irrelevant.

What he did was betray his oath to be faithful to the Constitution of the United States.

Who he betrayed were the hundreds of millions of Americans — past, present and future — whole generations in the past who have fought and died for a freedom that he has put in jeopardy, in a moment of intellectual inspiration and moral forgetfulness, 300 million Americans today whose lives are to be regimented by Washington bureaucrats, and generations yet unborn who may never know the individual freedoms that their ancestors took for granted.

Some claim that Chief Justice Roberts did what he did to save the Supreme Court as an institution from the wrath — and retaliation — of those in Congress who have been railing against Justices who invalidate the laws they have passed. Many in the media and in academia have joined the shrill chorus of those who claim that the Supreme Court does not show proper "deference" to the legislative branch of government.

But what does the Bill of Rights seek to protect the ordinary citizen from? The government! To defer to those who expand government power beyond its constitutional limits is to betray those whose freedom depends on the Bill of Rights.

Similar reasoning was used back in the 1970s to justify the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies. Otherwise, it was said, Congress would destroy the Fed's independence, as it can also change the courts' jurisdiction. But is it better for an institution to undermine its own independence, and freedom along with it, while forfeiting the trust of the people in the process?

[BaalChatzaf]

The ACA was originated in the Senate. According to Art I Sec 7 of the U.S. Constitution this cannot be a revenue bill hence the "mandate" cannot be a tax. Perhaps Justice Roberts needs a remedial course in the U.S. Constitution.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[9thdoctor]

The ACA was originated in the Senate.

Nope. We went over this ground months ago.

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11744entry156063

[Selene]

The ACA was originated in the Senate. According to Art I Sec 7 of the U.S. Constitution this cannot be a revenue bill hence the "mandate" cannot be a tax. Perhaps Justice Roberts needs a remedial course in the U.S. Constitution.

Ba'al Chatzaf

He did not follow any Constitutional theory. This was a completely extra-judicial piece of tyranny.

[Selene]

The ACA was originated in the Senate.

Nope. We went over this ground months ago.

http://www.objectivi...44

Wow! Nice Dennis...

That 60-39 vote in the Senate was the one I was screaming about because that scumbag Lieberman could have stopped it.

If you remember I made a big issue at that time, but our friend from California said it was no big deal and that we would be able to stop it later.

I, of course, was correct and he was incorrect.

Now we have this total repressive piece of tyranny that will fundamentally destroy this country with the final thrust.

Adam

Geez, I hate when I am proved correct on this type of prediction!