I'm Scared and Angry About the Obamacare RulingJuly 02, 2012
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RUSH: John Roberts, the Rodney King of chief justices. Can't we all just get along? Except Chief Justice Roberts didn't drown in his swimming pool, as Rodney King did.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, on Friday, when I opened the program I told you I felt sick, and I spent the next two hours explaining why I felt sick. Today I'm scared. I'm a combination of angry and scared. Because if this CBS report from Jan Crawford is accurate, and I happen to believe that it is, she cites two sources, she doesn't name them. But I happen to believe that her report is true. Let me summarize it for you. That the chief justice did indeed cave to left-wing media pressure. And, by the way, this does lend credence to the notion that Obama was told. I'll explain how. Just a wild guess on that. She doesn't get into that in the story.
Originally, Roberts voted with the other conservatives to strike down the mandate and pretty much the whole bill. And that was in, what, March, April, that was early on. Roberts voted with the conservatives to get rid of the whole thing for the most part, certainly the mandate. Shortly after that, Obama and the media go on a tear about Roberts, specifically Roberts, and they go on a tear about the court in general. And they start this horror story about how the court will be destroyed forever. It's integrity will be blown forever if they overturn major landmark legislation with the first black president, blah, blah, all of that stuff. And then Roberts changed his vote. And for a month -- you hear this, Dawn? For a month, Anthony Kennedy tried to get him to change his mind.
Anthony Kennedy did everything he could. Anthony Kennedy, say what you want about him being the swing vote, one thing you can deduce from many of Kennedy's decisions where he has written either the majority opinion or the dissent is that he is totally devoted to individual freedom and liberty and in that sense this whole thing could not stand. So, he spends a month trying to twist Roberts' arm and to no avail, and then Roberts, after a month, starts working on Kennedy to join him to make this 6-3. In fact, the conservatives, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Scalia, "found Roberts reasoning so flawed that they refused to join, or even acknowledge, his opinion, even in the areas where they agreed." That is why in their dissent, they didn't even mention Roberts.
They were so ticked off at what he had done. They were so ticked off at the way he was changing his vote that they didn't even acknowledge his opinion in their dissent. Some thought that meant that theirs was originally a majority opinion. The story is, no, they were just mad. They didn't even want to acknowledge his existence in their decision. Jan Crawford, CBS, also reported: "Roberts’ change of heart was almost certain to have been driven by left-wing media anger around the possibility that the law would be overturned. Roberts reads the papers, and is very concerned about the Court’s image."
If that's true, folks, do you know what it means? The chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is now run by the American media. And that's why they are happy. If you've noticed giddiness in the media, they're not talking about Jan Crawford's report, folks. You have to look long and far and wide to find mainstream coverage, analysis of, commentary on her report. But they are giddy and they are happy, and it's not just that the whole thing was upheld for the most part. It is that, according to this report, they did it. Now, Justice Roberts is going to be the chief justice for 20 years. I don't know what in the world this says about the integrity of the court. Whatever he was worried about in terms of the court having lost its integrity or appearing political, if he had voted to overturn the bill, he could not have done something that would have more damaged the court's integrity than this, if this is true.
Because now the Washington, New York media runs the Supreme Court of the United States. They run the chief justice. They can intimidate, and they did. I saw this, I said, "How far could I have gone if I cared what was said about me?" All these years, if I cared what was said about me, and I decided to change my core beliefs in order to avoid the criticism, to get praised, how far would I be along now? I'd probably be a movie star. There would be TV shows about me. But I have never -- well, not never -- it took me four years to come to grips with all of that, how to react to it, how respond to it. And now I don't give people the power to offend me or worry about what's said about me, but apparently, according to Jan Crawford at CBS, that's what did it. And Chief Justice Roberts tried to lobby Kennedy to join him and leave the other conservatives so that this would end up being 6-3 and look even better for the court. Kennedy refused.
