"Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians."
-- Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith, Hope
On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote the following to his wife Abigail:
More @ Godfather Politics
For John Roberts, it is Palm Sunday.
Out of relief and gratitude for his having saved Obamacare, he is being compared to John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Liberal commentators are burbling that his act of statesmanship has shown us the way to the sunny uplands of a new consensus.
If only Republicans will follow Roberts' bold and brave example, and agree to new revenues, the dark days of partisan acrimony and tea party intransigence could be behind us.
Yet imagine if Justice Stephen Breyer had crossed over from the liberal bench to join Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy in striking down Obamacare. Those hailing John Roberts for his independence would be giving Breyer a public caning for desertion of principle.
Why did Roberts do it? Why did this respected conservative uphold what still seems to be a dictatorial seizure of power—to order every citizen to buy health insurance or be punished and fined?
Congress can do this, wrote Roberts, because even if President Obama and his solicitor general insist the fine is not a tax, we can call it a tax:
"If a statute has two possible meanings, one of which violates the Constitution, courts should adopt the meaning that does not do so. ... If the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress's constitutional power to tax."
Roberts is saying that if Congress, to stimulate the economy, orders every middle-class American to buy a new car or face a $5,000 fine, such a mandate is within its power.
Now, Congress can indeed offer tax credits for buying a new car. But if a man would prefer to bank his money and not buy a new car, can Congress order him to buy one—and fine him if he refuses?
Roberts has just said that Congress has that power.
More @ Chronicles
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.
Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.
It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.
It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.
That’s exactly what happened to a mother in Kaysville, Utah, about twenty minutes north of Salt Lake City. After reading through the book, In Our Mothers’ House, that told the story of a pair of lesbian parents and how wonderful their household is. When a neighbor of the lesbian pair tells them that she does not appreciate what the couple are, they explain to their kids that the neighbor is full of fear and that she just doesn’t understand them.
The Utah parent complained to the Windridge Elementary School about the book and then collected twenty-five signatures from other parents who were against the book. The matter went before a parent-teacher board who then voted 6-1 to keep the book in the school’s library, but to place it behind the counter where only a parental permission would allow a student to check the book out. In making their decision, the board said that state law forbids the avocation of homosexuality in any school curriculum.
More @ Godfather Politics
A teenager has died after shooting himself in the head during a game of ‘Russian Roulette’ with three friends.
Thorin Montgomery, 17, was the first to hold a loaded .38 caliber handgun to his head and pull the trigger.
The teenager collapsed in front of his horrified friends who called paramedics.
Montgomery was airlifted to hospital where he later died from his injuries.
Russian Roulette is a lethal game of chance in which a player places a single round in a revolver, spins the cylinder, places the muzzle against his or her head and pulls the trigger.
The game originated in Russia and featured in the one of the most famous scenes in cinema history in the film The Deer Hunter with Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken.
It is estimated that up to ten people a year die from playing the risky game.
More @ I Own The World
Finally, a feel-good story out of moonbattery-addled Chicago. Recently the city collected 5,500 guns during a buyback program, handing out $100 MasterCard gift cards for every gun ($10 for BB guns and replicas)…
Sixty of the guns and several BB guns were turned in by the Champaign-based Guns Save Life. In return, the group received $6,240 in gift cards, said John Boch, president of the group. …
Most of the money will go toward buying ammunition for an NRA youth camp in Bloomington. The rest will pay for four bolt-action rifles that will be given away to campers.
“This was rusty, non-firing junk that we turned in,” Boch said. “We are redirecting funds from people who would work against the private ownership of firearms to help introduce the next generation to shooting safely and responsibly.”
Bwahaha! But unfortunately not everyone who exploits the staggering stupidity of gun buybacks has such noble motives.
Todd Vandermyde, the NRA’s chief lobbyist in Illinois, … said he was told one suburban gun dealer imported junk rifles for less than $50 each and received $100 gift cards for each of them.
Elsewhere, con “artists” have turned in homemade zip guns to get the taxpayer cash.
As for the possibility of the program accomplishing anything other than to waste taxpayer money,
More @ Moonbattery
Indeed, Senator Patrick Leahy (Vt., D.) , the chair of the Judiciary Committee, suddenly took to the floor on May 14 and directly addressed Roberts, urging him in harshly partisan tones to uphold Obamacare and maintain “the proper role of the judicial branch.”
Stewart Baker, a partner at the Washington law firm Steptoe & Johnson, writes at the Volokh Conspiracy that he found the whole campaign against Roberts weird and unusual, given that the justices’ conference vote on Obamacare had been held six weeks earlier. Why “would the chair of the Judiciary Committee risk the appearance of trying to harshly strongarm the Court when his remarks wouldn’t make the slightest difference?” he asks. “The Leahy speech reads like it was written for an audience of one. It offers flattery and it offers threats, all of them personalized to appeal to Chief Justice Roberts alone.”
Fund adds that the White House likely benefited from leaks at the Court, and almost certainly knew of Roberts's switch--just as it almost certainly knew of the initial vote to throw out the individual mandate in March:
The week before the Supreme Court announced its decision, the White House was clearly hinting to many in the media and on Capitol Hill that they expected a 5–4 opinion that would hinge on the taxing-power issue. Did someone leak?In promoting the health care law, President Barack Obama is repeating his persistent and unsubstantiated assurance that Americans who like their health insurance can simply keep it. Republican rival Mitt Romney says quite the opposite, but his doomsday scenario is a stretch.
