Was Justice Roberts Bullied Into Upholding ObamaCare!!

Could have Supreme Court John Roberts been intimidated by President Obama and his
allies into writing a startling, incomprehensible opinion that
preserved Obama’s signature achievement as president?

Could it
possible that the august corridors of the Supreme Court were trampled by
Chicago-style political tactics, that the Constitution was shredded by
the dog-eared playbook of bullying activist Saul Alinsky, the guiding
light of Obama’s political operation?

There is no way to prove
that Chief Justice John Roberts was intimidated into upholding Obamacare
as constitutional.

Back on
April 2, Obama helped ignite the recent focus by politicians and
commentators on the “politicization” of the Supreme Court when he
menaced:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme
Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step
of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a
democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative
commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on
the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that
an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted
and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident
that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.

Remarks that could have been written by a Brooklyn Wise Guy: I’m confident you’ll do the right thing, see?

All
of this was theater. There’s nothing “unprecedented” or “extraordinary”
about the Supreme Court overturning a law, and Obamacare was not passed
by a “strong majority.” What was extraordinary was the sight of a
president, standing in the Rose Garden, leaning on the Supreme Court.

Obama
had inappropriately gone after the Court before, of course, criticizing
the Justices to their faces during the 2010 State of the Union for
having “reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special
interests” in the Citizens United case and calling on Congress to “pass a
bill that helps to right this wrong.”

Is there anyone who
seriously doubts that Obama would have made denigrating the Supreme
Court – and promoting himself to fix it with second term appointments – a
central plank of his campaign?

The first suggestion that Roberts
may have been influenced by all this is that it appears he may have
changed his mind after initially supporting the four conservatives who
voted to strike down Obamacare.

The Wall Street Journal:

One
telling note is that the dissent refers repeatedly to “Justice
Ginsburg’s dissent” and “the dissent” on the mandate, but of course they
should be referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurrence. This wording
and other sources suggest that there was originally a 5-4 majority
striking down at least part of ObamaCare, but then the Chief Justice
changed his mind . . .

The political class and legal left
conducted an extraordinary campaign to define such a decision as
partisan and illegitimate. If the Chief Justice capitulated to this
pressure, it shows the Court can be intimidated and swayed from its
constitutional duties.

And Roberts, indeed, would be uniquely susceptible to such pressure.

Roberts
is a creature of Washington and likely less immune than some of the
other Justices to its Zeitgeist. He came to Washington 30 years ago,
after graduating from Harvard Law School, and has been here ever since.

But Roberts is also a creature of the Supreme Court.

He’s
been Chief Justice now for almost seven years. Nut what’s less well
known is that he basically started his career at the Court, clerking for
then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist from 1981-1982. He worked for
George H.W. Bush as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 1989-1993.
Afterward, in private practice, he argued some 39 cases before the
Supreme Court.

The chatter in the last 24 hours that Roberts may
have been seeking to protect the Court where he’s toiled for a major
portion of his professional life makes sense.

Especially when you consider his opinion in Obamacare case.

Roberts
imagined passages in the law that weren’t there. He called the penalty
for failing to sign up for Obamacare a tax, when it expressly was not a
tax. No lower court accepted the argument that it was. Even Obama’s
Solicitor General spent little time trying to argue this angle.

The
Chief Justice’s opinion is inexplicable in the absence of some other
external factor intruding on his thinking. And that external factor may
well have been the president and the mobs who threatened to trash
Roberts’ Court if it killed their beloved Obamacare.

Could it be possible the Supreme Court didn’t rule but the mob ruled?