I normally rest on Saturdays and don’t do any posting, but I’ll go halfway today. I won’t say much, but I’ll put up some cartoon commentary. There’s just so much fallout from the Obamacare Obamatax decision that it may be a public service to make sure you don’t miss some of these. So, here goes:

That last one was for the historian in me. The final one copies Obama’s main theme for the last four years, and this time it may be correct:

 Enjoy our brave new world. Let’s remake it in November.

Four justices got it right yesterday. Unfortunately, five got it wrong. The most painful part of the divide is that Chief Justice John Roberts led the charge for upholding the clearly unconstitutional Obamacare. Wait a minute, you say, how can I call it unconstitutional when the Supreme Court has declared otherwise. Because it is. The four justices who wrote in dissent, with Anthony Kennedy surprisingly in agreement, declared that the entire law should be thrown out because of its blatant unconstitutionality. Those judges understand the original wording and original intent of the Constitution.

This 5-4 vote would have gone the other way without the disappointing defection of Roberts. There has been speculation—and that’s all it can be at this point—that he was swayed by the White House attack on the integrity of the Court, and that he somehow thought by going in this direction, he was upholding the Court’s image. I don’t know if that is true. I won’t say it is; neither am I going to launch a personal attack on his character. What he has done, though, is deal a blow to the rule of law, which is always one of my main concerns.

Conservative commentators, looking for whatever silver linings they can find, have come up with at least one. Since the Court rejected Obama’s rationale for the law, they say that’s a win. Obama sold this monstrosity as being valid under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The majority said that was untenable, thereby hopefully curtailing future attempts to use that clause to do anything the government would like to do. So yes, that is a positive. But it’s the proverbial double-edged sword. Justice Roberts instead called it acceptable as part of the taxing power of the Congress, so now all we have to worry about is IRS enforcement:

If that doesn’t give you the warm fuzzies, you’re not alone.

When the president was “selling” this package at the beginning, he was adamant it was not a tax. He knew the American people would recoil at that. There’s a key interview he did with George Stephanopoulos back in 2009 that’s making the rounds again on the internet. In that interview, Obama absolutely claimed it wasn’t a tax. Yet when his people made their arguments before the Court, they tried to peddle it as a tax there, which reveals the hypocrisy and cynicism behind the law. This time they won a convert in Justice Roberts.

Here’s where I’m going to offer an argument that I saw only one writer even mention yesterday: the Court got it wrong on the power to tax. Although most of the negative comments about the ruling talked about the fear of greater taxation, they weren’t based on the Constitution’s enumerated powers. Rather, they went along with the idea that Congress has the authority to tax whatever it chooses. Wrong. The enumerated powers in Article I are there to limit the areas in which Congress can legislate and collect taxes. I challenge anyone to find a provision for legislating and collecting taxes for healthcare.

Of course, this is nothing new. Ever since the 1937 Helvering case, which declared Social Security constitutional, Congress has acted with little restraint at all. That case essentially said the enumerated powers don’t really exist—they’re just examples of the virtually unlimited power of Congress to legislate as it sees fit. Roberts should know better. I believe he has some background with the Federalist Society, an organization of lawyers and other political types who are trying to revive the concepts of constitutionalism and federalism.

Yesterday’s decision does tremendous damage to the future of freedom in this nation:

This brings me to another silver lining, though. When freedom is threatened, people awake and rise up to defend their freedom. Already this awful ruling has awakened a sleeping giant. The Romney campaign, in the hours just after the decision was made public, received an immediate influx of cash—the last I heard the amount was close to $2 million. And that was without any prodding, except for the Court’s ruling. Tea Party faithful are already organizing; the Republican Governor’s Association has declared that Republican governors are not going to go along with this ruling until they see what happens in November. Now that Obamacare has been called a tax by the highest court in the land, it has become the largest tax increase in American history. Somehow, the president has to defend that after famously claiming that no one, under his administration, making less than $250,000 per year would see their taxes raised.

One comment Roberts made in his ruling was quite accurate. He said the Court’s job is not to protect the people from the political decisions they make. By choosing Obama, the people brought this on themselves. They have no one to blame but themselves. But the nice thing is that they can change their minds. Just because the Supreme Court wrongly issued a decision saying Obamacare is constitutional, that doesn’t mean we have to live with it. Obamacare is the creation of Congress, and a new Congress can repeal it. In fact, the House has already scheduled a vote on that very thing after the Fourth of July. It will pass, and then die in the Democrat Senate. It will be symbolic, but it also may be a harbinger of what will happen if the Republicans can recapture the Senate and the presidency.

