OR, TO PARAPHRASE, "SPADE":

Unlike justices, elected leaders, Roberts reminded, "can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them." (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With one sentence, Chief Justice John Roberts did what scores of speeches from President Barack Obama and hundreds of pages of legislation from Congress could not do: define what the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act actually was.

"The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax," wrote Roberts, who joined the four liberal justices Thursday in upholding the key provision of Obama's signature health care law. [...]

As Roberts limited the power of the legislative branch, he also reminded Americans about the limits of his own branch. "Members of this court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments," Roberts wrote. "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices," the chief justice added with a spirit of humility always strangely absent from the commander in chief's remarks.

None of this is to say that voters must live with their bad decisions. Unlike justices, elected leaders, Roberts reminded, "can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them." In other words, ObamaCare need only be the law of the land for as long as Americans care to keep Obama in office.

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