"The conservative dissent was not originally written as a majority opinion, as some have speculated, but reads strangely because the conservatives refused to acknowledge Roberts’s opinion." So if Jan Crawford at CBS, if she's right about this, then at least one conservative justice that we know of can be blackmailed. In a manner of speaking. And she says, Roberts' change of heart was almost certain to have been driven by left-wing media. It's an incompetent opinion. It is incompetent. It is rewritten. It is outrageous. This opinion is disastrous. And I'm still marveling. I'm reading some of the analysis by the conservative media intelligentsia looking for a silver lining here, a silver lining there, praising Roberts for being a political mastermind, setting all this up, the people have to decide, the people are the ones have to make big decisions like this.
What happened to the reason he's there? What happened to the reason the court exists, from Marbury vs. Madison on? Basically the court is now confirmed to be a political institution that bends and shapes according to media pressure just like a lot of Republicans and conservatives can be made to bend and shape according to media pressure. I can't tell you how troubling this is. I'm still a little sick about it, but more than that, I'm just flat-out angry. It comes down to the fact that we've gotta win the House, we have to win the Senate, we have to win the White House, and after we do that, the people that win have gotta be committed to getting rid of this.
I'm not gonna lie to you. What we face to get rid of this, and we must, is daunting. When's the last entitlement you can think of that's ever been thrown away? That's right. The answer to the question is, what's the first one? And once people get entitlements, this thing doesn't fully implement 'til 2014, so all the horror stories that we have to tell about this, people aren't gonna see it. Every horror story, like Steve Moore, who is editorial writer, deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, said on TV over the weekend and this morning on Fox, he's looked into this, the CBO numbers everything. Seventy-five percent of all these new taxes are going to be paid by people who make $125,000 or less. Not $200,000 or more are gonna pay all the taxes, but $125,000 or less will pay 75%.
Well, that's all well and good, except that's not gonna happen 'til 2014 or 2015. So this summer, and going into the fall, we gotta tell everybody, "If you make less than $125,000 a year, your taxes are gonna --" Not gonna see it. Meanwhile, the benefits start kicking in. And you can look at Europe. Once people have entitlements, they don't like giving them up. Look at Greece. Look at Spain. Look at wherever. They don't like giving them up. Look at Stockton, California. We have American cities that are being boarded up because people don't want to give it up. They don't want to give it away. They don't want to give it back.
Crawford in this CBS story, says this, quote, "At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response," which is peculiar. Why would it be hard for Roberts to explain his change of view if he had... I'll tell you something else about this, if this is true, and again, I'm gonna tell you that based on the way she wrote this, I think most of it is, this stuff doesn't normally happen. These judges don't talk to each other. They don't twist each other's arms. They don't debate. They don't argue. I asked a justice once -- and no, it's not Clarence Thomas -- I asked a justice once, "Okay, you go in there and vote. Do you guys debate?"
"No. No. What do you mean, debate?"
"Well, I mean, do you try to change their mind?"
"I'm not gonna change their mind. They're not gonna change their mind." He's talking about the libs of the court. This stuff doesn't happen. The stuff that she said happened regarding Roberts and the four conservatives and all this arm twisting and debating back and forth, normally doesn't happen. There was quite a lot that was unique about this. Somebody show me the silver lining of the Titanic sinking. What, there hasn't been one since? What's the silver lining? We got a movie out of it with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet? What's the silver lining out of the Titanic? We got a big, big task ahead of us. Kennedy himself was the last justice known to have changed his mind, and that during deliberations, and that was a Roe v. Wade case back in 1992.
There's another thing, the Democrats do not want this called a tax. It is a tax. That's how it's freaking law, is that it's a tax on what you don't do. It's just outrageously incompetent. In fact, John Eastman, one of the lawyers involved, he was on Hannity Friday night. He thinks Roberts ought to resign over this, it's so incompetent. Now Pelosi and the Democrats are all of a sudden talking about free riders. Their whole party is devoted to creating freeloaders and free riders and now they're out there ripping into them over this. I have to take a break. I'm gonna regain my composure.
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RUSH: Jan Greenburg at CBS says that her sources told her that Chief Justice Roberts went wobbly back in May, which is when there were countless news articles warning of damage to the court and to Roberts' reputation if they struck down the mandate. When leading politicians (including Obama) were warning the court not to strike down the law, that -- her sources told her -- is when Roberts started going wobbly.
