{"id":8233,"date":"2012-07-02T11:44:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-02T18:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=8233"},"modified":"2012-07-02T11:44:19","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T18:44:19","slug":"inside-scotus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/02\/inside-scotus\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside SCOTUS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have always pictured the Supreme Court of the United States as a very formal setting, where collegiality and propriety prevail at all times.  In addition, Justices regularly claim that the atmosphere was non-political.  A rare glimpse inside SCOTUS puts both those myths to rest.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"SCOTUS3\"Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law<\/strong>, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. <\/p>\n

Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said<\/strong>. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy – believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law – led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold. <\/p>\n

"He was relentless<\/strong>," one source said of Kennedy’s efforts. "He was very engaged in this." <\/p>\n

But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You’re on your own." <\/p>\n

The conservatives refused to join any aspect of his opinion, including sections with which they agreed, such as his analysis imposing limits on Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause<\/strong>, the sources said\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <CBS<\/a>><\/p>\n

This actually surprised me.  To a large extent I had bought into the myths about the decorum of the court, even though I knew that the Court id dominated by right-wing political activists.  I suppose it\u2019s time to smell the coffee.<\/font><\/p>\n

This tends to validate my position that Roberts wanted to goose step with the Republican Regime, but so soon after unconstitutionally deciding Citizens United<\/em>, he correctly determined that unconstitutionally overturning the ACA, would permanently stain the legacy of the Court that bears his name.<\/font><\/p>\n

The partisan bullying pursued by the other Republican activists underlines the importance of reelecting Barack Obama and keeping Republicans out of the White House, as the following graphic demonstrates.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"ScotusNew\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have always pictured the Supreme Court of the United States as a very formal setting, where collegiality and propriety prevail at all times.  In addition, Justices regularly claim that the atmosphere was non-political.  A rare glimpse inside SCOTUS puts both those myths to rest. Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}