The Daily Show and The Colbert Report had their fun with the hyperventilating reactions to the health care verdict.
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(These clips appeared on June 28, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Syndicated columnist and right-wing firebrand Cal Thomas portrays the sudden characterization of Obamacare as a tax as a “bait and switch,” alleging (with some reason) that Congress would never have passed the bill had its constitutionality been based primarily on the taxing power rather than the Commerce Clause.
What he neglects to mention is that the Chief Justice, change of mind notwithstanding, followed the path of judicial restraint and deferred to the will of the democratically elected political branches. Roberts was very careful to invoke Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of the apostles of restraint. So-called conservatives have been lecturing us for years about the need to restrain judicial activism; when they finally get what they want they’re still not happy.
Of course, we’ve known all along that their call for restraint is “manufactured from whole cloth” (to borrow an expression from the late William Rehnquist), but we should never miss an opportunity to call them on their hypocrisy.