Has anyone pointed out to the "wingnuts" that the only thing ruled un-Constitutional

[maxrandb]

was the mandate they created and have been trying to push in their own effed-up Health Care Reform plans for the past 30 years???

So I ask you media people....What party is trying to destroy the Constitution??

[HopeHoops]

1. They don't get it. My mom was bitching about the "doughnut hole".

I told her that Obamacare closes the hole, but she still didn't comprehend that. She DOES however have FOX on 24x7 and listens to Rush in the car.

[Life Long Dem]

2. They have a health care reform plan?

[ashling]

3. UH, what?

It was upheld.

[maxrandb]

4. Under Congress' power to levy taxes

not as necessary and proper under the Commerce Clause, which is what the Repukes have pushed since they pushed an alternative to Hillary's plan.

[ashling]

5. That's true, but there is not a ruling here affecting the Commerce Clause for that very reason

the ruling of the court was that it is upheld as a tax. The rest is dicta and has no effect as precedent. That was merely superfluous language full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
PERIOD.

Justice Ginsburg went to some trouble to make that clear in her dissent. And her defence of the commerce clause was, frankly, much better writing than that of the CJ in his dicta.

[TexasProgresive]

7. Maybe they pushed for the mandate

as a Trojan horse.

It could be they planned to run any plan to the S.C.

[Honeycombe8]

6. The mandate was not ruled unconstitutional. It was ruled...

It was ruled unconstitutional under one reasoning, but was ruled expressly constitutional under a different reasoning.

[ashling]

9. It was not ruled unconstitutional under any reasoning. Period.

It was ruled constitutional - under the reasoning that it is a tax and that Congress has the authority to tax under the Constitution.

A SC opinion can be split into 2 parts. There is the ruling and the reasoning for that ruling - either up or down (i.e., the law) ... and then there is everything else. The everything else is dicta and is not precedent. It is full of sound and fury, signifying: nothing.

[Honeycombe8]

10. I stand corrected. But are you sure?

The fact that the S.Ct. said that the mandate being authority by the commerce clause is unconstitutional - that doesn't mean that that issue is settled?

[ashling]

11. The ruling of the court

and the reasoning for that ruling are the holding. It would have been theoretically possible to find a part of the ACA unconstitutional but the overall act to be constitutional. That is not what he did here.

Roberts basically said that it did not meet the test of constitutionality under the cc, but that it was still constitutional under congress' authority to tax.

[DURHAM D]

8. Huh?