Posted on 03/28/2012 10:40:30 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
My colleague Kate Hicks -- who has attended the High Court's oral arguments this week -- will file a full report on today's proceedings later on. In the meantime, some initial reactions indicate that the Supremes may be poised to not only throw out Obamacare's individual mandate, but the entire thing. Wow. Snippets the Wall Street Journal's excellent live blog:
* Justice Kennedy, again exploring the competency theme, says Mr. Kneedler suggests the court has the expertise to invalidate some parts of the law, but not the expertise to judge whether other parts should remain in place. The justice says he finds that "odd."
* Justice Scalia suggests there has never been another high court case where the justices have struck down the “heart” of a law, but left the rest of it in place.
* Chief Justice Roberts suggests that Mr. Kneedler, the government lawyer, has made effectively made the case that if the insurance mandate falls, the guarantee that insurers accept all customers must go, too. But, the chief says, that doesn’t tell the court what to do with all the many other provisions of the law.
* Justice Alito echoes those concerns, saying other provisions in the law, in addition to the guaranteed-coverage requirement, could lead to higher costs for insurers.
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin says Justice Kennedy led this aggressive questioning, indicating that Kennedy has made up his mind that at least the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Via CNN tweets:
Toobin: "The leader of the questioning was Kennedy; it certainly seemed likely he made up his mind the mandate was unconstitutional."
CNN JUST IN: Jeffrey Toobin: "this entire law is in trouble..." the individual mandate appears "doomed"..."seemed a foregone conclusion."
Toobin reiterated his "train wreck" imagery, adding that today could have also been a "plane wreck" ...
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Rush Limbaugh just said the justices are not going to read all 2700 pages and determine what to leave in or take out. It will either all pass or all fail.
I like the term:
OBAMAWRECK
Pelosi was right. We had to pass the law to see what’s in it. What was in it was an exploding dye pack of merde that is about to blow up in the Democrats collective face.
LOL! Garbage in..garbage out.
Rush said Scalia asked, “You really expect us to read the entire 2700 page law!”. Lol! Of course, not Justice Kennedy, nobody else did!
When will the ruling come down?
As usual, it all rests on Kennedy. If he votes to shoot it down, that frees the Dems to vote as they think best. But they will certainly vote in Obamacare’s favor, especially on the severability issue, if Kennedy does.
The fact that they are all asking questions may be serious, or it may just be political cover. They wouldn’t want to destroy the country unless they appeared to examine all the issues very carefully.
If an intern presented a sumamry to a Justice written like this his next assignment would be cleaning out the SCOTUS head.
I heard they rule on this in June some time.
That would be wonderful. I conjure the Democrats would be happy if the individual mandate was struck down but the rest maintained. That would end private insurance as people would wait till they got sick to purchase health insurance. That has been the goal all along in my opinion.
The ruling comes in June.
Don`t. Be. Fooled!
The comments and questions from SCOTUS justices should never be taken as a harbinger of their final rulings. They`re playing devil`s advocate by design. Remember, four of them are locked down for 0bama. Our side is the dicier one by far.
Do it. Kill the whole thing. It needs to be shot in the head...a double tap to ObamaCare.
His signature act...thrown out as unconstitutional before he finished his first (and, hopefully, only) term. Fitting, and representative of almost everything he has done.
The Man Who Despise America
http://www.jeffhead.com/obama-time.htm
America at the Crossroads of History
http://www.jeffhead.com/crossroads.htm
“When will the ruling come down?”
My understanding is June from what i have read
And why should they, right?
The dems didn’t read their own bill.
Typical libs....rely on others to do the work they refuse to do.
I still don't believe a word that comes out of any reporter's mouth. We could easily be Mahili’d.
“Pelosi was right. We had to pass the law to see what’s in it. What was in it was an exploding dye pack of merde that is about to blow up in the Democrats collective face.”
Very nicely put, hat tip.
Well, congress didn’t read the bill, why should SCOTUS?
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