Thursday morning when I first heard the results of the Obamacare decision, I recalled some words from John Roberts confirmation hearing back in 2005, when he quoted Professor of Law John MacArthur Maguire, who referred to law as the “the wise restraints that make men free.” Until I read the decision, I assumed that he must be finding some way to show great deference to Congress. In fact, it was just the opposite. As the always brilliant Justice Scalia points out in his dissent, Justice Roberts didn’t interpret the statute. He rewrote it, and he did so in direct contravention of not only the Founders’ plan, as expressed in Federalist Papers, but also in the legislative history. That’s a legalistic way of saying Congress knew what it was doing, and it specifically rejected versions of the Affordable Care Act (I laugh every time I hear that name) that called the “penalty” a “tax.” He engaged in ridiculous gymnastics, sophistry really, first correctly stating that stretching the Commerce Clause to the point of penalizing those who don’t buy something would make the federal government’s power nearly unlimited, then proceeding to write an opinion that makes the taxing power of the federal government nearly unlimited.

So the question is why did he do it? Why did he save Obama’s bacon by giving him and surrogates the opportunity to start their usual “OK, nothing to see hear, move on, conversation over, the Court has ruled ” routine on the most intrusive law in the history of this republic? Why did he give democrats the cover of constitutionality for this monstrous scheme? There are have several theories. Charles Krauthammer argued that Roberts is determined to protect the reputation of the Court against charges of being purely partisan. That may be the case. If it is, I say that would be like someone worrying about whether the neighbors think his wife is a slut or her husband is a fat loser while a guy is poised to not only bulldoze his house, but the whole neighborhood. Our civil liberties and the future of this country versus the “reputation of the Court?” There’s no contest. Was the Chief Justice cowed when Barack berated the Court during the State of Union, and then he and his apparatchiks went all Alinsky on them about the Citizens United case? Was he determined to bend over backwards to show that he’s too big a person to hold Barack Obama’s opposition to his own confirmation against the president by foregoing to chance to really stick it to him when he had the chance? Or was he simply saying “elections have consequences,” and throwing it back to us, knowing that November is right around the corner?

One of our guests today, author and breitbart.com columnist Ben Shapiro, author of Prime-Time Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV predicted that John Roberts might betray Constitutional originalists back in 2005! How did he know? We’ll ask him.

Plus, author and journalist Jack Cashill was also ahead of the curve, in his case about the true authorship of Barack Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, which he dissects in his terrific book, Deconstructing Obama. Now he turns his incisiveness on the supposedly definitive biography of Barack Obama, David Maraniss,’ Barack Obama: the Story, and asks how such an exhaustively-researched tome could tip toe around the gaps in the Obama nativity narrative. His recent piece in The American Thinker asks “Did Maraniss Commit Fraud To Protect Obama?”

Tune in today for the rest of the story.

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