Back to Basics

In 2008, 13.7 million California voters did their civic duty by voting on Proposition 08, the state initiative which sought to define marriage as being valid only when it involved one man and one woman

The election was won by Prop 08 advocates who garnered 51.1 % of the popular vote, to 49.9 % recorded by those opposed.

The ballot measure was bitterly contested, and hugely expensive. A total of $83 million was spent by both sides.

Despite the millions of votes cast and fortunes spent on the proposition, both for and against,  the issue of gay marriage is still in bitter contention in California, and throughout America.

Just this week, the gay marriage row reached the rarefied air of the US Supreme Court where nine Associate Justices, dutifully wrapped in black robes and reflecting appropriately somber countenances for the occasion, gathered to consider whether 13.7 million voters in California had sufficient intelligence, wisdom, and morality to decide the issue for marriages to be sanctioned in California.

Although no one is sure how the SCOTUS will ultimately rule, the fact that the issue has even risen to the level of the Supreme Court is astounding!

Whatever happened to the democratic principle of “Government Of, By and for the People”?

What better definition of tyranny could there be than nine elitist intellectuals ruling to invalidate the results of a free and open election conducted in a democratic setting?

What the hell makes the opinion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, or any of the other Supremes so much superior to the views of the ordinary citizens of California?

Perhaps the time has come to change our election laws?

Instead of asking common men and women to decide issues of great importance, why not submit the thorniest matters directly to the SCOTUS brothers and sisters and go around We the People, to begin with?

Especially, since We the People are utterly powerless to oppose the tyranny of the SCOTUS?

Well, this is pretty much exactly what I argued on Friday.

At the Los Angeles Times, “Supreme Court showdown expected over gay rights decisions.” Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, both 76 years-old, will be battling it out:

The two have much in common. Born in 1936, they graduated from high school in the early 1950s and excelled at Harvard Law School, where they were a year apart. They were Republicans who rose through the legal ranks. When appointed to the court, both bought homes in McLean, Va.

They agree on much. Both voted to strike down President Obama’s healthcare law as an overreach by the government. Scalia joined Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Citizens United case that freed corporate and union spending on political ads.

But Kennedy, the libertarian, and Scalia, the social conservative, clash fiercely over the court’s role in deciding moral controversies.

The two split 20 years ago when the court’s conservative bloc was poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the ruling that legalized abortion. Though personally opposed to abortion, Kennedy switched sides in spring 1992 and cast a crucial vote to uphold a woman’s right to choose. “Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code,” Kennedy wrote.

In the past, Scalia has accused Kennedy of having “signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.” Scalia is likely to have the votes of fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and probably Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to uphold state and federal laws that exclude gays from marriage.

But Kennedy has the much stronger hand. He ranks third in seniority after the chief justice and Scalia, and he has four liberal justices on his left. Because the senior member of the majority decides who writes the opinion, Kennedy could decide who writes the opinions if he votes with the liberals. And he could take the assignment for himself.

His past writings provide clues as to how he might see the issue.

In a New York case, the justices will decide whether the federal government can deny legally married same-sex couples the benefits that go with marriage. These include filing joint tax returns and receiving survivors benefits from Social Security.

Gay rights advocates challenged this exclusion in the Defense of Marriage Act as discriminatory, and they have won rulings from judges in New England, New York and Northern California.

Kennedy is likely to agree with the challengers, and he explained why in 1996, the same year Congress passed the marriage act. The court then faced a Colorado voter measure that repealed gay rights ordinances in several cities. Kennedy spoke for the court in striking it down. He said that the measure was “born of animosity” toward gays, he said, and that the Constitution “prohibits laws singling out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status or general hardships.”

If Kennedy and the court strike down the federal benefits provision of the marriage act, it would be a major victory for gay rights, but it would not affect the 41 states where same-sex marriage is forbidden.

The California case on Proposition 8 could be far more significant because it involves the right to marry.

On the traditional First Monday in October, the nine members of the United States Supreme Court reconvened today and will take up another batch of important — often controversial — cases in the coming months, according to several legal experts.

More than a few conservatives have revised their opinions of Chief Justice John Roberts and the eight associate justices whose decisions more often than not have an impact on the American people, their economy, their culture and their relationship with their own government, according to Jeffrey Schoen, an attorney and former law professor.

“A large number of Americans are still angry with the Roberts Court after its 5-4 decision to uphold President Obama’s healthcare law. Contrary to the pundits, it wasn’t Justice Kennedy who held the deciding vote, it was the so-called staunch conservative Chief Justice Roberts who ruled in favor of Obamacare,” said Schoen.

