EXTRA: A Thursday surprise!

I must confess, I expected a more partisan ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States when it came to health care reform.

Destined for an encore?



Although I’m sure that no one is going to have an epiphany after learning of the court’s ruling. The grand-children of the people who used to go around ranting that Earl Warren should be impeached will now probably be saying the same about Chief Justice John Roberts.

IT SEEMS THE high court got around to accepting the idea of a mandate that people buy insurance (or else face a fine) by thinking of it as a tax. And the federal government does have the legal right to impose taxes on people – as we all well know every time we hear from the Internal Revenue Service.

Does this mean that the anti-taxers will be the leading element in the political fight to try to overturn a measure that is meant to provide health care coverage to as many people as possible in our nation?

Will Jim Tobin of National Taxpayers United be coming out with his Taxpayer Villain of the Month designation and issue a graphic depicting Roberts and the rest of the Supreme Court in a jail cell?

So it seems that President Barack Obama’s primary initiative during his first term as president will survive into law. It likely will get so entrenched in the operations of federal government that even if we do someday get an entirely GOP-dominated government, they wouldn’t be able to undo it – no matter how hard they try!

Will Gov. Quinn soon have company...



ALTHOUGH I HAVE no doubt they will try. As House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has already pledged.

Does this mean that our federal government in the near future is going to become bogged down in a partisan hissy fit, with the hardheads of the conservative movement engaging in rhetoric that shows just how cold-hearted they can be?



Because for all the times those people claim that the United States already has the best-quality health care system in the world, I’d argue that it doesn’t matter how good the quality is if there are significant numbers of people in our society who can’t afford it.

... from Chief Justice Roberts?



And those people threaten to be a drag on our society. Which is why I always have thought that Obama deserved praise for trying to address that aspect of the issue.

NOT THAT I expect future years to be filled with praise for Obama.

Just imagine the outrage we’ll hear when the actual implementation of health care reform gets botched and somebody gets deprived of proper treatment.

Even I will be offended if/when that happens.

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