Time to stop whining about Roberts’ decision and think about what’s next

By Harold Kane

On this our Independence Day I think that it is time for the Republican geldings to stop their whining over the Roberts Supreme Court decision and to think about what can be done with the decision. He reigned in the Medicaid expansion. That ruling stopped the Federal government from extorting the states. This portion of the ruling could have implications that we have not yet discovered.

The Obama Administration has granted ObamaCare waivers to 1,200 organizations. These were “thank you” to their supporters. They were granted under the false notion that ObamaCare was constitutional under article 8, the “commerce clause”. Apparently the regulation of commerce was construed to mean giving out goodies to your friends. However since ObamaCare was found to be constitutional under article 7, the taxing power, are the exemptions still valid? Under the tax laws enforced by the IRS we are all treated equally. If I get a deduction for dependent children, so do all citizens who meet the dependent child test. The IRS cannot arbitrarily decide who will get the child exemption based upon political favoritism. The question now becomes are all of the 1,200 exemptions null and void. If they are null and void I’m sure that Obama’s supporters that received them are going to be very unhappy and some of this unhappiness could exhibit itself on Election Day

Just as a note, Fox News played the tape of the Solicitor General making the case for article 7. Apparently this was plan B if the commerce clause was going to fall apart, which it did.

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Look what you can buy on the President’s website

I’m not posting a link unless he buys an ad.  This is real.  The Commander in Chief is promoting the tee shirt on his twitter feed too.

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Chief Justice Roberts’ Foley

A National Review Online Editorial

In today’s deeply disappointing decision on Obamacare, a majority of the Supreme Court actually got the Constitution mostly right. The Commerce Clause — the part of the Constitution that grants Congress the authority to regulate commerce among the states — does not authorize the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance. The Court, in a 5–4 decision, refused to join all the august legal experts who insisted that of course it granted that authorization, that only yahoos and Republican partisans could possibly doubt it. It then pretended that this requirement is constitutional anyway, because it is merely an application of the taxing authority. Rarely has the maxim that the power to tax is the power to destroy been so apt, a portion of liberty being the direct object in this case.

What the Court has done is not so much to declare the mandate constitutional as to declare that it is not a mandate at all, any more than the mortgage-interest deduction in the tax code is a mandate to buy a house. Congress would almost surely have been within its constitutional powers to tax the uninsured more than the insured. Very few people doubt that it could, for example, create a tax credit for the purchase of insurance, which would have precisely that effect. But Obamacare, as written, does more than that. The law repeatedly speaks in terms of a “requirement” to buy insurance, it says that individuals “shall” buy it, and it levies a “penalty” on those who refuse. As the conservative dissent points out, these are the hallmarks of a “regulatory penalty, not a tax.”

The law as written also cuts off all federal Medicaid funds for states that decline to expand the program in the ways the lawmakers sought. A majority of the Court, including two of the liberals, found this cut-off unconstitutionally coercive on the states. The Court’s solution was not to invalidate the law or the Medicaid expansion, but to rule that only the extra federal funds devoted to the expansion could be cut off. As the dissenters rightly point out, this solution rewrites the law — and arbitrarily, since Congress could have avoided the constitutional problem in many other ways.

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Legal Attire Outside The U.S. Supreme Court But Not On The Asbury Park Boardwalk

Photo Credit: Andy LoCascio, SCOTUSblog.com

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Christie: SCOTUS confirmed what we knew all along–ObamaCare is a tax

Governor Chris Christie issued the following statement about the Supreme Court’s decision on ObamaCare:

“I’ve been clear from the very beginning that I do not believe a one-size-fits-all health care program works for the entire country and that each governor should have the ability to make decisions about what works best for their state. Today’s Supreme Court decision is disappointing and I still believe this is the wrong approach for the people of New Jersey who should be able to make their own judgments about health care. Most importantly, the Supreme Court is confirming what we knew all along about this law – it is a tax on middle class Americans.”

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Supreme Court: ObamaCare Individual Mandate Is Constitutional As Tax

Chief Justice John Roberts joined the liberal wing of the Court in the 5-4 decision. Or was it a 6-3 decision?

Bush appointed Roberts.  Therefore, ObamaCare is Bush’s fault.

It will take time for legal scholars to figure out what the decision really means. 

Now we’ll have an election about it.

Bad news for the country.  Good news for the Romney campaign.

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Black Kids In Asbury Park Shooting Each Other, Part Two: The 35 People Who Are At Fault

By Tommy DeSeno, also published in the April 26 edition of the triCityNews

In the last issue of Justified Right we printed Part One of this series, wherein the “Moynihan Report” of 1965 was revisited for its thesis that the reason poor black children in America struggle is due to the absence of a father in the household.

