The Goat Pen

10ac wrote:I see the bedwetters here are pissing themselves with glee at the further loss of personal freedom.

We lost our personal freedom many years ago. At least if you're a male. She says he says. He gets locked up. Ever spent 60 in the county 10ac because your ex said you threatened her? Which you didn't? Or another 90 thrown on top of that because you tried to talk to your kids while being ass fucked. with a CPO ?

Most laws, by their very nature, diminish personal freedom. Especially laws that deal with public health and safety.

I mean, if it was all about personal freedom, Wiz would drive his tractor down Main Street in the middle of the night with no lights, drunk and buck-naked, firing his .22 all over the place, screaming obscenities, and towing a sign that advertises meth, crack, and various sex acts.

As it is, all of your parents chose to bring you up in a civilized society governed under rules of law. And that is true of most of the Alabamans, too.

Its still funny Obamer won though. Are you packing for Cuba yet Hack? Wiz packed last year but he pussied out.

Well, at least now the local ERs won't be full of Mexicans. Does this mandate apply to illegals too?

10ac wrote:Well, at least now the local ERs won't be full of Mexicans. Does this mandate apply to illegals too?

Of course it does. You'll be paying a portion of their fine (tax) for them, but they have to pay too. ...equal rights, right?....

I was kinda depressed all day, but when I read that Wiz says that SCOTUS didn't really rule that Robertscare is constitutional, I was greatly relieved. I will sleep well tonight knowing that Wiz is right and everybody else is wrong. I'll wake up tomorrow and the individual mandate will be dead.

It's amazing to me that Roberts was so intent on passing Robertscare that he provided his own legal justification for it - "It's not a penalty! It's a tax!" - a justification that all the pro-Obamacare lawyers failed to conceive or argue. Roberts became his own solicitor general in favor of Obamacare.

Just once in my life, I'd like to see a SCOTUS justice appointed by a liberal democrat president become a conservative once they are seated. But for some reason half the justices appointed by republicans turn liberal when they join SCOTUS. It's never the other way around.

Someone said that because the way the bill was passed in the senate needing only 50 votes plus a tiebreak that the the reverse is true for repeal. Anyone know if that is accurate? If that is the case, then repeal really does have a shot if November goes well.

So did we lose a battle, but won the war? I'd be curious what DSL thinks instead of acting like rat.

The Chief Justice's Gambit

By Sean Trende - June 28, 2012

By Sean Trende

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printp ... -full.html

In 1803, the chief justice of the United States had a problem. His hated cousin, Thomas Jefferson, had won the last presidential election. But the outgoing Federalists opted not go gentle into that good night. The one branch of government they controlled was the judiciary, and they meant to keep it. They had passed the Judiciary Act of 1801, which allowed for several new judicial appointments.

President Adams did a remarkable job filling the appointments and getting them hastily confirmed. The so-called “Midnight Judges” by and large received their commissions. But not all of them did. Incoming President Jefferson then instructed his secretary of state not to deliver the remaining ones.

Unsurprisingly, litigation ensued. One of those who was to receive a commission, William Marbury, filed a petition directly in the Supreme Court under a provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789. He requested a writ ordering the secretary of state to deliver his commission.

But Chief Justice John Marshall was a staunch Federalist. The republic was young, the court’s legitimacy fragile, and the ability of the nation to endure the peaceful transfer of power between parties uncertain. It was also unclear how Marshall’s ordering the newly installed Jeffersonian Republican secretary of state to do something would go over.

So the chief justice did something very clever. He found that Marbury was entitled to his commission, bestowing legitimacy on those Midnight Judges who had received theirs. But he didn't stop there -- to Marbury's detriment. He then ruled that the Constitution only gave the court so-called “original jurisdiction” over a small number of cases. The provision of the Judiciary Act of 1789 bestowing the court with original jurisdiction over writs of the type Marbury sought was therefore unconstitutional.

Jefferson had won, nominally. Madison didn’t have to deliver the commission, Marbury didn’t refile in the lower courts, and he never became a justice of the peace. But history remembers the case as a huge, perhaps decisive, blow against those Jeffersonians who viewed the Constitution as nothing more than a glorified Articles of Confederation.

In depriving the court of original jurisdiction, Marshall had installed the Supreme Court as the ultimate arbiter of the constitutionality of laws. Jefferson hated the idea of what has become known as judicial review. But having won, he was powerless to act against Marshall. Over the course of his term, Marshall would use that power to increase vastly the powers of the federal government, and to diminish those of the states.