She said that "word of Roberts' unusual shift has spread widely within the court, and is known among law clerks, chambers' aides and secretaries. It also has stirred the ire of the conservative justices, who believed Roberts was standing with them." Her sources also say there was "a month-long, desperate campaign to bring [Roberts] back to his original position," led by Justice Kennedy, but Roberts held firm.
And again, at least one justice tried to get Roberts to explain his change of position but he was "unsatisfied" with what Roberts said. Which is peculiar. Why would it be hard for Roberts to explain his change of view if it was legitimate? (interruption) Well, it used to be Jan Crawford Greenburg, and she dropped the "Greenburg," but I still think of her as Greenburg, so I guess she just goes by Crawford now. Jan Crawford is the CBS infobabe. She used to be at ABC.
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RUSH: Now, all these people talking about, on our side, all the conservative intelligence, "Hey, wait a minute, we got a diamond in the rough here, Rush. We got a silver lining here. Did you see what Roberts said about the Commerce Clause? Congress can't use the Commerce Clause." He didn't say that. We had a former lawyer call here on Friday, and others have written extensively on this, too, Roberts was writing for himself when he wrote the bit about the Commerce Clause. He was not writing for the court. It's not part of the court's opinion. It's what's called dicta. Didn't even need to be in the ruling, his references to the Commerce Clause.
I don't know. All these people, and there's some smart people that are really fooling themselves on this, into thinking the Commerce Clause has just been debt a mortal blow. It hasn't. You wait. But what does it matter? The next controversial case that comes before the court that the media doesn't like, all they gotta do is threaten the same stuff and they're pretty confident they'll be able to change the chief justice's vote to get it to be whatever they want it to be. They got four in there that they can count on. I mean, this whole thing is a win-win for the government, because instead of buying insurance, we're gonna be giving money to the government.
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RUSH: I'm still sick, but more than that now I'm just burning. I'm really just angry about this, because I don't know what it is about people on our side. My good friend Mark Levin says our people in Washington are so used to losing that they look at it as winning.
Mike Carvin was on The O'Reilly Factor on Friday night. Laura Ingraham was the guest hostette, and Carvin has argued this health care case before the Supreme Court and at a couple of other levels. And he's stunned by this. He was literally stunned. Ingraham says, "You were at the court arguing this case, and I know you were shocked by the way the decision came down. But do conservatives have a right to be mortified and really disappointed with what the chief justice did here?"
CARVIN: Obviously it was a very strange opinion, the chief justice said that what Congress did and what it said it was doing was unconstitutional. So I'm gonna pretend they did something different and therefore make it constitutional, which not only rewrites the statute, but eliminates all the safeguards that he had found under the Commerce Clause. So it produces a bad constitutional result, only by someone who's deliberately ignoring the law as it was actually written. Chief Justice Roberts said during his confirmation that he was gonna be an umpire who calls balls and strikes, but this time he saw a ball and called it a strike.
RUSH: So the next question from Laura Ingraham was, "Any sense that there might have been some last-minute change of heart on the part of the chief? That thought's been circulating among some of us former clerks." She clerked for Clarence Thomas. "You've argued so many cases before the court over the years. Any sense there might have been a last-minute change of heart?"
CARVIN: A lot of people have noticed that the opinions are very odd in that they're referring to the concurrence as the dissent and the dissenting opinion never refers to the chief justice's opinion, which suggests that there might have been some changes during the process. If that happened, that would be doubly unfortunate, of course, because it would validate President Obama's wholly unprecedented effort to politicize the court and attack them while they were writing an opinion. I think it would leave a sour taste in everyone's mouth if it came out that Chief Justice Roberts had actually switched his vote after that criticism because it would create a terrible perception that the court is subject to political lobby.
RUSH: And Jan Crawford, CBS, has that exact story. It hit yesterday. That's the exact story. She sourced it twice. Now, I've said that I happen to believe it. But it's also possible that the story's BS, because one of the favorite memes of the media is to write about conservatives at war with one another, and that's what this is, the four justices, conservative justices at war with Roberts, and they love that theme. Well, I knew something was wrong because I had been warned. Anyway, that's Carvin.
John Eastman is a law professor at the Chapman University. He's a good friend of our buddy, Dr. Larry Arnn, who runs Hillsdale College. Eastman's a great guy.
