By Tribune-Review

Published: Thursday, June 28, 2012, 12:52 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

John Roberts stunned the nation on Thursday when the conservative Supreme Court chief justice became the swing vote and led a liberal minority into the majority to uphold the Affordable Care Act.

While the court found one of ObamaCare's most contentious measures — the individual insurance mandate and its penalty for noncompliance — to be unconstitutional under the commerce and necessary and proper clauses, it ruled that it does pass constitutional muster as a tax.

The ultimate irony, if not the legal quandary, is that President Obama, congressional acolytes and administration lawyers (except in court) repeatedly insisted the penalty was not a tax.

And as the conservative minority wrote in dissent, the 5-4 majority “save(d) a statute Congress did not write.”

Thus, the Supreme Court has created a new and incredibly steep slippery slope that gives the federal government an ever larger cudgel that threatens the basic foundations of America ­— freedom, liberty and independence.

And that's a ticking time bomb of a “gift” as America prepares to celebrate its 236th birthday.

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