* * *

Thursday’s health care ruling shocked most observers. It upheld the health care law as constitutional. But rather than find that the law was justified under Congress’ authority to regulate commerce, it instead found it was justified only under Congress’ power to tax. It also imposed limits upon Congress’ ability to condition spending grants to the states upon those states taking certain steps. To my knowledge, former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger was the only person who thought that the court would ultimately rule on those grounds. I certainly was surprised.

Even more surprising, the decision was 5-4, and Chief Justice John Roberts authored the majority opinion upholding the law, rather than Anthony Kennedy. Conservatives are flabbergasted by the chief’s decision (or, in their view, betrayal).

But I think if you scratch the surface here, Roberts embarked upon a gambit much like Marshall did 200 years ago. For the results-oriented -- which is to say, most observers on both sides who have been ranting about the Constitution for the past few months -- this is a clear win for the Obama administration, at least in the short term. By removing most legal impediments to the implementation of the law, the odds that the president’s signature legislation will eventually be implemented have risen.

The loss is especially galling for conservatives because they were extremely close to having the whole thing struck down in its entirety, immediately. That’s what Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito would have done, and there’s some pretty good evidence that Scalia’s dissent was the majority opinion until fairly late in the day.

But Roberts is only a few years further into his chief justice-ship than Marshall was at the time of the Marbury decision. His tenure is likely to be equally as lengthy, if not more so. I think the forest for him is quite a bit different than the trees that people are focusing on. Consider:

1. The law still has a good chance of not being implemented.

Let’s start with Roberts’ presumed crass political considerations. Namely, as a conservative Republican, he would not want the health care law implemented. But if Mitt Romney wins the November election, it is highly likely that Republicans will win the Senate as well. Right now, Romney probably has no worse than a 50-50 chance of being elected. I honestly don’t think in the long run this changes things that much. The next jobs report will have a much greater impact on Obama’s re-election bid over the long haul than this decision.

If Republicans win the Senate and presidency, the law is doomed. They will use reconciliation to repeal it, or to gut it. In fact, since the court essentially allowed states to opt out of the Medicaid expansion, there’s a chance that the bill would no longer reduce the deficit if a large state like Texas opted out. This makes the use of reconciliation much easier.

2. Doctrinally, The Federalist Society got everything it wanted.

But judicial conservatives who are not just concerned about the outcome got more than they could have reasonably hoped for. Doctrinally speaking, this case will likely be remembered as a watershed decision for conservatives.

Five justices just signaled to lower courts that, but for the unique taxation power argument, they were prepared to rule that a major act of Congress that plainly touched upon economic activity exceeded Congress’ commerce powers. Right now, liberals are seemingly too busy celebrating their win, and conservatives bemoaning their loss, to realize the significance of this.

None of the liberals’ previous arguments about the upshot of such a ruling are rendered invalid simply because the chief justice decided that this was a tax (and almost everyone agreed that if Congress had just called it a tax, it would have been constitutional). The court just constricted its Commerce Clause jurisprudence; if liberal commentators are correct, they did so by a lot. It doesn’t matter today, but 10 years from now, it will probably be a different story.

The most important aspect of the ruling, however, comes with respect to the spending clause. Seven justices just agreed to real limits on Congress’ ability to attach strings to legislation. This is significant. Until today, these limits were hypothetical, and it was believed that Congress could, for example, remove all Medicaid funding as a punishment for a state’s refusal to comply with the Medicaid expansion. I did not expect the court to rule the way it did here, much less to do so by a 7-2 vote.

To put it differently, if this ruling had a different result -- if Roberts hadn’t decided that this was a tax -- this decision would be regarded as a debacle for a liberal interpretation of the Constitution. It is no less so simply because the Affordable Care Act was upheld on alternative grounds.

3. The chief justice has built up some political capital.

Barack Obama was forced to go on television and praise the court’s ruling. In so doing, he validated -- at least implicitly -- one of the most pro-state’s rights decisions in recent times.

Roberts has basically done what John Marshall did: Insulate the court from criticism of bald partisan bias and infidelity to, as he once put it, calling balls and strikes. He’s earning plaudits from the left. Though the right is grumbling, I suspect they won’t be doing so for long

4. This matters in the long run -- a lot.

This is not the last battle to be fought on the Roberts Court. It might not even be the most significant. In the next term, for example, the court is being asked to reconsider its affirmative action jurisprudence. There are almost certainly five votes to overturn court rulings from a decade ago upholding some forms of affirmative action.

