Posted on 03/28/2012 9:44:18 AM PDT by Bill Buckner
The court’s conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional.
"One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto," said Justice Antonin Scalia.
Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an "extreme proposition" to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.
Meanwhile, the court's liberal justices argued for restraint. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court should do a "salvage job," not undertake a “wrecking operation." But she looked to be out-voted.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they shared the view of Scalia and Kennedy that the law should stand or fall in total. Along with Justice Clarence Thomas, they would have a majority to strike down the entire statute as unconstitutional.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox43.com ...
A lot can happen in three months.
>> “There is an unseemly conservative obsession with the mandate, IMO” <<
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What is so unseemly?
The mandate is the essence of what is wrong with Obamacare. The rest of the bill just tampers with a medical system that has completely failed its prime mission anyway. (The Hypocratic oath has been turned on its head)
Great point...Ginsberg’s attitude makes the point that we have been making for years: the left legislates from the bench and sees nothing wrong in doing so. She spoke in an unguarded moment...her comment needs to be played up.
Bingo!
Now that's saying it as it is.
Pray without ceasing for this court!
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I wonder if we'd be stuck with those regulations now. Is it like Bin Laden, once he's dead, he's dead? Did the law give them the power to pass regulations, that then become set in stone? Or do these regulations have to go away once the law that said they could pass them goes away? Like the birth control thing...does that regulation stand or does overturning the law now mean that the government no longer has the authority to enforce that regulation?
Yes, like Obama could get anything through the current House. Yes. Right. Sure.
More spin from our radical communist muslim leader.
The bill had no legitimate purpose; it needs to be chucked.
Congress should set out to educate the people that they do not need doctors, nor hospitals nor insurance; all that is needed is a Real Food Diet to be healthy.
My dad was right.
If the court’s liberals had any respect for the Constitution and Rule of Law, they would join with the conservatives in ridding this nation of this assault on our liberty and economy.
You’re mistaken. Bush during his 2nd term appeared to have capitulated and was listening to his liberal wife for advice. The first SCOTUS he proposed was Harriet Myers who would have been an unmitigated liberal disaster.
It was a group of staunch conservatives outside of Congress that got in front of Bush and said “NO!”. They brought Roberts. Later they brought Alito. One of these conservatives was Fred Thompson of Tennessee.
“Anyone know whose Constitution she was reading when she said this?”
Kenya’s?
Anthony KennedyAnthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, 1936) is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. Since the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, Kennedy has often been the "swing vote" on many of the Court's politically charged 5–4 decisions.[2][3][4]
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During Kennedy's time as a California law professor and attorney, he helped California Governor Ronald Reagan draft a state tax proposal.[6]Kennedy has served in numerous positions during his career, including the California Army National Guard in 1961 and the board of the Federal Judicial Center from 1987 to 1988. He also served on two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the Advisory Panel on Financial Disclosure Reports and Judicial Activities (subsequently renamed the Advisory Committee on Codes of Conduct) from 1979 to 1987, and the Committee on Pacific Territories from 1979 to 1990, which he chaired from 1982 to 1990.
On March 3, 1975, upon Reagan's recommendation,[6] President Gerald Ford nominated Kennedy to the seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had been vacated by Charles Merton Merrill. Kennedy was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on March 20, 1975, and received his commission on March 24, 1975.
Kennedy said about Griswold v. Connecticut (a privacy case regarding contraceptives), "I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result."[13] He also discussed "a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line that's drawn where the individual can tell the Government, 'Beyond this line you may not go.'"[14][15]
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Though appointed by a Republican president, Kennedy is not easily pigeonholed ideologically. He has tended to look at cases individually instead of deciding upon them on the basis of some rigid ideology.[6] As Kennedy said at a reunion of his law clerks, "We always tried to get it right." Georgetown University Law Center professor Randy Barnett has described Kennedy's jurisprudence as "libertarian,"[17] although other legal scholars have disagreed.[18]Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor have been swing votes in many 5-4 and 6-3 decisions on the Rehnquist and Roberts courts. On issues of religion, he holds to a less separationist reading of the Establishment Clause than did O'Connor, favoring a "Coercion Test" that he detailed in County of Allegheny v. ACLU.[19]
Kennedy has supported adding substance to the "liberty" interest protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which means he supports a constitutional right to abortion in principle, though he has voted to uphold several restrictions on that right, including laws to prohibit partial-birth abortions. He is "tough on crime" and opposes creating constitutional restrictions on the police, especially in Fourth Amendment cases involving searches for illegal drugs, although there are some exceptions, such as his concurrence in Ferguson v. City of Charleston. He also takes a very broad view of constitutional protection for speech under the First Amendment,[citation needed] invalidating a congressional law prohibiting "virtual" child pornography in the 2002 decision, Ashcroft v. ACLU.[20]
Kennedy has joined with Court majorities in decisions favoring states' rights and invalidating federal and state affirmative action programs. He ruled with the majority on Equal Protection grounds in the controversial 2000 Bush v. Gore case that halted continuing recounts in the 2000 presidential election and ended the legal challenge to the election of President George Bush.
Analysis of Supreme Court tenure
Kennedy has reliably issued conservative rulings during most of his tenure, having voted with William Rehnquist as often as any other justice from 1992 to the end of the Rehnquist Court in 2005.[40] In his first term on the court, Kennedy voted with Rehnquist 92 percent of the time—more than any other justice.[41]
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On the Roberts Court, Kennedy often decides the outcome of a case. In the 2008–2009 term, he was in the majority 92 percent of the time. In the 23 decisions in which the justices split 5-to-4, Kennedy was in the majority in all but five. Of those 23 decisions, 16 were strictly along ideological lines, and Kennedy joined the conservative wing of the court 11 times; the liberals, 5.[44]
I think, in this case, Kennedy will see the vast overeach by the Fed's that removes "individual liberty" with such a mandate.
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>> “Sending prayers.” <<
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YES!
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How many weeks until they actually rule on this? When can we expect their ruling?
-—We’re relying on Kennedy to determine the validity of the US Constitution here.-—
We almost made it to 250 years. Not bad, historically.
It’s strange that a reversion to a (leftist) aristocracy is regarded as “progressive.”
The mandate is to single-payer health care as school choice vouchers are to a government school monopoly. The mandate was created to try to peel off enough Democrat votes from single-payer in the ‘90s to pass a less onerous and more conservative health care bill. Just as conservatives would love school choice vouchers now rather than see kids forced to go to public schools. It’s all very relative. But once a health care mandate is off the table, everyone should be assured single-payer will get a big boost and more unity on the left than it’s ever had before. It will be passed if they get the presidency and Congress again.
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