What Roberts Has Done Is RE-WRITE THE LAW

Roberts: 'Need Not Be Read To Do More than Impose a Tax'

From the Ace of Spades blog: 

"Read" or, say, "interpreted." While I agree with a practical approach to the law, engaging in interpretation on this scale is unwarranted. I disagree strongly with Chief Justice Roberts use of the word "reasonable" in his conclusion:

The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part andunconstitutional in part. The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage in it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress’s power to tax . . .

(Emphasis added.) The prudential, reasonable thing to do would have been to strike down the ACA and tell Congress "We don't however rule today on the constitutionality of ACA as a tax," thereby leaving open that issue for Congress to try again if it wanted. What Roberts has done is re-write the law.

I also think the conclusion is very strong. Roberts decision is deemed to be "anti-formalist" because it does not demand of Congress that they be clear in wording about whether their law compels a mandate or a tax. It doesn't matter, says Roberts, because "No one would doubt that this law imposed a tax".


It doesn't matter, essentially, because everyone understood it was a tax. Even if Congress didn't understand it was a tax. Even if Obama committed fraud on the American by refusing to acknowledge it was a tax. Even if the flim-flam was brought by the glib-glam of the media in an overwhelming surge. The same Americans who are not deemed capable of understanding what an ARM is, are suddenly thought to be more intelligent than theirr Congresspeople, and more intelligent than Economists and Accounting theorists the world over. 


And so,

The kind of "pragmatism" or "anti-formalism" like we've seen today is a slippery slope. It takes onus away from Congress to legislate in a clear fashion and opens up the interpretation of statute to too much convenient second-guessing by the court. 

This is less about the rule of law than it is the rule of men. Because where do you stop? Why not "read" the law utterly subjectively as whatever you want, solely depending upon utility in the moment?

Biggest Tax Increase Ever And He Committed Fraud To Do It

Rush Limbaugh’s approach makes a lot of sense. His point: Obama passed the biggest tax increase in history and committed fraud on the American people by insisting it wasn’t a tax.


From Neo-Neocon.


OBAMA: TAXING EVERYTHING YOU DO
AND EVERYTHING YOU DON'T DO

Read My Lips. . .

So effectively what has been done here is a tax levied as punishment for inaction, for NOT doing something, for NOT doing something the State wants you to do. Not for not buying healthcare, but for not buying, for not taking an action. Period.

It's not a Tax that was written with a (very big) loophole -- everyone has to pay this tax but if you do this then you don't have to pay. But written "IF you don't do this THEN you have to pay this tax."

I didn't think that's the way things worked in America.

Think about where this could lead. IF you don't lose weight THEN you will be taxed. IF you don't buy a car from Government Motors THEN you will be taxed. IF you don't convert your home to "green energy" THEN you will be taxed.

Punishment for inaction.

Think Progress goes after Limbaugh over his comments on Hillary and Huma Abedin

Think Progress goes after Limbaugh over his comments on Hillary and Huma Abedin

From Barrack Now:

On June 26th, Rush Limbaugh spent a couple of minutes reporting on the story we broke on June 24th, that further exposes the familial ties of Huma Abedin - Hillary Clinton's closest advisor - to the Muslim Brotherhood. Specifically, the point of interest for Rush is the news that Huma's mother and Egypt's new first lady are close colleagues as leaders of the Muslim Sisterhood. The Soros-backed Think Progress attempted to debunk Limbaugh's claims and linked to an article we wrote last year, labeling it one of those conservative "conspiracy theories".

Keep checking Shoebat.com because we have an explosive follow-up piece to this story coming that you will not want to miss.

Here is the relevant audio clip of Limbaugh from June 26th, via Think Progress:

WHITE HOUSE WEBSITE STILL SAYS OBAMACARE NOT A TAX

From White House.gov:

As we move into the final stage of the historic push for health reform, opponents of reform are testing the age old adage that if you only say something enough times you can somehow make it true.  Yesterday, we heard a new version of the old, tired refrain that the health reform bills in Congress would raise taxes on the middle class.