Following that, the court will face a variety of tough decisions. There are probably five votes to uproot the entire campaign finance system, a decision that would make Citizens United look like small fry. And there are probably five votes to invalidate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

I don’t think invalidating the ACA would have affected the court’s legitimacy that much, at least outside of liberals in the legal academy. But taken as a whole, this series of decisions really might have irrevocably hurt the court’s reputation for independence.

But Roberts has something of an ace up his sleeve now. Accusations of hyper-partisanship are much harder to make against him, and he has more freedom to move on these issues.

All told, it is easier for the conservative wing of the court to make some significant rulings in some other policy areas. In so doing, he actually made significant progress for judicial conservatives while ruling against conservative policy. And he might still see that policy repealed if Republicans win in the fall.

UPDATE: One additional comparison has sprung into my mind. One of the interesting features of Marbury is that the Court didn't have to decide that Marbury was entitled to his commission. Indeed, it probably should have decided the jurisdictional issue first, then left the remaining issues for the Courts to decide upon refiling. But Marshall wanted to get the most favorable for Federalists that he could, while still maintaining the Court's credibility.

Similarly, Roberts actually didn't have to reach the commerce clause/necessary and proper issues. Having decided the tax issue, he actually probably could have stopped there. That he didn't suggests that he wanted to make sure that, even in defeat, there were five clear votes for the conservatives' view of the commerce clause and necessary and proper clause.

//
Sean Trende is Senior Elections Analyst for RealClearPolitics. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com.

This all strikes me as completely delusional. The author desperately wants to believe that Roberts is shrewdly playing his conservative hand by voting with the liberals to help conservative jurisprudence in the long run.

Bullshit.

With Roberts' vote with the liberal majority on the AZ immigration law, and now Obamacare, demonstrates he has become another Breyer and Kennedy - another mushy moderate RINO. Conservatives cannot count on him in the future to rule conservatively. He will twist the Constitution to fit whatever his whims and desire for liberal approval require. Get used to it.

The reason that Republican appointed judges turn liberal but Deocrat appointed judges never turn conservative is simple.

The Democrats fight tooth and nail, using whatever needed, to block all appointments until eventually they have one that is liberal appointed and they let that one through.

Republicans are cowtowed by the media and cave in and allow Democrats to appoint liberals like RBG who despise the United States. They cave because the 9 jump on with both feet and paint them as the bad guys and they turn tail and run like cowards.

The Democrats don't have to worry about that. They can do what they want and it is reported as being part of a "fair vetting process".

That is the difference.

Roberts should be tarred and feathered.

Professor Tiger wrote:I was kinda depressed all day, but when I read that Wiz says that SCOTUS didn't really rule that Robertscare is constitutional, I was greatly relieved. I will sleep well tonight knowing that Wiz is right and everybody else is wrong. I'll wake up tomorrow and the individual mandate will be dead.

It's amazing to me that Roberts was so intent on passing Robertscare that he provided his own legal justification for it - "It's not a penalty! It's a tax!" - a justification that all the pro-Obamacare lawyers failed to conceive or argue. Roberts became his own solicitor general in favor of Obamacare.

Just once in my life, I'd like to see a SCOTUS justice appointed by a liberal democrat president become a conservative once they are seated. But for some reason half the justices appointed by republicans turn liberal when they join SCOTUS. It's never the other way around.

You are a nut job

Still waiting dsl. C'mon man give me some insight.

It's good to see DSL. I was worried that after the Wisconsin repeal debacle he would be so demoralized. Good to see a pep in his step again...

s prof calling bullshit on the smartest man aliiiiive?...

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/comme ... court.html

GM only.

re: Roberts....Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State said it best.

You're either the smartest guy in the world, or the dumbest.

Roberts also handed conservative PACs another hammer for their ads. Obammer, biggest tax increaser of all time.

sardis wrote:s prof calling bullshit on the smartest man aliiiiive?...

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/comme ... court.html

I saw that article. It proves that Will is right only 99% of the time. This is the other 1%.

I forgive his-kermit-the-frog-ness. (A little muppet humor for Rat.)

On a totally unrelated note, 40 of 50 states record high temps are more that 50 years old....(2007 data)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001416.html