Opponents of the law — a majority of Americans, according to polls — claimed the mandate was nothing short of the federal government intruding on the private lives of citizens. While the high court was divided on this issue, the majority ruled that Congress’ taxing power was more important than a citizen’s right to be free from government intrusion.

In addition, non-government legal groups had filed amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs in the federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, (Susan Seven-Sky, et al v Eric Holder, Jr. et al.(No. 11-5047)). Their attorneys, most of whom worked pro bono, were completely surprised and disappointed with the supposedly conservative Supreme Court.

Many lawmakers also were angry with the Roberts Court decision on Obamacare. “When most people think of health care reform they think of more doctors’ exams, not more IRS exams,” said Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas, a top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee. “Isn’t the federal government already intruding enough into our lives? We need thousands of new doctors and nurses in America, not thousands more IRS agents.”

According to CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Scalia was furious with Roberts over the healthcare ruling in which Roberts sided with the court’s traditionally liberal-left justices. Toobin claims his source said Roberts wanted to only strike down the individual mandate but didn’t wish to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act.

On the other hand, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy believed the entire Obamacare had to be squashed.

But not all conservatives have given up on Roberts. Several right-leaning jurists say — off the record — that Roberts will show conservatives he’s indeed a Constitutional originalist in upcoming cases such as another legal challenge to affirmative action on university campuses

It’s now well established that Chief Justice John Roberts had ulterior motives for upholding ObamaCare.  The usual theories involve his being concerned about the Court’s, or maybe even his own, losing of respect by seeming to operate in a partisan manner.  But, to ask what may appear a rhetorical question, why such concern about respect?  Is it just vanity, the desire to be viewed as a font of temperance and intellectualism?  Perhaps.  But there actually could be a more tangible area of self-interest.

Last Thursday dawned bright and clear. It was shaping up to be a great day for conservatives. More than one observer — waiting for the Obamacare decision outside the Supreme Court — noticed aircraft coming in low on the horizon. Everyone assumed it was ICE drones searching for illegal aliens deserving of amnesty and a college scholarship.

But as the aircraft passed overhead the full weight of our mistake hit home. That wasn’t the Army Air Corps insignia on the underside of the wing. That circular logo was the Obama meatball and it was Pearl Harbor all over again! Obamacare was legal and conservatives were caught completely unprepared as plans to roll back Big Government exploded in their face.

Make no mistake. Chief Justice John Robert’s decision is a total, crushing and potentially unrecoverable defeat. Roberts joins with Chief Justice Roger Taney of Dred Scott fame as another Maryland chief justice responsible for a Supreme Court decision that will live in infamy.

“I always say…that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It’s my job.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Chief Justice John Roberts

Justice Holmes, a crusty veteran wounded three times during the Civil War, was being cheerfully cynical. Justice Roberts, who appears to be suffering from PTSD induced by State of the Union criticism following the Citizens United decision and potential criticism prior to the Obamacare decision, is merely being pathetic.

Berkeley law professor John Yoo contends Robert’s doesn’t agree with his own ruling but intended to “pull the court out of political fight.”

Unfortunately, Robert’s job is to uphold the Constitution regardless of Democrat political pressure. His failure to do so removes one of the few remaining limits on the growth and expansion of federal power.

This type of judicial temporizing in the face of political pressure is the same thing that happened during the 1930’s. A gutless Supreme Court stood idly by while FDR and the Democrats twisted the Constitution and began the long, legislative march toward intrusive, domineering Big Government.

If conservatives had not been lulled into a false sense of security, much like radar observers at Pearl Harbor, the Robert’s decision earlier in the week to overturn most of Arizona’s illegal alien law would have served to warn us of impending problems.

Deluded optimists claim the decision was a clever rope–a–dope and now Obama has to run for re–election with Obamacare and its hidden tax hung around his neck for all the voters to see.

I don’t know what election these optimists have been watching, but the failure of Obamacare was already part of his campaign. Now, thanks to Roberts, he can run on the success of Obamacare, which serves to solidify a base that was becoming increasingly disillusioned. Protecting the fruit of this Supreme Court decision becomes a strong motivator to get out the Obama vote.

If this is a victory for conservatives, God save us from defeat.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–KY) is already whining that it’s going to be difficult to repeal the entire law because it’s so complicated. But it doesn’t require a 2,400–page bill to repeal a 2,400–page bill.

He nails it.

See Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Charles Krauthammer at RealClearPolitics.

And more here: “Custodian of the Court: Charles Krauthammer Explains Chief Justice John Roberts’ ObamaCare Ruling.”

And in case you haven’t read it yet, here’s the opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius.