So let’s set the record straight:

• First, the health insurance reform bill being considered in the Senate does not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 – in fact it is a substantial net tax cut for American families. The bill being considered represents a substantial net tax cut for middle income families. According to the independent Joint Committee on Taxation, the bill will provide nearly $450 billion in individual income tax cuts over the next 10 years.

Keep reading…

Chief Justice Roberts: “It Is Not Our Job to Protect the People From the Consequences of Their Political Choices”

DID SCOTUS JUST ALLOW A TAX ONLY ON PEOPLE TOO POOR TO BUY A SPECIFIC SERVICE?

Answering Epaminodas' question:

The way I understand this, SCOTUS just allowed the administration to raise taxes on those who can least afford it.

The very poor and lower middle class, the 25-30 million un(der)employed who cannot afford to buy insurance (like myself) will now be taxed if they do not. Which they also cannot afford. And by ruling the states do not have to form low cost exchanges, give these people no affordable way to comply with the law even if they wanted to.

Meanwhile, the very wealthy, moderately wealthy, middle class and up ARE EXEMPT FROM PAYING THE TAX if they simply buy health insurance.

That's some weird class warfare going on there. I'd like to see OWS and Friends protest that. That their beloved Prez and hero of the poor just stuck it to the very people they claim to be championing and let the ones they are protesting off the hook.

Or maybe I'm missing something as well.


PASTORIUS CUTTING IN:

MR has a great point here, and this sets up an interesting conundrum for the Supreme Court, and even more specifically on the Liberals and Leftists of America.  Because they have colluded in handing down a law with which they all will be compelled, eventually, to disagree. 

If the tax is not applied to all, and if it is, therefore, applied only to those who are not wealthy enough to buy insurance themselves, then this is, essentially, a tax on poor people.

Additionally, I don't think people can be compelled to pay a tax on something they didn't do. 

Supreme Court Approves Government's Ability To Take Over 20% of The American Economy

In One Fell Swoop, Supreme Court Approves A Tax Increase of At Least 20%

If Obamacare is a tax, not a mandate to purchase, that means your taxes just went up dramatically.

The Administration had previously argued that Obamacare was NOT A TAX.




 But now, the Supreme Court definitively answers that lie, IT IS A TAX!


So this decision is, effectively, the Supreme Court approving the Marxist takeover of 1/5 of the American Economy.

Yesterday's Romney Rally In Northern Virginia

Mr. AOW and I attended the event yesterday afternoon at EIT in Sterling, Virginia.

If you look very closely around time marker :52, you can see me standing at the table in the left-rear background and buying some anti-Obama buttons. There is a tall young man wearing a red skullcap behind me and crossing from side to side.


Romney made several excellent statements, many of which all of us have heard before. However, there was no "magic in the air."

I can also think of three things that could have been done to make the rally more effective; after all, I've produced a lot of pageants during my 40 years of teaching.

Flaws:

(1) Should have been playing different music during the waiting time and to preface Romney's "grand entrance." The music was mostly songs from The Supremes.  Strange choice, and I'm not sure how that music was supposed to relate to Romney's campaign.

(2) Seating arrangements were pathetic! My husband, a disabled veteran, and others who were less disabled or unable to stand for two hours, had to sit in the back of the room right in front of the raised press platform. No way could anyone sitting at the back of the room see a thing on the stage!

(3) I realize that the turnout was much greater than expected. Still, those assisting with the crowd were not well prepared and didn't really know what to do.  Very poorly coached!  In fact, we got all the way through security up close to the entrance in the back of the facility when, lo and behold, a flight of steps loomed before us! How could these people working for a Presidential candidate's campaign have allowed Mr. AOW, a man confined to a wheelchair, to have waited so long in a snaking line and to have gotten so far in the admissions process and not automatically have rerouted him to the front entrance where the handicapped were supposed to enter? None of the assistants running around in that big parking lot and supposedly directing the crowd knew what to do with regard to getting my husband inside, nor could they find someone who did know.  They did manage to distribute a few bottles of water.  That's about it.

