The Supreme Court of the United States is supposed to interpret the law. Well not this one. It has seen fit to legislate from the bench. And the law be damned.
The lowly American people received two decisions from Mt. Olympus last week. One decision locked in lousy healthcare for the American people – maybe forever. And the other threw out the experience of thousands of years of human history, and decided, by one vote, that on marriage, we’ve had it all wrong.
First, Obamacare. You had to wonder whether this court could ever rule against Obamacare, when it went to such lengths to save it the first time around. That was back in June of 2012, in the case of NFIB vs Sibelius, when the Supreme Court said that Obamacare was a TAX, even though the Obama Administration had argued from the start that it was NOT a tax.
But this time, it seemed virtually impossible for the Court to uphold Obamacare. The language of the legislation was crystal clear. It said that Washington could only provide subsidies for Obamacare through exchanges set up BY STATES. 37 states, mostly red states with Republican governors and/or Republican legislatures, refused to do so, and are operating through FEDERAL exchanges. Obama’s IRS decided to provide the subsidies anyway, clearly in violation of the law (or so we thought.) The Supreme Court decided state-shmate, we need to uphold Obamacare. And that’s just what they did.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who was in the minority, had a lot to say about the Court’s decision in his dissent. He’s far more articulate, and knowledgeable, than I, so I’ll just quote from his dissent.
One thing should be abundantly clear. After the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Obamacare for the second time, the only realistic way of getting rid of Obamacare, is to elect a Republican President in 2016, and re-elect a Republican House and a Republican Senate. Otherwise we are stuck with this healthcare monstrosity forever.
Now, marriage. For thousands of years, marriage has been considered a union between one man and one woman. Over the past decade or so, public opinion has been evolving towards the position that the union of same sex couples should also be recognized as valid marriages. It has even reached the point where those who continue to hold the traditional view of marriage, are considered to be bigots. Apparently people like Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and Joe Biden and Barack Obama were once bigots, but since they have “evolved” to the politically correct position, they are no longer bigots.
Anyway, last week in the case of Obergefell vs Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is now the law of the land. That’s it. No more debate. WE know what’s good for the country. At least one more of us thinks we do than the four of us who voted the other way. Now get outta here.
Here’s my view. It’s clear that the American people were trending in the direction of accepting gay marriage. Especially younger people, who are more accepting. Us old fogeys, not so much. And we’re dying out.
But such a momentous decision should not have been made by nine (actually five of the nine) unelected judges. It should have been left to the elected representatives of the people. That means either the U.S. Congress nationally, or the state legislatures of the individual states, or to a direct vote of the people of the states in those states which allow such action through the initiative process. It seems absurd to me that the Supreme Court decided to act on its own by finding something in the Constitution which had apparently been overlooked for the last 226 years.
Once again, I’ll defer to the scathing dissent of Justice Scalia.
See you next week (unless the almighty Supreme Court determines otherwise.)
