"Randy Barnett, the Georgetown law professor who was an intellectual spark plug for the legal arguments against Obamacare, is optimistic about the future. 'The fact that this decision was apparently political, rather than legal, completely undermines its legitimacy as a precedent,' he tells me. 'Its result can be reversed by the people in November, and its weak-tax-power holding reversed by any future Court without pause.'
 
"I won’t go that far, but I will hazard a guess that Chief Justice Roberts is more likely to see his opinion upholding Obamacare collapse, a legal sandcastle blasted and eroded by the shifting tides, than to see it endure as the solid edifice he hoped he had built."

"If there is a modicum of hope in Chief Justice John Roberts's inglorious one-man opinion Thursday, it is that Americans were reminded again that they cannot count on others to protect their liberty. Certainly judges aren't reliable. They can be turned by the pressure of the media and the whims of vanity. If Americans want to repeal ObamaCare, their only recourse is to demand it at the ballot box in November.  

"The Affordable Care Act is more unpopular now than when it passed, yet it will grind on toward implementation in a second Obama term. The President made that clear in his remarks Thursday, deploying the usual half-truths he used to jam the law through Congress. He continued to claim that no one will lose his current health insurance, though millions are sure to do so as they are dropped from business coverage and tossed into Medicaid or government exchanges. ...   

"It is now undeniable that Mr. Obama has imposed the largest tax increase in history on the middle class. ..."

"Whether ObamaCare was affirmed or overturned by the ladies and men in robes, nothing was going to change one unimpeachable fact: From day one, the Obama health-care legislation was swimming against the tides of history. It was a legislative monolith out of sync with an iPad world. In the era of the smartphone, ObamaCare was rotary-dial health reform. ... 

"The public sector of its nature will always be behind the curve. But does it have to be routinely out of it, as Washington is now? The American people await a national politician or political party whose public policies at least occupy the same universe that the electronic tablet represents -- real value that can be altered and upgraded to admit new realities.

"Over time, a health-care dinosaur like ObamaCare was likely to implode under its own weight. It was inevitable that some future Congress would be forced to allow the delivery of medicine to join the rest of us in the 21st century. With or without the Supreme Court's thoughts Thursday on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, that day lies in the future."

"If Obamacare is tossed aside in whole or in part by the Supreme Court tomorrow, history will view the bill as one of the most remarkable blunders made by any president  -- both in terms of policy and politics. Even if it is upheld, Obama will have to carry it as an albatross into the fall campaign knowing that the majority of likely voters want it repealed, and they can accomplish that goal in only one way: removing him from office."

"Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are simply unwilling to do so. 

"Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty -- not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State. For these reasons, I dissent."

"As Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it’s alibi time for some of his backers.  

"His problem, they say, is that some voters don’t like him because he’s black. Or they don’t like his policies because they don’t like having a black president. 

"So, you see, if you don’t like Obamacare, it’s not because it threatens to take away your health insurance, or to deny coverage for some treatments. It’s because you don’t like black people. ... 

"There’s an obvious problem with the racism alibi: Barack Obama has run for president before, and he won. Voters in 2008 knew he was black. Most of them voted for him. He carried 28 states and won 365 electoral votes."

"Actually, it's amazing that during an existential crisis -- a crisis that is economic, cultural and political, and that bears on our role and purpose in the world -- both candidates for our highest office have felt free to be so . . . well, insubstantial. Neither Mr. Romney nor Mr. Obama has caught hold of the overall meaning of his candidacy, Mr. Romney because so far he's chosen not to, and Mr. Obama because he's tried and failed. 

"With just more than 130 days to go, Mr. Romney has to start pulling from his brain and soul a coherent and graspable sense of the meaning of his run. 'I will be president for this reason and this. I will move for this and this. The philosophy that impels me consists of these things.' Only when he does this will he show that he actually does have a larger purpose, and only then will people really turn toward him. He has to tell Americans why they can believe him, why a nation saturated with politics, chronically disappointed by its leaders, and tired of promises can, actually, put some faith in him. 

"They want to know how America can come back. Because they're pretty sure, down deep, that America has another comeback in her."

"Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to fully disclose the documents associated with Operation Fast and Furious and President Obama's assertion of executive privilege serves to compound this tragedy. It denies the Terry family and the American people the truth. Our son, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, was killed by memebers of a Mexican drug cartel armed with weapons from this failed Justice Department guntrafficking investigation. For more than 18 months, we have been asking our federal government for justice and accountability. The documents sought by the House Oversight Committee and associated with Operation Fast and Furious should be produced and turned over to the Committee. Our son lost his life protecting this nation, and it is very disappointing that we are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves rather than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious."

"It's presidential season, so again pundits are indignant that money is spent on politics. Spent by corporations! And rich people! Because the Supreme Court allowed that, '2012 will be a miserable year,' says The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne. 

"2012 may be miserable -- but if it is, it won't be because corporations spend on politics. And anyway, they have a right to spend.  

"In politics, money is speech. ... 

"It is shameful that leftists let their hatred of corporations lead them to throw free speech under the bus. There is a smarter way to get corporate money out of politics: Shrink the state. If government has fewer favors to sell, citizens will spend less money trying to win them."

"Next time, Congress shouldn’t bother. In another chapter in a long-running battle, it voted in December 2010 on the DREAM Act granting amnesty to illegal immigrants brought here as children. The lawmakers appeared to believe that they were entrusted with determining whether or not the legislation became law. 

"How quaint. Passage of the DREAM Act wasn’t necessary, and its defeat -- by a filibuster in the Senate -- was an irrelevance. ... 

"Last week the Obama administration activated the central provisions of the DREAM Act by wielding the most awesome power in Washington -- President Barack Obama’s say-so. He must imagine himself as fit for the company of the great lawgivers Hammurabi and Moses on the frieze over the Supreme Court. In one memorandum signed by his Homeland Security secretary, he claimed powers that literally once belonged to kings."