(4) We had few offers for help with the wheelchair, particularly from those working the campaign stop.  The man of the most help to us was a Vietnam veteran behind us in the line.  He was going to carry Mr. AOW up that flight of stairs.  Finally, the Secret Service intervened, and one of the agents pushed him around to the front entrance.

(5) Should have begun the program with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Clearly, Romney needs a better production manager for his campaign tours!

Some of the best moments at this event came afterwards when, FINALLY, one of the Romney workers offered to bring Mr. AOW outside for me to the side parking lot....

I went to get the car, parked quite far away (The Romney bus had blocked all the handicapped parking spaces!) and made a stop at the table that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

While at the table I struck up a conversation with the young man in the skull cap ("B). Fascinating conversation with such a polite and considerate young man!

He hasn't yet decided for whom to vote and is doing his own research.

I know that "B" and I do not have much in common with regard to politics. He's on the Left and, as all know here, I'm on the Right.

But, hey, that's okay.

B is not a lemming; that is, he doesn't vote along party lines.

I continued the conversation as long as I could before going to fetch Mr. AOW. I wish that B and I could have spoken longer.

A morass of a decision?

If I cannot afford individual health insurance (about 750-1300/month in this state) the government CANNOT force me to do buy it (that is now unconstitutional), but they can fine me for not being able to afford it, and the state mechanism which compels states to form low cost exchanges (because individual insurance is so expensive ,...and undertake much more costs) is not constitutional either.

Doesn't this mean that the PRECISE PEOPLE who this act was aimed at, those who have no health insurance specifically because they cannot afford it, are SPECIFICALLY SCREWED?

Am I missing something in what has to be, if I am correct a COMPLETELY inconsistent baby sliced in half?

Obamacare Mandate Approved By Supreme Court, Not Under Commerce Clause, But Under The Power To Tax

'Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it. '

Oh well.

This is the world we live in.

(WaPo) – The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual health-insurance mandate that is at the heart of President Obama’s landmark health-care law, saying the mandate is permissible under Congress’s taxing authority.

The potentially game-changing, election-year decision — a major victory for the White House less than five months before the November elections –will help redefine the power of the national government and affect the health-care choices of millions of Americans.

Passage of the legislation by the Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 was the signature domestic achievement of Obama’s presidency, capping decades of efforts to implement a national program of health care. When the legislation was passed, it was expected to eventually extend health-care coverage to more than 30 million Americans who currently lack it.

Republicans in Congress and GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney vowed to try and repeal the measure after the November elections if it was upheld by the court.

The health-care issue thrust the Supreme Court into the public spotlight unlike anything since its role in the 2000 presidential election. The court’s examination of the law received massive coverage — especially during three days of oral arguments in March — and its outcome remained Washington’s most closely guarded secret.

More:

Breaking News:

Insurance mandate survives in 6-3 Supreme Court ruling

The Roberts Court Is One of the Least Activist Courts of the Modern Era

From Ace of Spades: 

Now, I've got to say right off the bat: I don't know what the outcome of the case will be and neither does anybody else except the justices, their clerks, and a half-dozen other people. What follows is merely a reply to liberal idiocy, not an implied prediction of the outcome of the case. We may not win.

In their effort to preemptively attack the credibility of the Supreme Court in general and Chief Justice Roberts in particular, liberals have started spreading a stupid and easily refutable lie.

