Photograph by Ken Heinen/Getty Images.  John Roberts, former character actor as "the dad who wears khaki shorts and stands with his hands on his hips a lot," joined the liberal wing of the Supreme Court in upholding the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." This is why the challenge to the ACA, and its progress through the courts, came as a surprise to Democrats and to mainstream constitutional scholars: Three years ago, there was no serious doubt that Congress had the power to impose the individual mandate. With today's ruling, you can already see lay-readers reevaluating Roberts as a decent-if-misguided guy who was willing to see reason. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.” 
 
 The business about "new and potentially vast" authority is a fig leaf. At the same time, it represents the first major step in rolling back an interpretation of the commerce clause that has been considered fundamental for roughly 80 years, one whose elimination has been a Federalist Society wet dream for 30. Today, Roberts did what Obama predicted he would do.
– John Roberts upheld the Affordable Care Act today, and "in doing so, he gave a lot of people who don't pay attention a reason to celebrate him on Twitter," writes Mobutu Sese Seko of Gawker. "They're idiots." Seko and some other observers believe Roberts had a secret plan. Yes, his ruling hands Obama a superficial victory, but that "was, ultimately, a pretext," writes Tom Scocca of Slate. His real goal: to gut the commerce clause, and fundamentally cripple Congress' ability to regulate. Roberts ruled that the victory was a result of Congress' power to tax, not the commerce clause. In so doing he's rolling back long-held precedent, and severely curtailing Congress' power. "It is what Roberts has been pursuing ever since he signed up with the Federalist Society," Scocca writes. "Roberts' genius was in pushing this through without attaching it to the coattails of an ugly, narrow partisan victory." Seko also notes that by using the tax power, he's "handed the Republican Party a talking point." The ACA is now, officially, a tax.