The Roberts Opinion
Former US Senator Fred Thompson, the man who helped Bush and Roberts on his way through the Senate wrote a piece on Roberts opinion regarding Obamacare. Here's an excerpt from the piece:
In 2005 I was asked by the Bush administration to assist Judge John Roberts during the Senate confirmation process for his nomination as chief justice of the United States. Over several pressure-packed days, and throughout the confirmation process, I felt I got to know him fairly well. I found him to be one of the most brilliant, thoughtful, and humorous people I’d ever met. Those qualities don’t always go together. It was clear he was going to be a major right-of-center voice on the Supreme Court for decades to come. So it is with a great deal of personal interest that I have considered his opinion in Sebelius and the commentary that has followed.
The Antithesis Of John Roberts
The chief justice is a good man, whose record over the whole of his career will probably be a good one, perhaps even a great one. However, I do not agree with this opinion. I believe the dissent got it right. I am well aware of the fact that a conscientious judge must sometimes rule in a manner that he personally disagrees with. But the majority opinion appears to be a result looking for a rationale, which is the antithesis of what I ever thought would be the approach of John Roberts. One of his new admirers described his opinion as “incoherent but brilliant.” That’s the most depressing thing I have read in a long time.There is rampant speculation as to why Justice Roberts rendered the opinion he did. To many on the left it is believed that he was looking out for the Supreme Court as an institution. Liberals made it clear well in advance that if the Court struck Obamacare down they would attack the Court as politicized and illegitimate. They now say that the chief justice “put the country first” by the “clever” means of rejecting the government’s central Commerce Clause argument and instead achieving the same result by relying upon the federal government’s power to tax, an argument that was seen as peripheral at best by all the lower courts that had considered the issue of constitutionality. The same is true with regard to the litigants.
Old Line Elephant News Roundup: 7/2/12
Haven't written a post in a while, so let's go through the news:
- Did you miss the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting? Here are the resolutions they passed at the convention. An interesting one that got my Catholic friends' attention? This one where the SBC says we should stand with Catholic Bishops against religious intolerance.
- On a related note - the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting will be held in Baltimore in 2014. As one who lives locally & is a Southern Baptist I have one word: SWEET.
- Bongino made some excellent points at the "No More Neglect" rally. He generally does. Also, he's ceding no ground to Democrats in this election. I like that. Learn more here.
- For those interested, here's a partial list of the many new laws going into effect now in Maryland & Virginia. What do Marylanders get to look forward to? Higher taxes, higher flush tax, new regulations, and allowing certain conditions where you can BYOB to restaurants.
- As a reminder to Maryland 6th Legislative District members - Sonny Minnick was running illegal gambling out of his tavern & got out of the business in late 2011. Reportedly, he knew about the payouts.
- Efforts to overturn the gerrymandered Maryland maps have submitted over 63,000 signatures now. The hope is these signatures are upheld under scrutiny - if so, we'll be voting on it this fall.
- I think Ben Cardin & my definition of "win for America" are different. He thinks the court upholding Obamacare is a win, Americans disagree and hopefully will vote him out.
- Jimmie Bise of Sundries Shack wants to interrupt the anger toward John Roberts for a moment to say something important. Listen to him.
- Maryland will now force restaurants to hold their food at colder temperatures. 41 degrees instead of 45 degrees by December. Health inspectors will be checking temperatures in December. For reals.
- Silly article from Topless Robot about the 5 superheroes who are awful at their day jobs & 5 who are excellent at them. As a followup, here are some awesome Super Mario animal powerups that should be created yet.
Have more news? Post it in the comments. I'll end this piece with a newer web-ad from Mitt Romney, it's well done:
Disappointing
So, this is disappointing - video below where Romney effectively supports a national, individual mandate, in 2009.
Romney recently has been arguing that he doesn't support an individual mandate on a national level, said it was just a good idea for Massachusetts and not for the nation. Guess he disagreed with that in 2009. I didn't support Romney in the primary in 2008, still not my candidate in 2012. Which is why I'm still on team undecided.
