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In a dramatic moment at the Supreme Court Tuesday, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told justices that U.S. business owners have no religious freedom to reject government mandates forcing them to cover abortions. Justices and lawyers also sparred over whether businesses actually have religious freedom and whether striking down the Obamacare mandate makes women second-class citizens. The notable abortion exchange between Verrilli and Justice Anthony Kennedy came during oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, two cases linked by the companies’ owners objecting to the Department of Health and Human Services requirement that businesses fully...

In finding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) constitutional, 5 justices of the Supreme Court literally ignored the statutory language of the law and the wishes of Congress. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts rewrote portions of the Act in order to bring its substance into line with his own politically motivated preferences. In May, the IRS also ignored the will of Congress as expressed in the ACA. The law specifically states that subsidies and tax credits provided to certain ObamaCare enrollees may be awarded ONLY by “a governmental agency or nonprofit entity [ObamaCare exchange] that is established by a state.”(My emphasis)...

Why is no one in Congress pointing out the illegal way by which Harry Reid and his cohorts rammed through the very punitive Obamacare bill in the first place? Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) delivered an outstanding one hour exposition of the skullduggery these partisans used to shove this socialistic atrocity down the throats, “into the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchens” of we ordinary US citizens. No one else has the courage to point out that Harry Reid and company rewrote out of whole cloth a unanimously passed H.Res 3509 called “Sevice Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009.” This bill’s...

Viewed in isolation, the Supreme Court term that just ended had elements of modesty. The court declined to do away with affirmative action, gave Congress another shot at salvaging the Voting Rights Act and refused to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. But glancing at an end-of term snapshot can be misleading. The more meaningful way to look at the court is as a movie, one starring Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as a canny strategist with a tough side, and his eyes on the horizon. He is just 58 and is likely to lead the court for...

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, was disappointed when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. One year later — having thought about the case, gotten some distance from the issue, reviewed the ruling opinion — he’s confident of one thing: Chief Justice John Roberts engaged in “a betrayal of his judicial oath,” one that amounts to “a form of tyranny.” “In this case, I can’t be sure what exactly motivated Chief Justice John Roberts,” Lee said last night during a Charles Koch Institute event on “Freedom, Laws, and the Commerce Clause” at the Kirby Center for Constitutional Studies. “But what we do...

The decision to keep the bureaucrat who headed up Tea Party targeting in charge of Obamacare speaks to a bald affront by the Obama administration to a US Congress now facing some very tough questions of its own. Sarah Hall Ingram scored not a lateral but an up the chain promotion when she was put in charge of a reform division of the Affordable Care Act. But just what are the political ramifications of the 18 month long period in which the painful targeting of conservatives successfully squelched Tea Party opposition to her big boss’s re-election? The Tea Party targeting...

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No. 12A606 Title: Edward Noonan, et al., Applicants v. Deborah Bowen, California Secretary of State Docketed: December 13, 2012 Lower Ct: Supreme Court of California Case Nos.: (S207078) Date Proceedings and Orders Dec 11 2012 Application (12A606) for a stay, submitted to Justice Kennedy. Dec 13 2012 Application (12A606) denied by Justice Kennedy. Dec 26 2012 Application (12A606) refiled and submitted to The Chief Justice. Jan 9 2013 DISTRIBUTED for Conference of February 15, 2013. Jan 9 2013 Application (12A606) referred to the Court.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Nev.) said Monday he “still has a very high opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts," despite Roberts opinion upholding the individual mandate in Obamacare as constitutional. Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been one of the earliest and most forceful voices in the Senate speaking out against the constitutionality of the individual mandate when it was first proposed in 2009. On Monday, however, Hatch told CNSNews.com that Roberts “certainly had the right” to rule that the mandate is constitutional as a tax. “Naturally, I...

Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote the specific language of congress by claiming in his ObamaCare ruling that the penalty which the lawmakers had clearly attached to the individual mandate was actually a tax. It was the only way in which the Affordable Care Act could be saved, for the Court rejected the Commerce and Necessary and Proper clause defenses as constitutional grounds for the existence of the law. By “penciling in” the tax language necessary to satisfy his own requirement of constitutionality, Roberts behaved no differently from any liberal, activist judge so often criticized by conservatives for judicial malfeasance; that...