The strange news keeps coming out about this. See Owen Kerr at Volokh, “So Now We Have Supreme Court Leaks Disagreeing With the Substance of Other Supreme Court Leaks” (via Memeorandum).

And John Podhoretz thinks Roberts caved to the bullying, “Roberts the Coward“:

Our system grants federal judges lifetime tenure precisely to shield them from political pressure. Of course, the Supreme Court has often fallen short of that ideal. The early 20th century political wit Finley Peter Dunne, writing in the voice of Chicago saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley, famously declared flatly that “the Supreme Coourt follows th’ illiction returns.”

Yet the polls show the unpopularity of ObamaCare, as did the overwhelming results of the election in November 2010 that followed the bill’s passage. So, if Roberts had been following election returns and public opinion, he wouldn’t have hesitated to overturn.

No, he seems to have flip-flopped over worries about the hostility a 5-4 decision overturning ObamaCare would generate among pundits. No, let me be more precise — among liberal pundits like E.J. Dionne and the editorialists at The New York Times.

It seems astonishing that the chief justice of the United States would be motivated by fear of E.J. Dionne and the like.

But there it is. And if this is indeed why the chief justice changed his vote — out of fear of attacks on the court’s legitimacy by scribblers like me — then the court’s legitimacy deserves to be challenged.

What legitimacy does a decision on the most important case of the last decade have if a justice came to it for reasons other than his understanding of the law?

Not to mention that the naked intellectual cynicism on display in the Roberts opinion has satisfied no one.

In her concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg heaps scorn upon it. The dissent by the four conservatives whom Roberts abandoned “deliberately ignored Roberts’ decision,” according to Crawford’s reporting, “as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.”

That’s sounds overly harsh, actually. Roberts was bullied, but I don’t think it’s immoral that he switched. People change their minds for many reasons. And depending how Team Romney plays it, the Supreme Court might have helped deliver the election to the Republicans. More on that later.

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse argues that Roberts has made it extremely difficult for Democrats to use Commerce Cause powers to expand government going forward: “‘The commentary on John Roberts’s solo walk into the Affordable Care Act wilderness is converging on a common theme: The Chief Justice is a genius’.”

With full and enthusiastic support from SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, Usurper and Dictator-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama has now effectively “transformed” America into his personal empire if dying cash-cow. Supplanting the US Constitution and Republic with what some pundits are calling “political correctness” (a view of Roberts’ behavior to which I do not subscribe), Roberts has now placed the United States of America firmly into Socialism…aka Marxism…and effectively changed the US Constitution’s opening line “We-the-People” into “We-the-Rulers.”

Roberts is now ‘loved’ by the Marxist Media who are praising his name to the nether regions which they inhabit. In my estimation either Roberts has chosen to leave the light of Constitutionality and legality — as do all leftists when they discover which side they are truly on — in favor of praise and adulation from the rankest amongst us or the recent bribe was just too large to ignore.

Note: All four dissenting associate justices agreed that Roberts’ decision was illegal, in calling it “vast judicial overreaching.”

Unless Roberts is and has always been a “sleeper leftist” just waiting for his time to strike out (many of us wondered and were very concerned about the formerly secretive meetings between Roberts and Obama as well as members of the Obama syndicate) as a true Marxist against the American people and their country, he may soon learn that when you deal with the devil you choose an inherently unstable and untrustworthy partner.

However, my concern today — as I believe should be the concern of us all — is the unassailable fact that he has legislated (from the highest bench in the land) the transformation of the USA from a Republic to a totalitarian state. Then, laughing at us all, Roberts told an assembly of 300 attorneys and lawyers at what was called a posh Pennsylvania resort “Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress. It seemed like a good idea.” With his apparent vastly increased riches (courtesy of the American taxpayer) Roberts will enjoy his months of vacation on a well-fortified island far from the view and disgust of the Americans he has just sold into slavery. Yep! It appears Obama can even buy sitting US Supreme Court justices. Now, the Judicial branch of the US government has joined the other two in becoming completely lawless and under Marxist-Democrat rule. Roberts is making up new law, instead of good-faith rulings as to constitutionality. And, like his dictator boss, Roberts has also learned how to laugh at us all…with almost a perfect tone of disdain.

One thing left before it’s over, folks, and the last one turns out the last light in the USA…voting. Obama’s practice mobs are already turning against all who oppose or might oppose their leader and more and more reports of roving black mobs are coming in (many with videos) from across the country. I have listed only a few links below but, there are now thousands of articles on this latest Obama-inspired phenomenon. They are trying to intimidate you into staying home and cowering as the Obama Army violence increases. As I’ve stated before, Obama is working tirelessly to start a race war in OUR country.