Midweek Prolife News Roundup: 06/01/11
Below the text of my weekly, pro-life news roundup as originally posted to Secular Prolife.
Old Line Elephant Link Roundup 4/12/11
It's over - the Maryland legislative session for 2011 has ended. Thankfully, that means that there's no more taxes that the Democrats can raise. Sadly, they've already raised quite a few into the wee hours of morning. Let's add that to the roundup, shall we?
- The legislature approved and Governor O'Malley (D-MD) will sign a 3% additional tax on alcoholic drinks. The money is going disproportionately to counties which happened to support the Governor more in his reelection bid. Coincidence? Possibly, but still annoying to those who live in the few red counties left in this state. Anthropocon & I have been proposing to start some Beer Party Protests, but we better start soon before they get more expensive.
- Want to pay more to go to the hospital? No? Well too bad! Maryland just passed a new hospital tax, expected to bring in hundreds of millions into the state's coffers. And here I thought the Democrats proposed Obamacare to make it cheaper to get health care, this tax feels counterintuitive to their goals.
- A program on how to distribute medical marijuana will be "investigated" by the state of Maryland. That's a nice way of spending tax money to determine the feasibility of something inside a vacuum. My thoughts? Just legalize it altogether and treat it like alcohol under the law, it would just be easier that way.
- Speaking of Maryland, the Maryland Society of Patriots, a conservative activist group, has founded a Baltimore area chapter. The first meeting will be on April 20, 2011 and the speaker will be Delegate Mike Smigiel. You can get the details here. Delegate Smigiel is one of my legislative heroes, as I've discussed before, so I'm going to try to be in attendance.
- Unless you lived under a rock, you knew Mitt Romney was going to run for President. Guess what? He announced the formation of an exploratory committee. Here's the link to his announcement video.
- A number of conservatives are annoyed at the recent budgetary truce. I'm less than annoyed, as long as the GOP actually gets ready to fight the good fight for round 2...which they have a full year to actually do. For those annoyed, Race42012's Josiah Schmidt has an excellent list of the positives from the budget compromise. One of my favorites most didn't notice? A promised up or down vote on Obamacare repeal by the US Senate. This will further tie the Democrats to Obamacare, forcing them to defend the law.
- According to the lovely people doing PR for the Death Star, Obi-Wan Kenobi's a jerk. Here's their top 10 jerkiest things Kenobi did.
- Mike Koehler is just a man with a dream...to build a life-sized, fully functioning AT-AT. That's right, a fully functioning AT-AT. Not sure how he plans to do it, not sure if he'll ever get the project off the ground - but it's an interesting and way overly ambitious project entitled, "AT-AT for America." The slogan? "If America can put a man on the Moon, we can bring a little bit of Hoth to the Earth."
Have some links that you think I should have included? Let me know! Add them to the comments section below.
Maryland Blogs / Sites
- Augie "Citizen Watchdog"
- Baltimore County GOP
- Benstorming
- Frontline State
- Maryland Business for Responsive Government
- Maryland Public Policy Institute
- Maryland Reporter
- Maryland Society of Patriots
- MD Conservative Action Network
- Potomac Tea Party Report
- Right Coast Conservative
- Tony McConkey's Blog
- Watchdog Wire Maryland
National Blogs / Sites
- Anthropocon
- Bearing Drift
- Oddly Said
- Pithy Title Goes Here
- RightKlik
- Ruby Slippers
- Secular ProLife
- The Quinton Report
- TORARADICALcom
Regular Reads
- Ed Stetzer
- Moe Lane
- monoblogue
- Other McCain
- Race42016
- Red Maryland
- RedState
- SBC Voices
- Sundries Shack
Religious Blogs / Sites
- Catholic Coffee Talk
- Challies.com
- Coleen York
- Edgemere Baptist Church
- Just1Word
- Tally Wilgis
- The Girl On The Road To Self Discovery
- Thom Rainer