Back in 1857, the Supreme Court said that no black person was a citizen of the United States. It was wrong, and a Civil War corrected that wrong decision. In 1896, it declared the doctrine of separate-but-equal to be valid in racial matters. The nation eventually rejected that rationale as well. There is hope that yesterday’s abominable decision will also be cast into the dustbin of foolish Supreme Court pronouncements.

But it depends on the intelligence and vigilance of the electorate. How determined are we to protect our liberty?

As I write this, we are less than three hours away from the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. Most of you reading this will already know what was decided. I’ll examine what transpires today and offer some thoughts on it tomorrow. This is probably one of the most anticipated and historic Supreme Court decisions in my lifetime, aside from all the bad decisions on abortion. If Obamacare is allowed to stand, it will go down as the worst decision since Roe v. Wade. A decision to uphold this unconstitutional nightmare will follow in the infamous footsteps of the Dred Scott decision before the Civil War that declared no black person was a citizen and the Plessy v. Ferguson segregation ruling of 1896.

Well, that lets you know where I stand.

The other big event of the day will be the House vote on the contempt of Congress charges against Eric Holder. There’s not nearly the suspense for that one. Even some Democrats are going to vote for those charges, especially those who represent Republican-leaning districts in the upcoming election. So much is at stake in this as well: immigration policy, border security enforcement, states’ rights, possible misuse of executive privilege. If these charges pass, will the courts then do their job and force the attorney general to do his? I wish I had more confidence in the public’s grasp of the importance of the issues in this case. Well, at least some of the cartoonists have a good handle on it:

For me, seeing cartoons like this on a daily basis provides hope that rational thought and common sense may yet prevail. November will tell if my hope is illusory or if we still have a future as a nation.

The media naturally focused on the Supreme Court’s decision on the Arizona illegal immigration law, but apparently it’s missing the other story: the abandonment of Arizona by the federal government. From what I’ve read, none of the network morning programs—not Today or Good Morning America, or whatever CBS has currently—even mentioned the astounding change announced by the Department of Homeland Security. I haven’t yet heard a report on how the evening news shows handled it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they downplayed it as well. It’s what they do.

Consider: the federal government no longer will work with state and local law enforcement in Arizona on the illegal immigrant problem. If state or local law enforcement wants to check on the immigration status of someone being held for any other crime, the federal government will not respond to their request for information. As I said yesterday, it’s as if Arizona is the criminal in the eyes of the Obama administration. Of course, that should not startle anyone familiar with this administration’s approach to enforcing laws it doesn’t like:

It’s kind of like this:

They say immigration enforcement is a federal job, not that of the states, yet they don’t help the states being overwhelmed by a flood of illegal immigration. How can they have it both ways? Oh, that’s right, lawyers are in charge:

Given the attitude displayed by Obama’s DOJ and DHS, they might as well act as tour guides:

At least then they might be doing something useful.

The Supreme Court yesterday, in a much-anticipated ruling, upheld the central feature of the Arizona illegal immigration law that has been the center of controversy for the last few years. Yes, the Court did strike down other features of the law, but they were minor in comparison to the provision that allows police to check the immigration status of citizens who happen to be stopped under suspicion of breaking a law. Although the Obama administration, spearheaded by Eric Holder of the Department of Justice [it still has the name, but not the substance of the name] has branded the law racist, the phoniness of that charge was laid bare in this decision. Why? The Court ruled unanimously in favor of that so-called controversial provision—both liberals and conservatives on the Court declared it valid, which, in a sane world, would put to rest the idea that racism was behind the law.

In my view, the entire law should have been upheld, and Justice Scalia wrote a stinging dissent making that very point. He stated that the law didn’t create anything new, but simply mirrored federal laws that were not being carried out by the federal government, thereby forcing the state of Arizona to try to make up the difference. States have a right to defend themselves. The three most conservative justices all agreed on this.

