Category Archives: Independents

Did Justice Roberts Help Romney and Provide a Path to Repeal ObamaCare?

Over at Red State, Erick Ericson theorizes that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion as a way to put ObamaCare back into the hands of the political branches to decide the law’s fate:

The Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground. Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, because John Roberts concluded it [the individual mandate] was a tax, the Democrats cannot filibuster its repeal because of the same reconciliation procedure the Democrats used to pass it.

It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.

Our own Doug Mataconis said he “would not be surprised to see it be a 6-3 decision” way back in April for the following reason:

Ordinarily, the most senior Justice in the majority gets to decide who writes the majority opinion. However, if the Chief Justice is in the majority he gets to make that decision. If Kennedy ends up voting to uphold the mandate then I could see Chief Justice Roberts joining him so that he can write the opinion himself and make the precedential value of the decision as limited as possible.

Erick Erickson also mentioned on his radio program that many conservatives and libertarians who aren’t thrilled with Romney as the nominee will put aside their objections and vote for him if it means repealing ObamaCare.

I hate to say it but I think Erickson has a point. ObamaCare being upheld is a game changer. Prior to this decision that was supposed to strike down all or part of ObamaCare, I was absolutely certain that I would enthusiastically vote for the Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson rather than settle for the lesser of the two evils. With ObamaCare being upheld, now I have to say I’m not so sure. I’m not normally a single issue voter but if ObamaCare isn’t stopped and soon, we will be stuck with it for at least a generation.

The problem is though, it might already be too late. Several things have to happen just right. First Romney must be elected and the GOP must take control of the Senate and hold the House. Second, we have to trust that Romney and the Republicans in congress will actually follow through. We’ve been disappointed before.

Doug Stanhope – Liberty (Re) Defined

Brad has posted a version of this comedy routine by Doug Stanhope before. This version has been edited to include images and video by Fr33 Agent Beau Davis with a more honest than the traditional “pledge of allegiance” at the close.

I thought that since today happens to be Flag Day, this video would be an important reminder about the true meaning of liberty albeit with an (at times) crude, comedic delivery. True liberty has nothing to do with a flag*, much less worship for the government for which it stands.

WARNING: some of the material in the video will be offensive as hell to some of you. Enjoy!

Related: The Un-American Pledge of Allegiance

*Of course the flag can mean different things to different people. I think it’s one thing to show appreciation for the flag with its original intended meaning by the founders and quite another to “pledge allegiance” to its government regardless of how hostile to freedom the government becomes. I seriously doubt that Thomas Jefferson (who advocated separating political bonds with any government that becomes hostile to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence BTW) or other founders would have ever pledged allegiance to the flag of the federal government.

Rasmussen Poll: 61% of 500 Likely Voters in Colorado Support Regulating Marijuana Like Alcohol (Amendment 64)

This is one of the most encouraging polls I’ve seen in a long time. Honestly, I didn’t think that Amendment 64 [full text here] would have much chance of being approved by the voters, especially since a similar measure, Prop 19 failed in California in 2010. The Huffington Post reports:

The survey of 500 of likely voters in Colorado conducted on June 6, 2012 shows sixty-one percent are in favor legalizing marijuana if it is regulated the way that alcohol and cigarettes are currently regulated.

[…]

That is the highest percentage of Colorado voter support that any marijuana legalization poll has shown to date. In December of 2011, a similar poll from Public Policy Polling showed only 49 percent in favor of general legalization of marijuana.

I also found this to be interesting (continuing the same article):

Amendment 64 also recently received support from both Republicans and Democrats — in March, 56 percent of the delegates at the Denver County Republican Assembly voted to support the legislation, and in April, the Colorado Democratic Party officially endorsed Amendment 64 and added a marijuana legalization plank to the current party platform.

Bipartisan support for legalizing marijuana and regulating it like alcohol in Colorado? This is quite encouraging and fascinating (in California, you may recall, there was bipartisan opposition from the blue and red teams).

This isn’t to say there that Amendment 64 will sail through unopposed. There are anti-64 groups mobilizing so those of us who want to see 64 pass cannot be complacent. Also, with about five and a half months until election day, anything can happen.

The Birther Distraction Only Benefits Obama

There it is again. That damned conspiracy theory about Barack Obama being born not in Hawaii but Kenya. An honest question for you birthers out there: even assuming that everything you believe about the birthplace of Barack Obama is true, do you really think that even if you could prove it 100% that people who would otherwise support him/undecided would choose not to or would be declared ineligible to serve as president by some court, perhaps SCOTUS?

IMO the answers to those questions are no and probably not. If the voters are not concerned enough to vote him out (or even call for his impeachment) based on his other, much more damaging assaults on the Constitution, I seriously doubt these same people are going to be upset about Obama’s audacity to be born to an American mother outside the country. As far as violating his oath to defend the Constitution goes, this would be quite a minor assault.

So if the birther issue doesn’t benefit Obama’s opponents, who would it benefit? President Obama and the Democrat Party. The Obama campaign has already released an ad critical of Mitt Romney and his ties to Donald Trump (below).

This is precisely the kind of issue President Obama wants to be a part of this campaign. If the media and the people are talking about the birther question, they are not talking about his failed economic policies, his continued assaults on free market capitalism, ObamaCare, signing extensions to the Patriot Act, signing the NDAA, Fast and Furious, his drug war hypocrisy, his foreign policy befitting that of a warlord, his very Orwellian change in the definition of the term “civilian” to make his statistics for killings of innocent people in foreign lands not look so bad to the casual news consumer, and etc. In other words, Obama’s record as president!

I hear people complain that Obama wasn’t properly vetted in 2008 (and to a certain extent I agree). The media didn’t concentrate enough on the birth certificate, his time hanging out with Marxists in college, his unwillingness to release his college transcripts, his association with Jeremiah Wright. Some of these things are reasonable questions but are distractions to the issues of the greatest importance.

It may be true that we don’t know a whole lot about Obama’s biography or what made him the person he is relative to past presidents but we have had four years to evaluate his job performance as president. In the final analysis, isn’t that all that really matters?

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