The Wall Street Journal is having an Rmoney sad

Lament the hosts of their own Fox "News" teevee show:

[Willard "Mitt" Rmoney] is managing to turn the only possible silver lining in Chief Justice John Roberts's ObamaCare salvage operation—that the mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty is really a tax—into a second political defeat.

First of all, the Supreme Court didn't say that buying insurance was a tax. And it barely said the penalty for not buying insurance was a tax, only that the penalty was a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to tax, and one that was well supported by a host of federal precedent.

As the Chief Justice put it for one majority of the Court:

Although the payment will raise considerable revenue, it is plainly designed to expand health insurance coverage.

And what the WSJ editorial mandarins refer to as a "salvage operation" was in fact an exercise of the Court's deference to the will of the elected legislature, the exercise of which in other circumstances Republicans who claim to be "judicial conservatives" rejoice over.

This time they just don't like the result that it led to, in the latest example of why such claims to "judicial conservatism" are fraudulent.

Anyway this sad WSJ editorial is a fun read for reasons other than its inept characterization of the Court's health care reform decision.