Some quotes from George Will on Liberals attempting to put "the squeeze" on Chief Justice John Roberts.
Concluding that Kennedy might be disposed to overturn the mandate, some Obamacare defenders decided that Roberts’s vote will be decisive. They hope to secure it by causing Roberts to worry about his reputation and that of his institution.
Recently, for example, Vermont’s Pat Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, delivered a Senate speech defending the constitutionality of what he calls the “personal responsibility requirement.” (This is his Orwellian appellation for the mandate, whereby government coercion nullifies personal choice regarding insurance.) After 37 years in the Senate, Leahy probably no longer knows when he sounds insufferably patronizing, as he did when he said that during oral argument he thought that Roberts “seemed well aware of the significance of [the Obamacare] decision.” And “I thought I saw a chief justice who understands the importance of this case to all Americans.” And Roberts “seemed to understand” the deference owed to Congress.
Will concludes:
Leahy tutored Roberts about “appropriate deference” to “the elected branch,” vacuously admonished him to be “a chief justice for all of us” and absurdly asserted that the mandate is “consistent with the understanding of the Constitution” that “the American people have had for the better part of a century.”Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington Law School, writing in the New Republic, topped Leahy’s rhetorical extravagance by saying this is Roberts’s “moment of truth” because, if the court overturns Obamacare 5 to 4, Roberts’s “stated goal of presiding over a less divisive court will be viewed as an irredeemable failure.”
Oh? Viewed by whom? Perhaps by people who consider it “ideological” and somehow reprehensible that in the last full term, Justices Roberts and Sam Alito voted together 96 percent of the time, but who consider it principled and admirable that Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted together 94 percent of the time. Like-minded justices agree. So?
Why, exactly, would it be less “divisive” for the court to uphold the broadly disliked Obamacare 5 to 4 than to overturn it 5 to 4? But whether Obamacare is liked or detested is entirely irrelevant. The public’s durable deference toward the Supreme Court derives from the public’s recognition that the court is deferential not to Congress but to the Constitution.
Concerning which, it is cheeky of Rosen, a liberal, to lecture Roberts about jurisprudential conservatism, which Rosen says requires “restraint,” meaning deference to congressional liberalism. Such clumsy attempts to bend the chief justice are apt to reveal his spine of steel.
After the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the individual mandate, many were left with the feeling that the Supreme Court wasn't buying the Obama's administration's arguments.
Obama attempted to intimidate the Supreme Court first, polls finding that majority of Americans agree with the assessment that Obama's public words were an attempt to intimidate. Then the Obama administration continued with their intimidation campaign by threatening "Medicare reductions" if the High Court overturns Obamacare.
The Supreme Court ruling on the individual mandate's constitutionality is expected some time in June.
No one knows how the Supreme Court is going to finally rule, but the good thing about the Supreme Court is strong arm tactics like the liberals are attempting do not work as well on positions that are lifetime appointments, so judiciaries can be left to do their business with no threat of losing their jobs, therefore they cannot be intimidated.
