SCOTUS: A Guest Post by Ol' Remus of The Woodpile Report

To characterize the Supreme Court as some great upholder of the rule of law in spite of it being a pillar in the state apparatus is insulting to any decent person that has a basic understanding of justice. In lieu of the upholding of the Affordable Care Act, it's now worth asking what the U.S. government can't do to Americans. [James Miller at mises.ca]

But imposition of a tax nonetheless leaves an individual with a lawful choice to do or not do a certain act, so long as he is willing to pay a tax levied on that choice. [Justice Roberts at supremecourt.gov/opinions]

The Obamacare decision has revealed the Supreme Court for the fraud it is. They bound and gagged the Constitution long ago, embezzled its authority and now speak for it rather than from it. It's a Medieval priesthood overawing the citizenry with imagined infallibility, but at ground level these cocktail-circuit Big Thinkers enable and shield DC's most conspicuous assaults on the rightful liberty of the people.

The deciding vote was cast by Chief Justice Roberts, a Bush appointee whose confirmation Obama opposed, which shows DC as it really is, an evil carnival of political chameleons imposing their dark fantasies on the rest of us, corrupt and convoluted beyond even its own understanding, a brittle and bankrupt fear-machine clanking from crisis to crisis, sniffing for advantage. DC is run largely off the books by psychopaths and the irretrievably compromised and they mean to make outsiders of us, with all the rights of uninvited spectators.

DC believes the people adore its captor, and some do. They're the Kapos of our time. They think it right and proper to ask DC's permission to be free. They believe permits and licenses are the same as liberty, meaning one man is compelled to get consent from another to live his life, or even to protect his life. They think it right we travel only by DC's leave, that DC choose our food and our neighbors, that DC decide how much of our earnings we're entitled to, that DC can rightfully demean and dismiss our opinions. They think it right we're surveilled, bullied, and bribed with our own money. They think it right we're lied to, swindled and slandered.

Others believe DC is a criminal enterprise in the sense of being outside the law, and thereby lawless, that elections merely sanction palace machinations, that every police-state decree was proposed and passed by our "representatives" and signed off by the court, that DC is where liberty goes to be abused and strangled, in short, that DC has become fundamentally illegitimate and the fix must be equally fundamental. They understand what's been pilfered through chicanery and compromise, or outright betrayal. They revere liberty as it was and will be. Take heart. Ancient bonds are reconnecting. Paine and Jefferson and Adams are speaking again. Liberty will be regained.