Maggie's Farm

What Roberts did is not what I would call "compromise" but capitulation. As for the alleged "restraints" the Court may have imposed on wide use of the Commerce Clause, fuhgeddaboutit. That was coming anyway.

Instead, as I wrote in earlier posts, the broad taxing authority of the government has now gotten Roberts' approval to become a superhighway for intrusive government-policy 10-wheelers. When it comes to taxes, there are few speed limits or red lights in the Constitution. Roberts has just waved the federal trucks on and told them there'll be no tickets for reckless driving or speeding. As someone else wrote on a different blog, SCOTUS has handed the Obama administration its approval to use the broad taxing authority of the federal government as a Swiss army knife for all sorts of future public policy mischief.

Regarding the integrity of the Court, I fail to see how a Court that once managed to see hidden "penumbras" and "emanations" in the Constitution to carve out a right of privacy in order to justify its Roe v. Wade opinion on abortion (a health care issue, we are told) was so blind as not to find a similar right to privacy when it comes to the entire ObamaCare health care package, which will be far more expansive and ultimately intrusive for the entire nation than is Roe v. Wade.

And as for Roberts' argument regarding the individual mandate, people should note how illogical it is. In appealing to the Commerce Clause, supporters of the law have consistently argued that everyone at sometime in his life needs health care. It is inevitable. There is no such thing as being "outside" the nation's health care system. "Inactivity" eventually becomes "activity." In his majority opinion, Roberts turns that argument on its head. He writes that the "mandate" is Constitutional because it provides a way for each person to avoid having to buy health insurance. He can pay the "tax" instead. So, according to Roberts, it is NOT inevitable that everyone eventually requires health care and enters into the health care system. Inactivity does not become activity. Therefore the law is Constitutional.

In the end, the Dems had a "friend at the Court" they never expected. I'm just wondering why. As for Conservatives who find a silver lining in this decision by the Court, pay them no mind. They are being delusional.

One last comment on the subject of ObamaCare and I will stop.

I don't think Liberals should let their enthusiasm over their victory in the ObamaCare decision get too far out in front. After all, the Court has now given Conservatives who are opposed to abortion a strategy for effectively eradicating it. Following a logic similar to that of Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion, Conservatives need only "tax" the abortion procedure until it becomes prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest women. Women could still legally undergo abortions, but they would have to pay a "tax" to avoid the medical costs of the alternative available to them, giving birth. The ObamaCare decision regarding general health care gives no weight to the arguments of individual privacy that were so central to the abortion rights movement. The door is now open, Conservatives. Will you walk through it?