John Roberts, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, overruled the parole board today in a decision to free Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon.
"I am a maverick, and America needs me to continue to go against the grain of what people think is fair, decent, and right. Mark David Chapman, contrary to the views of the parole board, contrary to society's sense of justice, and contrary to common sense, is worthy of freedom after serving many years behind bars.
What is Chief Justice Roberts up to? Why? President Obama seems to be pleased with his ruling; that augurs ill for the nation.
…Except that none of this is true. It’s all a lie, a fabrication.
I suppose the intention was to make a parody that expressed the authors displeasure with Chief Justice Roberts decision on the Mandate in ACA, but he failed his readers by nowhere revealing that it is all irony and all untrue. Maybe at the end of the article he should say something like “April fool! I was just trying to do a parody at Roberts expense”, but neither the author nor Miller made such a demurer. That’s really irresponsible, especially on Millers part since he’s some kind of lawyer who should fear false evidence and false statements.
Even with a disclaimer some people will take this as true, which it is not.
And it is NOT funny or amusing, which is usually the purpose of a parody, but the author is no Jonathan Swift.
If you want to read about Roberts judicial propensities you’d do better to read this article from The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_toobin
“Roberts’s hard-edged performance at oral argument offers more than just a rhetorical contrast to the rendering of himself that he presented at his confirmation hearing. “Judges are like umpires,” Roberts said at the time. “Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” His jurisprudence as Chief Justice, Roberts said, would be characterized by “modesty and humility.” After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/25/090525fa_fact_toobin#ixzz24ZnIgxLk