We even had key swing vote Anthony Kennedy on our side.
We had the opinion being written by BUSH’S pick for Supreme Court Justice. It was in the bag for conservatives.
All over America – even in the WHITE HOUSE – people were looking at the decision and initially believing it was a 5-4 ruling against ObamaCare. People read what Roberts in his majority opinion wrote about the the unconstitutionality of ObamaCare as it pertained to the Commerce Clause:
The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority.
And it seemed to everyone that the decision had been to strike ObamaCare down. The majority opinion clearly states that ObamaCare is unconstitutional if the mandate derives from the Commerce Clause, as ObamaCare in fact did derive it’s authority.
When suddenly the worm turned.
Yes, the mandate, the very heart of ObamaCare, was ruled unconstitutional. But John Roberts decided if he just rewrote the law to make the mandate a tax and the power deriving not from the Commerce Clause but from the power of Congress to tax, it would fix everything.
In the minority opinion that should have been a MAJORITY opinion given that all the conservative justices but that Bush-picked guy supported it along with Anthony Kennedy, the statement was:
[T]o say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling.
ObamaCare was NOT a tax. We have Democrats and Obama on the record saying that all over the place and actively arguing with anybody who said it was a tax:
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
Here’s more of the exchange with Stephanopoulos in which we can now saw with complete factual certainty that Barack Obama lied to the American people:
STEPHANOPOULOS: “Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.
But Obama lied to you. It IS a tax increase.
And none other than Bush Justice John Roberts rewrote the law to “fundamentally transform” it to turn what was in every Democrat’s words NOT a tax increase (and therefore unconstitutional according to the decision yesterday) into a tax increase (and therefore “constitutional enough” for John Roberts).
John Roberts played the role of Brutus in being that sudden, surprise stab in the back.
Why in the hell would he do this? Why would he abandon his conservative philosophy and betray not only conservatives but America itself?
Well, in a nutshell, here’s why:
Today Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) took to the Senate floor to warn his colleagues and President Obama about public comments about the Supreme Court as it deliberates the health care case.
“Attempts to manipulate or to bully the Supreme Court, especially during deliberations in a particular proceeding, are irresponsible and they tend to threaten the very fabric of our constitutional republic, ” Lee said during a floor speech.
Lee was responding in part to a speech in May by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Leahy took to the Senate floor to warn the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, not to strike down the Affordable Care Act.
Leahy said that when he attended oral arguments in March he “was struck by how little respect some of the Justices showed to Congress.” He said some of the justices seemed “dismissive” of the months of work—including dozens of hearings—on the part of both the House and the Senate to enact the law.
Leahy singled out Roberts, explaining why he had voted for him during the Chief Justice’s confirmation hearings: “I trusted he would act to fulfill his responsibilities in accordance with the testimony he gave to the United States Senate. I said then that if I thought he would easily reject precedent or use his position on the Supreme Court as a bulwark for activism, I would not have supported his confirmation.”
During a Rose Garden ceremony in April President Obama said, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
Chief Justice John Roberts, to his great personal disgrace, put the “reputation” of the Supreme Court ahead of the law, the Constitution, and the nation.
And he did so in the face of frankly terrorist threats to delegitimize the SCOTUS that Roberts – who was appointed directly to the role of Chief Justice by George W. Bush – loves more than anything.
Call it the Stockholm Syndrome, which amounts to the desire for a captive to please the terrorists in order to stay alive.
John Roberts, we are now told, almost certainly switched his vote.
We have never seen a president demonize the Supreme Court the way Barack Obama did when he started the terrorist-threat ball rolling. George Bush was confronted with a decision that he came out and announced he disagreed with immediately before stating that he respected the Court and would follow the law. Obama flat-out stated that if the Supreme Court overturned his ObamaCare, this “unelected body” would be exceeding its authority and would no longer be deemed legitimate.
Obama directly threatened the Supreme Court. His terrorist bomb was the “extraordinary disruption” of Medicare that his “law” had already created and he would see turn into total chaos to punish America if ObamaCare wasn’t upheld.
There was the threat to implode the Medicare system, yes. There was the demonization of the Supreme Court as an illegitimate body that was all over the place, yes (conservatives kept asking liberals, but what are you going to say if ObamaCare is upheld?). That demonization was ALL over the place as every liberal crawled out to join in on the Supreme Court bashing in the days before the decision.
