Discussion: Toobin: Chief Justice Roberts Was Oddly Quiet During Oral Arguments

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Discussion for article #233953

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Guess he was just listening real hard like he always does - trying to come to the right decisions for the good of corporate America. (In this case, keep the ACA, you jerk!- the health insurance companies love it!)

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I am betting that he was thinking why in the hell did we take this insane dumb and stupid case.

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Hungover? Was he sipping from a bottle of gatoraid?

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“Toobin: Chief Justice Roberts Was Oddly Quiet During Oral Arguments”
Said the reporter who famously destroyed his credibility by anxiously reporting that the SCOTUS had found that the ACA was unconstitutional. Not that credibility matters to CNN.

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He’s already made up his mind.

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The good news is that Justice Kennedy reportedly appeared to have serious concerns about the reading that the challengers of the ACA were giving to the law… so perhaps this doesn’t all hinge on Roberts.

See the first and the second to last paragraph here:

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Would be an interesting turn of events if it went 5-4 with Kennedy being the deciding vote instead of Roberts.

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Roberts seems like the kind of prudential jurist who would have voted not to hear this case in the first place until and unless a circuit split emerged. I suspect that the other four conservatives on the court voted to hear the case against Roberts’ wish to the contrary. So perhaps Roberts is generally uninterested in this case, or already knows how he is going to vote for the sake of the Supreme Court’s institutional credibility.

All very speculative, I know.

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I’m starting to think that we are looking at a 6-3 decision, actually.

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Rubber, meet road.

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This is like watching golf: totally pointless but engrossing if you buy the premise that it’s worthwhile to bother.

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Toobin unfortunately seriously undermined his own credibility when he characterized the Administration’s case defending ACA as a trainwreck.

And was hysterical about it.

So he thinks John Roberts was being “oddly quiet”. Who cares?

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Since Roberts upheld it before, does he really want to be responsible for denying thousands of Americans health insurance/care? Repubs are the most hateful folks I know.

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Yeh…

Semantics will come to his rescue…

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Probably pissed something this trivial made it this far.

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Ignore Toobin, he’s like Bill Krystal, i.e., never right.

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Jeffrey Toobin…another fucking hack on the payroll. Line 'em up CNN. That’s what you do.
That’s why you won’t see me watching their shit. They lost their credibility on anything years ago.

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As have the rest of the ‘Justices’.

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A comment below suggests this may be a 6-3 vote, with Kennedy and Roberts voting with the intelligent Justices. I’m not so sure. It may very well be that, for Roberts, as long as Kennedy is the 5th vote to preserve the ACA, he can follow his instincts and side with the others.