After the Supreme Court upheld the law last week, Obama stepped forward to tell Americans what good will come from it. Romney was quick to lay out the harm. But some of the evidence they gave to the court of public opinion was suspect.
A look at their claims and how they compare with the facts:
OBAMA: "If you're one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance. This law will only make it more secure and more affordable."
ROMNEY: "Obamacare also means that for up to 20 million Americans, they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and they want to keep."
THE FACTS:Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse investigating Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility have been promising more major revelations since their March 1 press conference, and now another event has been scheduled to unveil new information.
Arpaio told WND a press conference will be held July 17 at 2:30 p.m. local time at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix, Ariz.
WND will once again provide live Web streaming of the event.
The evidence will include information gathered in the posse’s recent investigative trip to Hawaii as well as an update on the ongoing investigation.
At the March 1 conference, as WND reported March 1, Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse announced there is probable cause that the document released by the White House in April 2011 purporting to be Obama’s original, long-form birth certificate is a forgery. The posse said it also found probable cause that Obama’s Selective Service registration form is fraudulent.
More @ WND
House Speaker John Boehner said today that Republicans are preparing to file a civil suit in an attempt to gain access to more information pertaining to the Justice Department’s botched Fast & Furious drug cartel gun tracking program.
The planned civil suit, which comes on the heels of a letter sent by the Justice Department stating that the DOJ would not prosecute Attorney General Eric Holder following a House vote to hold him in criminal contempt of Congress.
More @ Cowboy Byte
Justice Roberts’ opinion upholding the Obamacare individual mandate shocked the world. Despite his protestations to the contrary, his ruling that the individual mandate is a tax and not a penalty ignores explicit statements from Congress, disregards decades of precedent on this subject, turns judicial restraint on its head, and opens a new floodgate for federal abuses. So, I immediately asked myself why he did what he did. Within a day the answer became apparent: Justice Roberts set aside the Constitution to play politics.
Immediately after the ruling was made public I began hearing conservatives pushing the idea that Justice Roberts' ruling was a stroke of genius. The idea is that leaving Obamacare in place will ensure Obama’s defeat in the upcoming election.
I agree that Thursday’s ruling may help Romney and hurt Obama. Polls unambiguously show that Obamacare is very unpopular. Even among liberals the popularity of Obamacare has been trending down since its passage. The longer Obamacare is in place the more we will learn about this horrible law, and the less popular it will become. More importantly, elections turn on which party’s base turns out to vote. In political circles it is a well-known fact that voters turn out when their leader is under attack by the opposing party. I was recently told by a Republican Senator that Congress would never attempt to impeach Obama before the November election, regardless of what crimes Obama may commit, because any such attempt would bring out the Obama voter base.
A ruling against Obamacare would have stirred up Obama’s voters because it would have been perceived as an attack against Obama himself. Even the liberals who don’t like Obamacare would have rushed to the voting booth to defend their leader. Leaving Obamacare in place had the opposite effect. It made liberals less likely to be mad enough to vote, and it certainly riled up the conservative voters. This effect is demonstrated by the millions of dollars raised by the Romney campaign between Thursday morning and now. Republican party operatives and so-called conservative pundits are now pushing the idea that we must win back the country by ensuring that Obama is defeated in November.
I’m convinced that Justice Roberts’ appalling disregard of the Constitution was motivated by his desire to ensure Obama’s defeat in November. This would explain his surprising agreement with Kagan, Sotomayor, Bryer, and Ginsberg. It explains his disregard of well-established precedent on the tax and spend clause. It explains what is otherwise a completely unsupportable ruling.
If I’m right about Justice Roberts’ motives he should be impeached (at the very least) for violating his oath of office. It does not matter whether we agree that Obama must be defeated. It does not matter that Thursday’s ruling may get Romney elected. Supreme Court Justices should never play politics with the Constitution.
Justice Roberts’ statement that “It is not our (the Supreme Court’s) job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices” is shocking in the extreme. This is EXACTLY the job of the Supreme Court! Our Constitution protects individuals from a tyrannical majority. Political choices of the majority can NEVER violate the God-given rights of even one person. The Constitution was written to protect THIS principle. Now the Chief Justice has told us that it is not the Court’s job to protect the people from the political choices of the majority. Anyone tempted to justify Justice Roberts’ ruling by claiming that it was a brilliant political move has completely missed the point of our entire system of government.
Our Constitution is the only thing protecting individual citizens against a tyrannical government. It is the only thing that can prevent our government from falling into absolute despotism. In order to function the Constitution must be enforced by a Supreme Court that does not bend to political whims. Constitutional limits on authority must be absolute, or they are not limitations at all. Justice Roberts sacrificed the Constitution to political considerations. This is unforgivable.
It’s bad enough when politicians think like politicians: no consideration of right or wrong, only political calculation, despite the moral implications. If the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court thinks like a politician, all is lost.
I thank God that Justices Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito wrote a scathing dissent. They summarized the Roberts’ opinion well:
“The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today’s decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.”
Decisions to ignore principles for short-term gain lead to deep regrets. If Justice Roberts’ was motivated by political considerations, then he will almost certainly regret his decision in the near future. A lot can happen between now and the election, American memories are short.
Liberty Legal Foundation intends to use its existing Obamacare Class Action lawsuit to bring Obamacare to the Supreme Court again. Because we have already begun our lawsuit we are well-positioned to reach the Supreme Court quickly. With a little providence we will reach the Court just when Justice Roberts has begun to regret last week’s mistake.
For Liberty,
Van Irion, Founder