Statistics, as pointed out in that report, reveal that the nuclear Black family with both parents in the household see their children grow up on average with higher IQs, less crime and more financial success than their single mother counterparts.

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What if Obama is declared ineligible?

What an unprecedented mess that would be.

In the unlikely event that any of the challenges to Barack Obama’s candidacy for a second term makes it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and succeeds, then what?

Before the case even got that far, would Judges and Justices appointed by Obama be eligible to hear and rule on the issue?   Can you imagine Hannity or Limbaugh if they do rule?  Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann (if he gets a job) if they don’t?

If Obama is ruled ineligible to serve as President of the United States, is he immediately removed from office?  If so, who becomes President?  If Obama’s 2008 election was invalid, it seems that Joe Biden’s election as Vice President would also be invalid.   Next in line would be House Speaker John Boehner.

If John Boehner assumes the presidency, would the GOP nominate him as the 2012 candidate?  Boehner isn’t ready to retire.  Why would he want to give up the Speakership in order to be President for a few months.  Would Boehner appoint Mitt Romney as Vice President?  Would the Senate confirm Romney?  Would Romney accept the job?

Would Boehner pardon Obama?

Who do the Democrats nominate for President?  Biden?  The party never warmed to him as a presidential candidate in his multiple tries.  Hillary Clinton?  John Kerry?  Al Gore?  Jesse Jackson?  Al Sharpton?  Keith Ellison (a real American Muslim)? Cory Booker?  Dennis Kucinich?

What happens to all the laws, executive orders and appointments that Obama signed?  Is ObamaCare the law?  Are Sonya Sotomayor and Eleana Kagan Supreme Court Justices?  Did Sandra Fluke really need all of that birth control?

Obama hasn’t signed a budget sinced he’s been President, but is the debt ceiling valid?  Is all of that debt backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America?

Would Obama owe the U.S. Treasury his salary, rent on the White House?  Would he have to reimburse the Treasury for his security and vacations?   Does he has to reimburse all his donors from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns?

I can understand why Judges would look for procedural or jurisdictional grounds not to hear such a case.

What would be better for the country?  To pursue the issues raised by the Objectors or look the other way?

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Star Ledger Editor Tom Moran Calls Conservatives Racist

The Star Ledger’s Tom Moran is back to his old tricks of using the race card while attempting to advance his political agenda.

In early 2010, shortly after Governor Chris Christie took office, Moran tried to derail the Christie administration by teaming up with Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver to call Christie and his team “…white men, most of them political neophytes…” who never rode a bus and couldn’t understand how their deeply their economic policies were impacting “working poor families.” 

Moran did that before he realized that Christie is a “force of nature who could probably make a dog sing if he put his mind to it.”

In a column posted on Tuesday that defends the President’s constitutional pronouncements about the Supreme Court’s right to overturn ObamaCare Moran employed Jeanane Garofalo’s tactic of accusing Obama’s critics of being racist.

Because Moran is smarter and prettier, his accusation is sublter than Garofalo’s crude remarks, yet it is no less offensive:

Obama went on to make an important point: That if the court overrules the health care law, it will be practicing judicial activism. Conservatives have been complaining about judicial activism since the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow segregation laws in the South, and the heat rose considerably after Roe v. Wade.

Maybe fellow Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine can explain the difference between judicial activistism and constructionism to Moran.

Activistism is when a Court finds, invents or redefines a constitutional provision in order to make new law that is consistent with its political or ideological preference.  That is what the U.S. Supreme Court did in Roe v Wade and what the NJ Supreme Court did in the Abbott decisions.

Constructionism is what a court does when it decides that the legislative or executive branches exceeded the power granted to them in the Constitution, like mandating people buy something they don’t want.

Moran, like Obama, probably knows the difference.  Also like Obama, he probably just doesn’t think the Constitution is that important.  That’s OK for Moran who hasn’t sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.  It’s not OK for the President who has sworn that oath.

The race card worked well for liberals in 2008.  The invoked it successfully to mute Obama’s poltical opponents in the Democratic primary and during the general election.  They appealed to ‘white guilt” to get Obama elected.  It was a disgusting and effective strategy.

But the race card is played out. It didn’t work in the politicization of the Trayvon Martin tragedy.  It didn’t work when Garofalo played it.  It didn’t work in 2010.

Moran should stop playing the race card.  Conservative opposition to ObamaCare has nothing to do with the Jim Crow laws, just as Governor Christie’s economic policies have nothing to do with how many of his cabinet members and staffers have ever ridden a bus.

Moran’s job is the inform, educate and persuade.   He should leave the obfuscation to politicians, activists and B-rate entertainers looking for their next gig.

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