We only presume he was once competent, before he was handed the immense freedom he sees in being part of the Supreme Court, completely free of any anchoring in the Constitution or statutory construction.
The closest Chief Justice Roberts comes to “principle” is his identity with the one that begins “The Peter… “
Nine of Justice Scalia’s zingers from yesterday’s Obamacare decision.
A couple of passing thoughts on the Supreme Court decision on King v. Burwell, since it deserves nothing else than everlasting contempt:
1) We originally thought, when Chief Justice Roberts turned himself and the law into a pretzel in order to protect Obamacare 3 years ago with his weird opinion on the individual mandate that the jurist may have been under intense threat from some source which was not known at the time. We speculated that it might be possible he had been threatened with bodily harm or that his family might be in dire danger if he were not to allow Obamacare to survive challenge.
Further, we considered the possibility that, if intimidation of this kind were not the case, perhaps Justice Roberts became so enamored of media and Beltway acclaim when he took a liberal position, that he acted as he did to further ingratiate himself to the editorial board at the New York Times?
Surely not, we concluded. This is a man who has reached the very pinnacle of his chosen profession and enjoys the most stellar reputation for wisdom and integrity, and solid legal judgement.
About the only other possibility we could think of, was that maybe Chief Justice Roberts never was what he was thought to be or quietly claimed to be. Incredible as it might seem, could Roberts have always been dedicated to a liberal ideology but was able to conceal his devotion to those ideas all those years until he was in position to go for the “Big Enchilada”… unchallengeably upholding the precursor to socialized medicine for America?!
About the only other possibility is that Chief Roberts was promised some enormous financial gain by grotesquely manipulating the US Justice system.
Impossible! We concluded. He probably was just off his meds for a few days, we decided.
Well, that was then. But, now, he has done it again. More weirdly, more blatantly…but again, for the purpose of upholding Obamacare!
We’re out of guesses for Roberts’ motivation What’s yours?
2) Those crafty Republicans like the “formidable conservative” Orin Hatch and Everybody’s Conservative Hero, John Boehner, have vowed, on their 401k’s, that they are going to fight “tooth and nail” to repeal Obamacare!!!!!!!
We are so relieved.
So ineffectual, or deliberately dishonest, is the GOP caucus that we don’t expect it to come to this, but if it did, it is absurd to think that any negative legislative action regarding Obamacare (SCOTUSCare) would be upheld. This is a Supreme Court totally dedicated to advancing a leftist agenda…for whatever reason. DLH
Scalia’ Scathing dissent in King v Burwell Re-posted from Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, as collected by Tiffany Bates.
Justice Antonin Scalia is known for his sharp wit and even sharper pen. He pulled no punches in his dissent today from the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell allowing the Obama administration to allow Obamacare subsidies to flow through the federal exchange.
Here are nine highlights:
1. “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare … [T]his Court’s two decisions on the Act will surely be remembered through the years … And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.”
2. “This case requires us to decide whether someone who buys insurance on an Exchange established by the Secretary gets tax credits. You would think the answer would be obvious—so obvious there would hardly be a need for the Supreme Court to hear a case about it.”
The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.
3. “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’”
4. “Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved.”
5. “The Court interprets §36B to award tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges. It accepts that the ‘most natural sense’ of the phrase ‘Exchange established by the State’ is an Exchange established by a State. (Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) Yet the opinion continues, with no semblance of shame, that ‘it is also possible that the phrase refers to all Exchanges—both State and Federal. (Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!)’”
6. “Perhaps sensing the dismal failure of its efforts to show that ‘established by the State’ means ‘established by the State or the Federal Government,’ the Court tries to palm off the pertinent statutory phrase as “inartful drafting.’ This Court, however, has no free-floating power ‘to rescue Congress from its drafting errors.’”
7. “The Court’s decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people’s decision to give Congress ‘[a]ll legislative Powers’ enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them.”
8. “More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers. ‘If Congress enacted into law something different from what it intended, then it should amend the statute to conform to its intent.’ In the meantime, this Court ‘has no roving license … to disregard clear language simply on the view that … Congress ‘must have intended’ something broader.”
9. “Rather than rewriting the law under the pretense of interpreting it, the Court should have left it to Congress to decide what to do about the Act’s limitation of tax credits to state Exchanges.”