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RUSH: Have any of you ever been in a jury? Okay, you've seen television shows where a judge tells the jury, "Do not read the media." You know the judge gives jury instructions. You are specifically told by the judge that you are not to be influenced by the news media or, in fact, anyone or anything apart from the facts of the case. But Jan Crawford says that the chief justice was, in fact, directly impacted by just that. John Eastman from the Chapman University Law School. He's a professor there, and he was mad on TV Friday night. He was on The O'Reilly Factor with Laura Ingraham guest-hostetting. He was mad. You could see just by his facial expression that he was mad. She said, "Some people are saying this was a brilliant twist by the chief justice. This is a victory for the Republicans, because it narrowed the Commerce Clause jurisdiction, the reach of the Commerce Clause. So isn't that a good thing?"
EASTMAN: The issue here is whether the federal Constitution limits the power of the federal government. And I don't care whether they act under the Commerce Clause or under the Spending Cause. If they do things that were not delegated to them, the role of the court and the chief justice in particular is to say to Congress, "No." And if the assumption is right that he thinks this was unconstitutional but found a way to uphold it to preserve the "integrity" of the court, then he really ought to resign. Because it proves that he doesn't have the judicial fortitude to do the job that he's been chosen to do.
RUSH: I sat up straight when I saw that. He "ought to resign ... if the assumption is right." Really, if going into this the reason follow this was to protect the integrity of the court... You know, as far as the integrity of the court is concerned, we're back to the same old thing. As far as the media is concerned, the integrity of the court is just fine. Everything's cool! Everything's fine! There is no problem here. The media says it's okay. Whatever they say is okay, is okay. If the media approves of what you're doing, you're home free. Grab sound bite 23. I just want you to hear this. This is Jan Crawford herself on Face the Nation on Sunday morning. This is, in her own voice, reporting the story that hit the wires and the CBS website on Sunday.
CRAWFORD: I am told by two sources with specific knowledge of the court's deliberations that Roberts initially sided with the conservatives in this case and was prepared to strike down the heart of this law -- the so-called individual mandate, of course -- that requires all Americans to buy insurance or pay a penalty. But Roberts, I'm told by my sources, to change his views, decided to instead join with liberals. And he withstood, I'm told by my sources, a month-long desperate campaign by the conservative justices to bring him back to the fold. And that campaign was led, ironically, by Justice Anthony Kennedy. And why that's ironic is because it was Justice Kennedy that conservatives feared would be the one most likely to defect.
RUSH: Come on, Jan! Kennedy was the one you guys feared was gonna defect. Kennedy is always the focus of your attentions. It's always Kennedy. You guys are afraid of Kennedy. You also hold out all your hope for Kennedy, not just us. Anyway, that's from the reporter's own lips.
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RUSH: Just to tell you about Jan Crawford Greenberg, remember when Clarence Thomas' great memoir came out? I think she did the profile for him. Now, wait a minute. That was 60 Minutes? I know she did something. Was it ABC? I don't even know. She did a report, and it was very fair on Clarence Thomas' book and his life. She's wired in there, not just on him.
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RUSH: It was Jan Crawford Greenburg. She's separated from Greenburg now. That's why it's just Jan Crawford. But I remember she used to cover the Supreme Court for PBS. She's a lawyer herself. I'm telling you all this as a means of helping you to decide whether you want to accept her report Sunday on CBS as accurate or not. This is what I remember. She did an eight-part interview with Justice Thomas when his book came out, and she traveled all over the place. I remember I was a guest at a Nebraska football game in Lincoln. Dan Cook, Mr. Nebraska, Kathryn and I were there, and unbeknownst to me, Justice Thomas was there. He's a huge Nebraska fan. I ran into him. We were doing a tour of the field before the game, and Jan Greenburg was there doing a profile of him for his book, eight-part interview.
It was fabulous. It was profoundly fair and she established that he is his own man and all this talk about how he's just a Scalia clone was blown out of the water. It was an extremely well-done profile. She has deep connections with a lot of people inside the court. So when she says that she has a couple of sources, I think people are tending to believe her report simply because she brings the experience and credibility to it. Jan Crawford.
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