How the Roberts court could save Obama’s health-care reform

The Washington Post ^ | Friday, March 16, 8:48 AM | Robert Barnes

[Mariner]

From the inaugural oath do-over to an unprecedented State of the Union throwdown, relations between President Obama and the conservative members of the Supreme Court have had an unusually cantankerous feel.

If it had been up to Obama, after all, John G. Roberts Jr. would not have been holding the Bible at the president’s swearing-in, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would still have been in his New Jersey judicial chambers rather than in the second row of the House mouthing “not true” during Obama’s 2010 address to the nation. As a senator, Obama voted against the Supreme Court confirmations of both men.

But these days, the president must hope that grudges are put aside. He will need at least one Republican-appointed justice on the increasingly conservative court to uphold the signature domestic achievement of his presidency: health-care reform. The court’s four liberals, two appointed by Obama, are forecast as reliable votes in favor. But Obama needs at least five.

[Kevmo]

Besides... to suggest that our highest court in the land would apply the law selectively in a tit-for-tat is a worse charge against them than the one I was making.
***I own up to it, that is what I am suggesting. I have lost respect for the SCOTUS.

[Chunga]

It wasn’t McCain’s nomination that caused Obama to be able to nominate Kagen and Sotomayor. It was his defeat.

[LegendHasIt]

The nomination of a squish that the base despised , who refused to say anything negative about 0bama, made 0bama’s win inevitable.

[Chunga]

The refusal of some of the conservative base to vote for McCain and Palin against the most radical Democrat presidential nominee in history is what led to Kagen and Sotomayor. Some of us were shouting the warnings from the treetops.

They are complicit in Obama's election. Their only defense is to deflect from the truth. They could have cast a meaningful vote against Obama, but they didn't, and they ensured that the country would be saddled with trillions in debt, a depression in the housing market, rampant unemployment, National Health Care and the two most extreme justices in SCOTUS history.

[1010RD]

Scalia is a big G conservative. Look at his vote on Kelo. If we could find another three or four Thomases and then hold on to Congress for a generation or two we’d make it back from the brink.

[1010RD]

Typical liberal thinking. If the professor likes kittens put one on your economics term paper and he’ll give you an “A”. Idiotic, but that’s what we’ve been brought to by a century of progressivism.

Thanks Teddy.

[NEPA]

The author writes that perhaps only the individual mandate won't be upheld but the rest of Obamacare will be. IIRC, the way the law was written, it was an all or nothing proposition. If the individual mandate is struck, the whole law goes down.

Even if it doesn't, Obamacare just doesn't work without the individual mandate.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Typical liberal thinking. If the professor likes kittens put one on your economics term paper and he’ll give you an “A”. Idiotic, but that’s what we’ve been brought to by a century of progressivism.

They probably think that they are giving Scalia a carrot and stick in the same "gift." The stick, they imagine, is that he will look inconsistent if he rules that the Obamacare mandate is out, because he used the commerce clause to as a basis for ruling that the Feds could regulate marujuana in California.

I don't think Scalia will see it the same way the commies and druggies do.

[NMCicero]

Alexander Hamilton desired for the Senate to be composed of people who served for life. See Resolution III of the Hamilton Plan, presented on June 18th at the Philadelphia Convention.

[Monorprise]

I will not defend the views of Alexander Hamilton. Frankly I’m more with Jefferson on that man, except that fully I believe that Alexander Hamilton was in after creating a 2nd British Empire in America not a Federal Constitutional Republic.

Frankly I am glad that We were rid of Alexander Hamilton in his foolish duel with Arron Bur. I do not regard Alexander Hamilton as important to American history on the level with John Adams, or Thomas Jefferson. I feel Alexander Hamilton was in fact a negative influence, largely responsible for more of the vices than any of the virtues.

Despite the claims of Hamilton I don’t think the Federal fiances were or could ever have been in such state as he proclaimed them to be to justifying his power grabs. There were many other ways to work the issues out Hamilton & his cohorts wouldn’t have any of them even seriously tried. He demanded we all give up liberty because that was his ultimate goal.

Hamilton had no need to incite the threatened military coup contributing to the constitutional convention, nor the following wisky rebellion against his unfair & untenable federal taxing scheme.

Those participation in the whiskys rebellion were justified in the way Alexander Hamilton’s tax plan was designed to put them out of business in favor of their larger eastern competitors. The whole insolent was in my opinion quite clearly Alexander Hamilton’s making.