Oy, I want to turn away, but I can’t help looking. Like a horrific car crash, the closer you look at John Roberts’ Obamacare opinion, the worse it gets.
Worse still, Justice Roberts’s opinion provides a constitutional road map for architects of the next great expansion of the welfare state. Congress may not be able to directly force us to buy electric cars, eat organic kale, or replace oil heaters with solar panels. But if it enforces the mandates with a financial penalty then suddenly, thanks to Justice Roberts’s tortured reasoning in Sebelius, the mandate is transformed into a constitutional exercise of Congress’s power to tax.
And then there’s this from Big Government:
Roberts’ decision was to preserve his own hide. “Protecting the integrity of the court” is a line to euphemize this sad truth: he lacked the moral fortitude to accept a lifetime of revulsion from the left and the press. He chickened out of facing ignorant collegiate hecklers, like Scalia and Thomas do all the time, at his speaking events. He put his personal comfort before literally centuries of jurisprudence.