Last Friday, after Chief Justice John Roberts upheld Obamacare as a legitimate use of the federal government’s taxing power, we said the decision, “exposed the fact that the supposedly conservative Chief Justice of the Court, is actually an unprincipled political operative who can be cowed into supporting a massive expansion of the welfare state in the face of sustained and organized liberal media pressure.” Now CBS News’ Jan Crawford has produced a report confirming conservatives’ worst fears. SNIP Crawford goes onto report that after being bullied by the liberal media, Roberts began “to focus on a different argument to uphold...

My apologies to all whom I am about to offend. But he raped us all. The fact that he kissed us first makes it no less vile. I feel so violated. Go ahead and ban me Jim - I just don't care anymore. You are the best, privatedrive

Conservatives won a substantial victory Thursday. The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has served this cause. The health-care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the Framers’ design for limited government. Conservatives distraught about the survival of the individual mandate are missing the considerable consolation prize they won when the Supreme Court rejected a constitutional rationale for the mandate — Congress’s...

...Today’s holding is problematic for many reasons. First, it is a novel holding that threatens to expand the taxing power extensively. It removes the taxing power from the representative branches and places it in the only non-accountable branch, the judiciary. Defenders of the law — from President Obama to Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid — all insisted that the law they voted for was not a tax. Now, when it is off their desk, the court has retroactively declared it a tax, circumventing the public accountability intended by the Founders and recognized by constitutional law as the major check on...

Did Justice Roberts trade votes with Justice Kennedy in the Arizona decision handed down Monday? I certainly hope so, for he would have struck a blow for constitutional conservatism. I will explain: Many Court observers have expressed surprise at Chief Justice Roberts joining the majority opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy, which struck down three of four provisions at issue with Arizona's S.B. 1070 and left the fourth on life support in terms of jurisprudence, and all but dead in terms of practice. As Justice Scalia noted in a dissent that was animated even by Scalia standards, the Supreme Court's decision...

The Judiciary: Controlling the politically insulated federal courts, especially the Supreme Court, has long been atop the left's to-do list. Since it doesn't own Chief Justice John Roberts, now the game is to shame him. The battle over retaining the liberal politicization of the courts, symbolized by Chief Justice Earl Warren's tenure, goes back at least as far as President Nixon's failed nominations of Clement Haynsworth and Harrold Carswell in 1969-70; extended to the "borking" of President Reagan's nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987; and ultimately sank to the bottom of the gutter in the character assassination of President...

Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committees, Socialist Patrick Leahy, threatened Chief Justice Roberts weeks before the Obamacare case decision is to be made public. Senator Leahy - “I trust that he will be a chief justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch,” said Leahy. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the court. Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this...

Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday what has long been known but seldom spoken. During the third and final day of Supreme Court hearings on whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is unconstitutional, Roberts said states have been compromising their sovereignty for decades through increased reliance on the federal government for money and accompanying directions on the governance of state affairs. "It seems to me that they have compromised their status as independent sovereigns because they are so dependent on what the federal government has done," the chief justice said during Wednesday's nearly three hours of...

When the young John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the United States in 2005, he declined to put those gold stripes on his robes. They’re the ones that the late William Rehnquist had devised to indicate his status as first among equals on the nation’s high court. “I’ll have to earn them,” Roberts said modestly. He just did. He gave a powerful rejoinder this week to President Obama’s unprecedented foray into demagoguery. It’s more than a tempest in a teapot. Last January, President Obama took the unheard of step of criticizing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling during his...

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts addressed students at the University of Alabama Law School. Following his remarks he responded to questions from audience members. In response to a student, Justice Roberts said the Senate's confirmation process for federal judges is “broken down ” and stated that President Obama's State of the Union speech degenerated “into a political pep rally.” VIDEO - Chief Justice John Roberts The SOTU issue is at the 44:57 mark