Justice Roberts Got It Right But Still Got It Wrong

Regardless of whether or not you are in favor of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), last Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare was a disaster for the rule of law in the United States.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said, "The ACA was passed to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them." thus he concluded that the intent of Congress in their wording that subsidies would only apply to those who purchased their insurance through exchanges, "Established by a state" had to mean both federal and state exchanges because otherwise the Act would be a failure. He reasoned that Congress would not have written the law to fail. That might have been avoided had they not had to "Pass the law in order to know what's in it." but that is beside the point.  So John Roberts got it right in that Congress wouldn't have written the law so that it would fail but he got it wrong when he concluded that allowing subsidies only for those who got their health insurance though state exchanges would result in the ACA failing. What Justice Roberts misses is that Congress saw this wording as a way to make the Act succeed not fail. According to Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the law, subsidies only for state established exchanges was a key provision because it was seen as a way to pressure states to establish their own exchanges. State exchanges, not federal subsidies, were seen as the key to success for the ACA.  Liberals gambled that citizens in the various states would insist that their state legislatures set up exchanges so they could receive the subsidies. Like so many other shenanigans associated with this law, this backfired and once again Justice Roberts saved a poorly constructed law, written by a lazy, conniving Congress. This is a terrible precedent for the rule of law. It should not be up to the Court to find ways to save bad laws yet once again this is exactly what the Supreme Court did for a second time with regard to the ACA. As a result, Congress will continue to pass overly complex, poorly conceived, self-contradicting laws written by staffers and lobbyist, and they can count on the Courts to rule on what the law should have said rather than what it does say. What this does is abdicate Congress' Constitutional role of writing law as the duly elected representatives of the people to 9 unelected men and women in black robes who are appointed for life and accountable to no one. The result is the death of the rule of law in America.

With over 2800 pages, one can only wonder what future harm this abomination of a law will do to America and our system of laws. What will Justice Roberts and the rest of the justices do when Congress figures out that allowing children to stay on their parents health insurance until they are 26 destroys one of the major premises of the ACA - namely that the mandatory insurance premiums of young, healthy Americans will pay for the insurance of older, less healthy citizens. Did Congress really mean that children can stay on their parents' insurance until they are 26? I guess we will have to wait and see what John Roberts says Congress meant.

Doormat-in-Chief

As any reader of this blog knows, I'm no fan of President Obama. That said, he is still the president of the United States and deserves respect.

Recently, a transgender, illegal alien heckled Mr. Obama during his remarks at a White House reception. This is completely unacceptable! How can we tolerate this insult? Why should we let this person remain in our country?

I think it is high time we stop allowing ourselves and our nation to be disrespected. It's time for America to start standing up for itself again. America and her president are no body's doormat. Show some self-respect! If we don't respect ourselves, why should we expect respect from anyone else?