And John Roberts blinked. He switched his vote to appease the demonic, rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth Democrat hate-machine that had been switched on by Barack Obama.
Everyterrorist will confidently tell you something: terrorism works. That’s why we do it.
The narrative was as follows: John Roberts was troubled by the 2000 lawsuit in which the SCOTUS ultimately ruled that George Bush won the election and the left decried the Supreme Court as a politically biased institution. And John Roberts listened to Barack Obama’s threat and his ugly words about the Court he loved, he listened to Democrats like Patrick Leahy and Charles Schumer, he listened to all the liberal punditry and he realized that the only way to save the reputation of the Supreme Court from charges of bias was to side with the liberals.
Now, interestingly, there was never any pressure on the four liberals to not rule in lockstep liberal fashion. This idea of “bias” that was crafted by the left to demonize the SCOTUS doesn’t work that way; it only works against conservatives for ruling according to their conservative philosophy. Liberals are free to be as biased and as political and as ideological and as partisan as they want. So there was never any pressure whatsoever for the four liberal justices to ever rule in any other manner but according to their lockstep-liberalism.
Nope. It was the five Republican-appointed Justices who had to cave.
We were told that a 5-4 decision against Obama would be dreadful. But if there were to be a 5-4 decision FOR ObamaCare, well, “The highest Court in the land has spoken.”
So John Roberts “fixed” everything. Just listen to the Democrats and the liberal media praising Roberts and the Court now??? And all he had to do was utterly abandon his conservative principles. It’s that easy. It’s just as easy for Republicans in the House and the Senate. “Bi-partisan compromise” isn’t when 17 Democrats join Republicans in holding Obama Attorney General Holder in contempt; no. It is when 3 Republicans join Democrats in passing the stimulus.
The Democrats demonized the Court as a political body, and that cut Roberts to the core so much that he was willing to do whatever it took to keep Democrats from politicizing the Court. Even if it meant politicizing the Court by rewriting a law that his own decision argued was unconstitutional without rewriting the law (with said rewriting the statute being a very political thing to do).
If you want to see true politicizing of the Supreme Court – just as if you want to see ANYTHING evil in America, whether it be slavery, or the Ku Klux Klan, or re-segregation, or the resurgance of the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th Century under the banner of the Democrat Party, or racist union-imposed segregationism, or putting people in camps – you look at DEMOCRATS. And what is so for everything else is so in the case of the politicization of the Supreme Court: FDR tried to pack the court with “yes men” judges when the Supreme Court told him much of his New Deal was unconstitutional. And you throw in what the Democrat Party did to destroy Robert Bork and the “high-tech lynching” they demonized Clarence Thomas with, and you ought to get the picture.
Chris Matthews actually libeled John Roberts by comparing him to the judge who passed the fugitive slave act:
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, one other concern here, Ezra, a friend of mine, who is a fellow Roman Catholic said, he doesn’t want to be the second Roger Taney. Roger Taney, of course, was a Roman Catholic who upheld the Fugitive Slave Law back before the Civil War and was villainized throughout history because of that.
The Democrat Party overwhelmingly passed the fugitive slave act over Republican opposition. It is frankly evil to so turn history on its head. But since when did facts matter to liberal propagandists like Chris Matthews?
Terrorist Democrats had planted a bomb under the foundation of the Supreme Court of the United States. Only by bowing down to the left could the SCOTUS be allowed to be viewed as “credible” or “legitimate.” It only works one way.
I agree with the Democrats who say the Supreme Court is a purely political body. Given that presidents pick the judges, how on earth could it be anything else? And why should Republicans feel guilt over the fact that Republicans have held the highest elected office in the land than Democrats, such that they have an advantage in “picks”???
Why is it a travesty of justice if five Republican justices decide the law from their philosophy but it wouldn’t be a travesty of justice if five Democrat justices decided the law from their philosophy, apart from the very partisan bias that the left had been dumping on the Supreme Court in the months before Roberts caved?
