The episode started with a video of Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee speaking of Chief Justice John Roberts: “I trust that he will be a chief justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch. Given the ideological challenge (INAUDIBLE) the Affordable Care Act and the extensive supportive precedent, it'd be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce.”

 

Was that intimidation of the Supreme Court, asked Shannon Bream, sitting in for Greta Van Susteren. Her guest, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who also sits on the Judiciary Committee, seemed to think it was desperation. ”You know, most of the time, the team that's yelling the at the referee is the team that's losing. What's extraordinary about this circumstance is that the team yelling at the referee hasn't even lost yet, but they recognize that they're about to, and they don't like it.”

 

Lee also took Leahy to task for criticizing the court's "conservative activism” of recent years. Voting down the health care law isn’t "activist", said Lee, it’s just doing their job. “A court that refuses to invalidate an unconstitutional law like this one is every bit as bad as a court that invalidates a law that is constitutionally just fine. Either way, you have a court that's not doing its job, that's doing something that it shouldn't be doing.” (Hmmm. He's telling SCOTUS how to do its job? Isn't that just what he accused the other side of doing?)

 

Since Senator Lee thinks the act is "going down in flames," he's not going to yell at any referees. But if the Republicans thought the Court would rule in favor of the health care law, would they be yelling? You betcha. They’d be screaming “activism” from here to Tierra del Fuego. And what happens if the court overturns the law? The Republicans would be on the hook for replacing “Obamacare” with something of their own, and so far they haven't agreed what the replacement should look like. Of course, you'll never hear criticism of that on Fox News.