So what did the Obama administration do immediately upon hearing of the Court’s decision? The Department of Homeland Security [another agency that is quickly becoming an oxymoron] suspended its cooperative agreement with Arizona for border security. In effect, it has said the state is now on its own in protecting its borders and dealing with illegal immigration. Further, it has published a phone number for Arizona citizens to call to report on police attempting to do their duty. Obama and his people have decided that Arizona is the criminal and must be punished. The federal government will do even less of its job in the future. It will refuse to execute the law of the land.

This is almost breathtaking, if you really stop to consider what’s happening at the highest levels of our government. In a series of actions and/or inactions, the president has trampled the entire concept of separation of powers and has taken it upon himself to be the government, purposely ignoring the constitutional limitations of his office and relegating the legislative and judicial branches to irrelevance. Here are examples of what he has done lately:

• He has adamantly refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, duly passed by Congress, and has declared his approval of same-sex marriage.
• He has unilaterally suspended the rules on how to handle illegal immigrants aged 16-30 and substituted his own agenda, again without any congressional act to authorize it.
• He has misused the right of executive privilege to shield himself and his attorney general from potentially embarrassing information in documents needed by a congressional committee investigating Fast and Furious.
• Fast and Furious itself was an out-of-control operation by the Justice Department that led to hundreds of deaths with guns deliberately passed to organized crime in Mexico.
• Now, with the denial of help for Arizona in policing illegal immigration, the president once again has violated his own oath of office, which says that he pledges to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws passed under its authority.

And it’s all politics. Hispanics, on the whole, seem to be in favor of his “new” rules for illegal immigrants, despite the damage this does to the rule of law. He has solidified their votes for November. His “evolving” view on same-sex marriage mollified a segment of society that has money to burn in the upcoming election. He now has greater access to those funds.

With this man, everything is political. But why should anyone be surprised? He was weaned on corrupt Chicago politics. He never was a genuine hope and change kind of guy; it was all political theater that worked amazingly well in the wake of a disillusioned electorate that, without thinking rationally, just wanted to take out its angst on Republicans. Few listened to the voices that were warning of the true nature of the candidate. I only hope eyes have now been opened and ears are more willing to hear.

America doesn’t crown monarchs, and when a president tries to act like one, the voters can let him know they won’t abide such arrogance. At least the voters who aren’t on the public dole won’t abide it. Are there still enough of those to make a difference?

I was thinking I’d skip writing about Fast and Furious, Eric Holder, contempt of Congress votes, and executive privilege today, but there’s at least one point I didn’t cover last week. And I may need to amend a comment I made about this being policy-oriented and not political in nature. Since the invocation of executive privilege seems to be inappropriate in this type of situation, it’s quite possible there’s a rather embarrassing revelation that could come from inspecting the documents. We’re told they’re not hiding anything, but the argument, in this case, is not very persuasive. It kind of reminds me of someone else in a similar situation:

Speculation has been circulating that the real reason for the operation was to push for stricter gun-control laws. In other words, blame the people who sold the guns rather than the government agents who allowed those guns to get in the hands of drug dealers, etc. What facts might lend themselves to this interpretation? Well, first of all, there was no attempt to trace where these guns were going. If you’re planning a sting operation, shouldn’t you be on top of the path of these weapons? Second, there was no coordination with the Mexican government. Apparently, they didn’t even know this was going on. When you take all of this together, it doesn’t look good for Holder or his boss.

On other matters, this administration has boasted of its secrets when it shouldn’t have said anything. Now we see just the opposite. Again, it makes one wonder why:

The Democrats are circling the wagons in the same way they did with Bill Clinton when he faced impeachment. But there are some cracks in the solid wall. A number of high-profile Democrats, including the governor and a senator from West Virginia, have decided not to attend the Democrat convention. They don’t want to be identified with a president who is not popular in their state. The rest of the Democrat party will try to say this is all a Republican political maneuver, but they are ignoring one salient fact:

As I said last week, and will repeat again, this is much worse than Watergate. If the media had any semblance of integrity, this could lead to the resignation of the attorney general and could possibly bring down a presidency. The big difference: they hated Nixon; they love Obama.

All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the Lord weighs the motives. Commit your works to the Lord and your plans will be established.

Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; assuredly, he will not be unpunished. By lovingkindness and truth iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one keeps away from evil.

When a man’s ways are pleasing to the Lord, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.

Better is a little with righteousness than great income with injustice. The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.

It is an abomination for kings to commit wicked acts, for a throne is established on righteousness.

How much better it is to get wisdom than gold, and to get understanding is to be chosen above silver.