Do not be intimidated.

It’s a tax… it’s a penalty… no, wait…it’s a tax.

Chief Justice John Roberts turned the Constitution and the Supreme Court on its head with a not-quite-coherent opinion in which he managed a tortured interpretation of the Obamacare Act, which was clearly intended to save the most detested piece of legislation since prohibition.

The temptation to jump on my keyboard as soon as I heard the announcement was severe. As with most news events, I prefer to wait until the immediate coverage has sorted itself from the garbage which so often accompanies events such as this. I’m glad I did. It gave me the opportunity to listen to the opinions of one of the true experts on the Constitution and Constitutional law in this country, Mark Levin.

For those of you seeking information you could not find a better, more coherent source than Mr Levin. His book, ‘Men in Black’, is a compelling look at the Supremes and their relationship to jurisprudence and the Constitution. His book,’Liberty and Tyranny’, is a tour de force which offers a compelling insight into the minds and actions of those who would destroy America as we know it.

Mark was as close to ballistic in his treatment and analysis of the Roberts decision as anything I’ve ever heard him say or write. Words such as “Mickey Mouse”… and… “There’s nothing redeeming about Obamacare, nothing”. To say that he filetted the opinion of the Chief Justice is a wild understatement.

Roberts found a political reason to render the judgement as he did. Had he not convoluted his reasoning along the tortuous path he chose, Obamacare would have gone down in the flames it so richly deserves. As it is, Roberts’ legacy to the court and the nation is going to be one of eternal vigilance on our part. The usual beltway pundits are falling all over themselves to posit this mess as some sort of conservative victory.

The only victory here is that there’s probably nothing that could have galvanized an already aroused conservative patriot populace more. Everything I’m hearing out here and reading online indicates a real anger over upholding a clearly unconstitutional law, which was passed in the ‘dark of night’ without a single Republican vote and not a single committee hearing.

For myself, November just can’t get here fast enough.

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2012

In a full ring game of high stakes political poker (9 Supreme Court Justices and the President), at the end of the day it came down to a heads up competition between two deep stacks – Chief Justice John Roberts and President Obama. While the left clearly won a major victory, the right is claiming the river card has yet to be dealt.

In other words, Obama’s pocket aces survived the flop and are in the lead at the turn, but according to political power brokers like Krauthammer, Erickson and Morris, Roberts dealt a turn card that clearly gives America multiple outs and favorable pot odds to draw to a victorious card at the river in November.

How? By Roberts rewriting the legislative language to deem Obamacare a massive federal tax and therefore . . . Constitutional!

Before I pontificate on the clear violation of judicial activism on Roberts’ part, let’s examine the claim that this was a shrewed move that sets up a victorious showdown in January assuming Romney eeks out a narrow victory in November and repeals Obamacare right from the git-go.

Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post column today . . .

“It’s the judiciary’s Nixon-to-China: Chief Justice John Roberts joins the liberal wing of the Supreme Court and upholds the constitutionality of Obamacare. How? By pulling off one of the great constitutional finesses of all time. He managed to uphold the central conservative argument against Obamacare, while at the same time finding a narrow definitional dodge to uphold the law — and thus prevented the court from being seen as having overturned, presumably on political grounds, the signature legislation of this administration.”

He goes on to write . . .

Why did he do it? Because he carries two identities. Jurisprudentially, he is a constitutional conservative. Institutionally, he is chief justice and sees himself as uniquely entrusted with the custodianship of the court’s legitimacy, reputation and stature.

As a conservative, he is as appalled as his conservative colleagues by the administration’s central argument that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a proper exercise of its authority to regulate commerce.

That makes congressional power effectively unlimited. Mr. Jones is not a purchaser of health insurance. Mr. Jones has therefore manifestly not entered into any commerce. Yet Congress tells him he must buy health insurance — on the grounds that it is regulating commerce. If government can do that under the commerce clause, what can it not do?

“The Framers . . . gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,” writes Roberts. Otherwise you “undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers.”

That’s Roberts, philosophical conservative. But he lives in uneasy coexistence with Roberts, custodian of the court, acutely aware that the judiciary’s arrogation of power has eroded the esteem in which it was once held. Most of this arrogation occurred under the liberal Warren and Burger courts, most egregiously with Roe v. Wade, which willfully struck down the duly passed abortion laws of 46 states. The result has been four decades of popular protest and resistance to an act of judicial arrogance that, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, “deferred stable settlement of the issue” by the normal electoral/legislative process.

Obamacare is now essentially upheld. There’s only one way it can be overturned.