It started with that James Fallows character who claimed the Supreme Court was about to perpetrate a coup. He claimed that Justices Roberts and Alito in particular, “actively second-guess and re-do existing law.” Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's chief law analyst who completely shit the bed predicting that no lower court would even pretend that the Obamacare lawsuits had merit, also oozed this lie, claiming that the Roberts Court has been "eager" to overturn legislatures. This lie was ultimately repeated by Politico's dim and shallow Roger Simon and now it is ubiquitous and unchallenged among liberals.

Yes, in about 48 hours liberals managed to cook up this claim and now they're all scurrying around repeating it like a bunch of lemmings. There's just one problem: it is completely untrue.

This is not a matter of opinion. We can actually count how often various Courts have "re-done existing law" and "overturned legislatures." And such a count reveals that the Roberts Court doesn't overturn as many precedents as its three predecessors. The Roberts Court doesn't even come close to overturning the number of laws that its three predecessors did.

Go read the whole thing. 

Is The Obama Administration Imploding In Private?

From Erik Rush:

Over the last few weeks, Americans have been treated to a plethora of disturbing and occasionally bizarre news stories both directly and peripherally relating to President Barack Obama. The fact that many of these have not been covered meaningfully (if at all in some cases) by the establishment press notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to presume that these are not having an effect on the administration and the president on numerous levels.

Given the shape of the economy and the present character of the political landscape, an increasing number of likely voters are scrutinizing what is transpiring in the nation politically, and are making their own decisions as to what is newsworthy. Even if one isn’t solidly aligned in terms of ideology, the nature and gravity of current events has been enough to make the proverbial head spin.

Recently, there’s been the president’s endorsement of same-sex “marriage” and his unilateral granting of temporary amnesty to young adults among our illegal-alien population. These are issues wherein Obama’s position is not shared by a majority of Americans, to say the least.

On the bizarre side, there have been reports claiming Obama held membership in a gay men’s club in Chicago in years past. On the heels of this was the mother of slain Trinity United Church of Christ’s choir director Donald Young claiming that her gay son was killed (execution style in 2007) to protect Obama politically by erasing the trail of his alleged homosexual dalliances. Trinity United Church of Christ was the radical black church attended by Obama for 20 years prior to his election as president.

There are the peripheral events that nevertheless bear Obama’s fingerprints. Since the Trayvon Martin shooting in February, there have been dozens of black-on-white attacks, including incidents just this month in which a young couple was severely beaten by a gang and another in which a man walking his dog had his throat slashed. I have maintained for some time that the resurgence of black militancy is a direct result of Obama and his Department of Justice’s ideological alignment with and leniency toward this philosophy.

On the foreign-policy front, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi won the presidency in Egypt, Libya has fallen to Islamists, and Syria’s secular dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is struggling hopelessly to fend off revolutionary Islamists in that nation. It has been reported that Obama clandestinely helped to catalyze the Arab Spring uprisings across nations in the Middle East.

Even some members of the press are having trouble biting their tongues when it comes to the increasing clownishness of this president, his liability to the Democratic Party and his evident desperation. A few prominent liberal pundits have come out with catty quips intended to mock Obama, comedians are ripping him on everything from spending to shameless pandering, and incumbent Democratic lawmakers up for re-election in November are distancing themselves from him.

The hard left among Obama’s base is all but prepared to tar and feather him. He simply hasn’t been radical enough. In addition to having failed to impale capitalists and Christians by the thousands along Pennsylvania Avenue, he hasn’t even closed Gitmo or gotten us out of Afghanistan.

The administration’s public shame has now become unavoidable. The press managed to keep the fallout from the government’s Fast and Furious gunrunning operation investigation in check, but it’s difficult to conceal a sitting attorney general’s imminent contempt-of-Congress vote. To complicate matters, of course, President Obama elected to invoke executive privilege in the matter of Fast and Furious, which naturally prompted chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., to infer that in so doing the president was either attempting to cover up White House involvement in the botched operation, or is obstructing justice in the matter.

