Republicans: Et tu, John Roberts?

Today was a crazy day at the office with a large commercial closing and chaos with the installation with a new computer system server.  Hence, until now, I haven't had a chance to comment on today's stunning surprise of this morning's U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding "Obamacare" as the wingnuts like to call it.  It's been fun watching the far right and the Tea Party go utterly berserk over the ruling and seeing Chief Justice Roberts be viewed as a Judas by the Kool-Aid drinkers.  As I noted last night - especially if one claims to give any deference to the Gospel message - it is a national disgrace that so many Americans are viewed as human trash by the Republican Party ans its Christofascist base.  Worse yet, Americans who do have health care coverage pay literally twice or more the costs paid for more expansive health care in every other industrialized nation.  A piece in Politico looks at the shock and spewing spittle among Republicans over what they view as Justice Roberts' betrayal.  Here are highlights:

Republicans on Capitol Hill were in a state of shock Thursday that Chief Justice John Roberts, their longtime ally on the court, sided with liberals in upholding the health care law.

I thought he was the champion of limited government,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. Wilson famously yelled “You lie!” to the president during his 2009 health care speech before a joint session of Congress.

 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he was “surprised” by Roberts and “uneasy” about the court’s interpretation that the individual mandate was constitutional as a tax, but not under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Sessions was struggling to understand how Roberts reached that key conclusion.
“I am stunned and shocked, somewhat confused, by the decision, by the nature of the decision, by the nature of the majority and by the nature of the reasoning,” said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on the floor. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a tea party favorite, also described himself as “shocked” by the turn of events.

And, grasping for an explanation, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) remarked: “As a lawyer, I can see where Roberts is concerned about the institution and maybe that explains it?

Roberts — the architect of the 2010 Citizens United ruling that opened the door to unlimited spending by outside groups in elections and a frequent boogeyman of the left — joined the court’s four liberal justices in saying that Congress had the authority to force most Americans to buy health insurance through its constitutional powers of taxation. The court’s three conservative justices, along with swing vote Anthony Kennedy, voted to strike down the law in its entirety.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a frequent critic of Roberts’s decisions in the court, said he sees this week’s decisions as “efforts by the chief justice to move the court back to the center line when it came to political neutraility.”

“The earlier decision in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United raise serious questions about the drift by the court,” Durbin said. “Some of the comments being made by Justice [Antonin] Scalia from the bench, where it sounded he was just quoting Fox News verbatim, really didn’t enhance the image of the court in the mind of the American public.”

We may never know what ultimately motivated Roberts.  It may be something as simple as the fact that he realized that the health care system before ACA in this country was broken and morally wrong.  Some suggest that Scalia's obnoxiousness and extremism may have tilted Roberts' decision.  Whatever the cause, I am glad that Justice Roberts put the nation and lies of millions of citizens ahead of partisan politics and greed. 

What Planned Parenthood Actually Does vs. GOP/Claims

As part of its never ending effort to utterly prostitute itself to the Christian Right, the GOP constantly targets Planned Parenthood - an organization that utilizes only 3% of its budget/funding to provide abortion services. As the chart above from the Washington Post indicates, the other 97% goes to needed services - such as cancer screening - given principally to poor and less affluent Americans. Meanwhile, spineless organizations like the Susan G. Koman Foundation - which has received its last dollar from me - are running scared and kissing the religious extremist asses of the Christianists and withdrawing ALL funding to Planned Parenthood. If you find such pandering to the forces of hate distasteful, let the Susan G. Komen Foundation know here.

Following Bush Over a Cliff

This column by David Broder (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/26/AR2007092602067.html?nav=hcmodule) discusses a phenomenon that I simply do not understand - why members of the GOP blindly follow a president that the vast majority of the population disapprove of and believe is taking the country in the wrong direction. The GOP increasingly deserves to be savaged at the polls in 2008. As for the Chimperator, perhaps a mental institution is where he belongs:

The spectacle Tuesday of 151 House Republicans voting in lock step with the White House against expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was one of the more remarkable sights of the year. Rarely do you see so many politicians putting their careers in jeopardy.

The bill they opposed, at the urging of President Bush, commands healthy majorities in both the House and Senate but is headed for a veto because Bush objects to expanding this form of safety net for the children of the working poor. He has staked out that ground on his own, ignoring or rejecting the pleas of conservative senators such as Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, who helped shape the compromise that the House approved and that the Senate endorsed.

Governors of both parties -- 43 of them, again including conservatives such as Sonny Perdue of Georgia -- have praised the program. And they endorsed the congressional decision to expand the coverage to an additional 4 million youngsters, at the cost of an additional $35 billion over the next five years. The bill would be financed by a 61-cents-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes. If ever there was a crowd-pleaser of a bill, this is it. Hundreds of organizations -- grass-roots groups ranging from AARP to United Way of America and the national YMCA -- have called on Bush to sign the bill. America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest insurance lobbying group, endorsed the bill on Monday.

Bush's adamant stand may be peculiar to him, but the willingness of Republican legislators to line up with him is more significant. Bush does not have to face the voters again, but these men and women will be on the ballot in just over a year -- and their Democratic opponents will undoubtedly remind them of their votes.

Two of their smartest colleagues -- Heather Wilson of New Mexico and Ray LaHood of Illinois -- tried to steer House Republicans away from this political self-immolation, but they had minimal success. The combined influence of White House and congressional leadership -- and what I would have to call herd instinct -- prevailed.