Come again?

More on John Roberts' reputational downfall:

Quin Hillyer:
Jed Babbin is right that the Supreme Court has contradicted itself.
John Roberts has ruled that the penalty is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act, but IS a tax for constitutional purposes.

(As a side note, even the lower courts or judges that semi-accepted the "tax" argument had it exactly the opposite: that it was a tax for AIA purposes but NOT for constitutional purposes. Then, not a single lawyer argued before the high court itself that it was a tax for constitutional purposes. Roberts basically made it up out of thin air.)

He has ruled that Congress can't mandate that an individual must choose economic activity over inactivity -- but then that Congress CAN tax the inactivity itself and give IRS powers (other than criminal prosecution, but presumably including wage garnishment, etcetera) to penalize the refusal to pay "taxes" on that inactivity.
...
Even Roberts described this as "a tax on going without health insurance." I challenge anybody to give a single other example of there being "a tax on going without...anything." This blows aparts every notion of what a tax is. Governments tax things or actions; they do not tax that which is nonexistent.
...
He has conflated the authority to tax with the authority to exempt people from taxes via what he calls "tax incentives." See here:

Congress’s use of the Taxing Clause to encourage buying something
is, by contrast, not new. Tax incentives already promote,
for example, purchasing homes and professional educations.

What sheer nonsense this is. Government taxes real property, and it taxes services. To decide to lessen the tax on home ownership and on the service known as professional education is completely different from deciding to tax the refusal to buy a home or to pursue professional education. Again, a tax break and a tax are not at all the same thing.

Finally, he has ruled that Congress can create a penalty and call it a penalty but have it considered for constitutional purposes as a tax -- thus overriding congressional intent to engage in what the dissent rightly called "judicial tax-writing" -- but that the court should nevertheless do back flips to defer to congressional intent overall (by not ruling a law unconstitutional) because "The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a 'fairly possible' one." So we see this justice who otherwise insists on the "plain meaning" of the Constitution or statute now insisting that judges should impose an artificial meaning on it if it is remotely plausible, if doing so will allow a law to stand.

Boggles the mind.

ADDED:

YET -- this is rich -- in dicta in the same decision, he basically ridiculed Justice Ginsburg for using the "fifth alternative definition" of one word "which was itself the second alternative definition" of another.

How many alternative definitions, pray tell, did he need to search before he concluded that what Congress called a penalty and that what acts like a penalty (in that it is only imposed on those who do not do what the goverment wants to dictate) is nevertheless a tax even though under other circumstances (the Anti-Injunction Act) it can't be construed as a tax no matter what???

If this isn't result-oriented jurisprudence -- searching for a way, any way at all, to uphold a law and eep the court out of Obama's campaign-related cross-hairs -- then I don't know what is.

This is why I think Justice Roberts won't have that long-lasting SCOTUS career he once dreamed of. (Yes, I know he's got lifetime tenure...)

It will eat at him.
If you can read, and you have a basic understanding of legislation and the law, you see the ... trick he pulled here.

George Will applauds. Those Volokh law professors think they've won the Commerce war, just lost this here battle...

Reread his legal trickery. Jesuit sophistication more worthy of Scalia. (Think he regrets his Raich ruling, where he sold out his federalism principles on behalf of drug-law pragmatism? I do...)

Roberts simply got this one wrong. Politically, you might pick up the crumbs and say he helped things. Thing is: that's not his role. He knows it. It doesn't add up.

He should never have sliced into that baby. They called it a mandate, denied it was a tax, the mandate is constitutionally illegal. Let the political gamesmanship start afresh in Congress then: let them call it a tax, and Pass It as a Tax. That's the separation of branches.

Where we got the idea that "a good guy must swoop in and save the Congressional legislation for the good of the country" (or to trigger some electorate uprising in November) is beyond me...

He's been reading too much George Will, I suspect. Perhaps he never had all that much courage in his judicial convictions in the first place. Maybe (god help us, but he is a Catholic) he really indeed thought he was helping the nation, putting pragmatic justification ahead of what he knew the law required him to do...

Either way,
there's no takebacks now, Chief Justice.
We can read, some of us out here, and think independently.

This is a low mark on your reputation scholastically, even if the respected pundits, scholars and professors are going to be too polite, civil and politically correct these days to call you out on it.

We know,
and most of all, friend:
You know.