Let me take this a little bit further, to the practical level: Republican presidents – including the hated George W. Bush – have appointed two of the justices who sided with liberals in monumental decisions like ObamaCare (President Ford appointed John Paul Stevens to go with John Roberts). Oh, and perennial swing vote Anthony Kennedy was appointed by Reagan. Consider that Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan will NEVER rule with the conservatives on a major issue. They were in lock-fascist goose-step on ObamaCare.
If John Roberts ever wanted to be welcom at another hoity-toity Georgetown cocktail circuit soiree, well, he knew what he had to do (hint, hint: the same thing that Brutus knew he had to do to Caesar). Because he would have been a poster boy for left wing contempt if he’d decided the way he apparently clearly had decided before caving into the intimidation of the left and changing his tune. Now Roberts has miraculously been transformed from right-wing goon to hero (see also here for the same).
It only works one way, you see.
Like the horror of a 5-4 decision overturning ObamaCare, as NBC anchor David Gregory amply documents:
Early the 7 a.m. et hour of Today, Gregory melodramatically fretted over the possibility of ObamaCare being ruled unconstitutional: “What happens if it is struck down in part or in whole by a 5 to 4 decision? Would that not underscore how dysfunctional our government is, the major institutions of our government are? That is a real nightmare scenario, I think, for the political class in this country.”
Now a 5-4 decision is wonderful and healthy for the nation. Now “the highest court in the land has spoken.”
What a million metric tons of manure.
Let’s just all agree with the Democrats the days before the ObamaCare decision. The Supreme Court is nothing more than nine political hacks wearing weird black robes like evil priests of some strange god that has nothing to do with us.
The thing that most bothers me is that “justice” is very much working against conservatives. And that is because the way the game is being played. You’ve got the liberal “justices” who can do ANYTHING. They can literally make up rights (such as “privacy”) to use those made up rights to then make up other rights (abortion). And how did they justify abortion? Did they find it in the Constitution? Nope. But they found – and this in their very own words – “penumbras and emanations” of abortion in there when they stared into the Constitution like a crystal ball.
What on earth do conservatives have to fight against penumbras and emanations? We read the Constitution like it actually MEANS SOMETHING and seek the intent of the founding fathers who didn’t intend us to make up whatever we needed to make up to justify whatever the hell we want to do.
Maybe at some point we’ll have the rightwing equivalent of liberal justices who will use the ObamaCare verdict against liberals by forcing all Americans to buy Bibles or pay a “tax” and then force all Americans to go to church or pay a “tax” and then force all Americans to buy a gun or pay a “tax.” Maybe we’ll have a rightwing president who will decide to arbitrarily abrogate the tax laws the way Obama abrogated immigration law and simply declare that he will not enforce the laws against any American who refuses to pay capital gains taxes.
The reason we’re going to ultimately lose this war for American culture is because in order to do things like this, we’d have to sacrifice our core principles. Whereas the left have no such principles to sacrifice.
Again, principle is something that only works one way.
In the short run this could actually work out well for Republicans. Remember, it was the rage of ObamaCare that prompted Americans to come out in droves and give the Republican Party the largest landslide win in history. And now that issue is right back on the table. The Supreme Court won’t save us; we must save ourselves from Obama and his tyranny in November. And that was when ObamaCare was a mandate and not the largest tax in the history of the United States directly smacking the middle class.
The long run is another beast entirely. America will lose in the long run. Because too many critical things only work one way. I’ve listed several above, but there are many other cancers, such as spending and debt. They can only work one way – and that one way is taking us up like a rocketship until we come down in utter economic collapse. This is because it is simply too easy for the left to demonize the right over ANY cut in spending. If Republicans cut spending its because they’re greedy and want to protect the rich at the poor’s expense, etc. etc. And Republicans will do the very same thing that John Roberts did and blink and then cave in the face of demonic attack. And as a result America will never be able to cut spending enough to save itself.
The beast is coming. The Bible tells us that this Antichrist will be a big government world leader who will literally be worshiped as he leads the world straight into hell. Prior to these last few years, my major stumbling block in believing this was America; how could America do such a thing as worship the beast and take his mark?
Those illusions have been utterly dispelled. The beast will come. When he does America will vote for him. And then worship him. And then take his mark. And then burn in hell forever and ever.
Start Thinking Right 