Obamacare in Trouble at the Supreme Court

As all people who don't live under rocks, the President's signature Obamacare legislation is before the Supreme Court this week. The Drive-By Media has spent the preceeding weeks trying to essentially convince justices like Scalia and Roberts to go against their personal judgement and history and consider this law Constitutional. So far, oral arguments and the questions posed by the justices are not backing this theory.  Thank you, God.

All people living in the Real World are pretty much penciling Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts under the Unconstitutional side and similarly penciling Ginsberg, Kegan, Breyer and Sotomeyer under the Constitutional side. Anthony Kennedy is presumed the swing vote, but his questions thus far do not back that claim.  The Drive-Bys have told you otherwise, but their track record of being right is pretty sad.

Yesterday, CNN claimed that the court seemed to be willing to let the law stand. This shows the level of dellusion of the Drive-By Media in a nutshell. Read the article, friends, you'll find they quote Ginsberg, Kegan, and also throw-away lines from Alito and Kennedy.  They're deliberately obfuscating, friends, to try to make their case seem plausible.

But when you read quotes from Justice Kennedy, it becoems clear that he's incredibly skeptical about the authority of the government to create commerce. When you read the transcript from the Oral Arguments, you see Kennedy asking questions like:

"Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?"

 And here:
"The reason this is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts, our tradition, our law has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him, absent some relation between you. And there is some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that's generally the rule.

"And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way."

The most telling statement from Chief Justice Roberts is this:

"Can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? You can just dial 911 no matter where you are?
The reason this is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts, our tradition, our law has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The 

And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.


"It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical. You don't know when you're going to need police assistance. You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need, but when you do -- and the government provides it. I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it.

Irregardless of what the Drive-By Media is telling you and dreaming of conservative justices floating over to support Obamacare while wearing their Happy Imagination Hats, the evidence is against them. I have about as much fear of Chief Justice Roberts supporting this bill as I have expectations of the Mets winning the World Series this year. (So basically none.)

As far as Justice Kennedy, it seems like he's falling on the side of freedom and the Constitution in this case. The left can dream, of course, but the truth is his questions do not sound like someone who believes it's okay to force people to purchase any product.

Friends, the more I read these transcripts the more confident I am that, at the very least, the Individual Mandate will be going bye-bye; and likely the entire law on the grounds that government may not force people to purchase anything and the rest on the backs of defense of the 10th Amendment and of the rights of the individual states.  And by the way, the law barely matters minus the mandate and the forced expansion of Medicare.  I still have a problem with legally requiring insurance companies to insure 27 year old adults, but it's small potatoes in the scheme of things.

I'll make it an official prediction. Obamacare struck down, 5-4. We'll find out this summer if I'm correct.