Now, it appears that some House Democrats will be breaking ranks in order to vote in favor of citing Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt. Add to this the impending Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., refusing to endorse Obama for re-election and murmurings of key Democrats boycotting their national convention (which itself appears to be turning into a sideshow), and it is clear that the pressure is on, despite all doggedly maintained appearances to the contrary.

This Week On The Gathering Storm

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, hosted by WC and Always On Watch. The show broadcasts live for 30 minutes every Friday beginning at noon, Pacific Time.

The call-in number is 646-915-9870. Callers welcome!

Our scheduled guest this week is Bill Warner of Political Islam.

Listen to the June 29, 2012 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show, live or later, by CLICKING HERE.

UPCOMING SHOWS:
July 6: Robert Spencer
July 13: IQ al Rassooli
July 20: Midnight Rider
July 27: IQ al Rassooli

The "decision" today in light of others

Context for later this morning..

1857Dredd Scott vs Sanford : 7-2 African brought to the USA and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and were not U.S. citizens..A Roger Taney decision and one which went a long way towards determining how Lincoln decided to treat him

1896 Plessy vs Ferguson : 7-1, upholds the state’s right to mandate Separate but Equal, i.e. SEGREGATION

1935 A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States: 9-0 Two kosher butchers unravel national price controls and rendered the National Industrial Recovery Act, a main component of President Roosevelt’s New Deal, unconstitutional.

1952 Youngstown Sheet and Tube vs. Sawyer: 5-3 also commonly referred to as The Steel Seizure Case, was a United States Supreme Court decision that limited the power of the President of the United States to seize private property in the absence of either specifically enumerated authority under Article Two of the United States Constitution or statutory authority conferred on him by Congress. It was a “stinging rebuff” to President Harry Truman.

Justice Hugo Black’s majority decision was, however, qualified by the separate concurring opinions of five other members of the Court, making it difficult to determine the details and limits of the President’s power to seize private property in emergencies. While a concurrence, Justice Jackson’s opinion is used by most legal scholars and Members of Congress to assess Executive power.

This case is actually very interesting since FDR appointed very liberal judges formed the majority to limit executive power

1954 Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka: 9-0 reverses Plessy, and mandates the end of segregation, stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of theFourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.

1973 Rowe vs. Wade: 7-2  is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. Decided simultaneously with a companion case, Doe v. Bolton, the Court ruled that a right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman’s decision to have an abortion, but that right must be balanced against the state’s two legitimate interests in regulating abortions: protecting prenatal life and protecting women’s health. Arguing that these state interests became stronger over the course of a pregnancy, the Court resolved this balancing test by tying state regulation of abortion to the trimester of pregnancy.

The Court later rejected Roe’s trimester framework, while affirming Roe’s central holding that a person has a right to abortion until viability. The Roe decision defined “viable” as being “potentially able to live outside the mother’s womb, albeit with artificial aid”, adding that viability “is usually placed at about seven months (28 weeks) but may occur earlier, even at 24 weeks.”

2000 Bush vs Gore: 7-2 that the vote recount method was unconstitutional, 5-4 that no constitutional method could be conceived and carried out under the time limits of state law, - is the United States Supreme Court decision that effectively resolved the 2000 presidential election in favor of George W. Bush. Only eight days earlier, the United States Supreme Court had unanimously decided the closely related case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000), and only three days earlier, had preliminarily halted the recount that was occurring in Florida.

Each of these votes close or decisive settled NOTHING in terms of feeling, of the public, but did settle law. The true nature of the changes wrought by these decisions only made political sense when the consciousness of the public was changed.

This requires sustained leadership. Dredd Scott and Plessy represented popular sentiment. Brown ultimately set off busing which remains controversial. Row vs Wade settled NOTHING politically in a lot of places. And Bush, 2000 DESPITE a decisive majority of SCOTUS finding that Florida’s recount methods denied the rights of its voters still left him regarded as an illegitimate president in the minds of the the other side until the day he left in 2009.

Nothing in terms of public or political sentiment will be settled later today.