Growls

Over the next few weeks, we'll continue growling about last Thursday's Supreme Court decision to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, sometimes referred to as ObamaCare (see our June 28, 2012 Growls).

In an article posted at American Spectator, Ross Kaminsky wrote that Chief Justice John Roberts was "too clever by half." Especially of interest was the following two paragraphs dealing with the position of the four conservative dissenters:

"The Court's dissenters also noted that the law was specifically passed with the mandate as a penalty, not a tax: "We cannot rewrite the statute to be what it is not. Although this court will often strain to construe legislation so as to save it against constitutional attack, it must not and will not carry this to the point of perverting the purpose of a statute ... or judicially rewriting it." Critics of the majority's decision will say for the foreseeable future that Chief Justice Roberts rewrote Obamacare to save it. Michael Carvin, who argued against Obamacare before the Supreme Court, noted dryly, "I'm glad he rewrote the statute instead of the Constitution."

"Carvin's summary of the Supreme Court's ruling was on target: "What the Obama Administration… thought they were doing was completely unconstitutional; what they lied to the American people about was constitutional.… Unfortunately they got away with that bait-and-switch. A fraud has been perpetrated on the American citizenry."

The Kaminsky article is worth reading in its entirety.