Posted on 06/30/2012 6:10:27 AM PDT by gusopol3
Back in 2010, Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett, who has been described as the legal architect behind challenges to the health care law,.......Yet in the wake of the Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority decision to uphold the mandate on taxing power grounds, Barnett has been downplaying the legal significance of that precedent, especially relative to the Court’s ruling that the law was not allowable under the Commerce Clause.......“Chief Justice Roberts rewrote the (health care) statute to change this from a requirement, or mandate, to an option to buy insurance or pay a penalty,” Barnett explained. “This is far less dangerous than had the mandate been upheld under the commerce power....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
“Congress can’t do whatever it wants,” he said. “Under this ruling, Congress can’t put you in jail for violating a future economic mandate. This holding stands for that proposition. Congress also can’t coerce states by withholding all existing Medicaid funding unless they agree to new coverage. That’s a constraint the Court has never enforced before. And the Necessary and Proper Clause cannot be used to salvage these laws. And that’s a ruling we haven’t had before.”
IMO, the biggest problem with his argument is that if Roberts could use “flimsy reasoning” to turn the biggest Supreme Court case of decades on its head, why won’t he in particular for decades to come, or somebody else in general, be able to do the same thing on any case.
This action is a gigantic wake up call. The majority of the country disagrees with Robert’s interpretation of this new law. Kagan shouldn’t have even been permitted to vote.
Horsehockey. What we have seen is that certain justices will vote in whatever manner they deem fit to push their own agenda, precedent be damned, with the classic example being the inherent contradictions, just a few months apart, between Raich and Gonzales, as noted by Clarence Thomas in his dissent in Gonzales.
Taxation with Misrepresentation
He/they will do whatever suits their whim at the time, what we call the Constitution means nothing to those people.
It wasn’t “flimsy reasoning” it was completely fallacious reasoning. Roberts held that two contradictory ideas can BOTH be true i.e. its a tax, its not a tax. His ruling was blatantly ridiculous.
http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/01/clarence_thomas.html
Clarence Thomas, most brilliant Justice
Thomas has been on a tear lately, making himself stand out as the true thinker on the Court and relegating Scalia to the role of ideaological hack.
A few months ago, the Supreme Court decided Gonzales v. Raich in which the majority held (with Scalia being part of the majority) that the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) gave a regulatory agency the power to overrule a state’s decriminalizaton of marijuana for medical purposes.
Thomas dissented based on ennumerated powers issues. He said that growing marijuana for personal use was an intrastate issue and outside the reach of the interstate commerce clause.
Today, Thomas dissents in Gonzales v. Oregon in which the Supreme Court ruled that the CSA does not grant the authority to prohibit doctors from prescribing medicine for suicide purposes if state law permits it.
Has Thomas somehow flip-flopped on the issues? Not at all! If you read Thomas’ dissent, it’s clear that he’s dissenting in order to call out the hypocrisy of the majority who interpret the CSA based on their idealogical whim and not on sound legal principles. Basically he’s saying to the majority, “hey you morons, you decided in Raich that that the CSA gives the government power to do whatever it wants with regards to regulating drugs, you’re a bunch of hypocrites to suddenly change your mind here. I’m just agreeing with your first dumb decision because of stare decisis.”
The takeaway? Stare decisis doesn’t matter for jack with this court.
Most people I know cannot understand who these people think they are? This is not a dictatorship. The MSM and the Democrat Party should not be permitted to dictate to the majority of the country.
Most people I know cannot understand who these people think they are? This is not a dictatorship. The MSM and the Democrat Party should not be permitted to dictate to the majority of the country.
Most people I know cannot understand who these people think they are? This is not a dictatorship. The MSM and the Democrat Party should not be permitted to dictate to the majority of the country.
We only have two or three decades-worth of brilliant decisions from this Chief Justice ahead of us.
Which brings to mind Roberts' earlier, surprising defense of the justices' unquestioned integrity and professionalism in deciding whether or not to recuse themselves. It now looks like he was providing cover for Kagan to hear the Obamacare case.
My daughter was in a small college seminar group with Roberts a few years ago. He said that his general philosophy is to leave decisions to the people in the decisions made by their elected representatives, since, in his opinion, it is much easier to change the Congress than it is to change the members of the Court. I guess this ruling was consistent with that. However, it is totally divorced from the reality of my entire life due to its ignoring of the heavy propagandizing involvement of our MSM. They are even now allowing the administration to get away with morphing the basis from taxing power back to a mandate, despite the explicit rejection of that. Opponents can’t let that happen. “Taxation by Misrepresentation” needs to be reinforced early and often , like “It’s the economy , stupid” was in 1992.
*bump*
...otherwise there is no reason.
I asked him whether a future Congress could just repeat what we saw in this instance – call a mandate a penalty for the purposes of passing the bill, then switch around and call it a tax in court. “That is never going to happen again,” he insisted. “No one is ever going to fall for that again…The findings in the (health care) bill were Commerce Clause. The findings in the next bill will have to be taxing power.”
He's right. The Commerce Clause argument is dead. The taxing argument can be decided at the ballot box.
I also agree with Barnett that five justices on our side is not enough as we always have to get all five. We need more and a Romney two term presidency would give us more. Then our odds would greatly increase.
Maybe we can get John to peruse all our laws, and rewrite the ones he thinks he can improve. We can call him Chief Editor and Legislator. We don’t need a Supreme Court, now that we have John cleaning things up.
Yes "far less dangerous" in that there are only 5 rounds in the cylinder instead of 6.....But let's not forget that instead of .22LR rounds, they are now 44 Magnums...
So why even have a Supreme Court, then, if it fails to enforce limited powers? Roberts just turned himself into a turnstile that never locks.
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