After a long summer filled with effusive praise from the American Left for his tie-breaking vote in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, derisively known as Obamacare, Chief Justice John G. Roberts announced that he's decided to side with Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotomayor on all Supreme Court cases in the future.
"I'm on an amazing ride right now, and Steve Breyer and the Girls have just been super cool with me," Roberts told a packed house at a Bruce Springsteen concert he was attending with his wife. "I can't tell you how stoked I am to be right for once. I mean left, right. Get it? Left right?"
Supreme Court watchers were initially surprised when Roberts upheld the PPACA not because he found the law constitutional per se, but because he ruled it a tax. "I know that's not what the Justices on the Left think, not to mention those other jerks, but why split hairs? I really liked how random it was to surprise everybody, you know? Shake them out of their boots. Let them wonder what Ol' Roberts was up to. I've been trying for years to put my personal stamp on this court, the Roberts Court, also known as the Supreme Court led by me, John Roberts, but nothing else has ever worked like this health vote thing. Before, all anyone cared about was what Smartypants Scalia had to say.
In a tersely worded statement sent to his former allies on the Court Roberts wrote: "Mayday, Mayday! John Boy's gone rogue. All Mimsey were the Borogrove."
Roberts later explained. "Well for one, I couldn't think of anything else that rhymed with rogue, except maybe brogue, but I'm not Irish so who's gonna understand that? I don't know if I've said this before but I'm on an amazing ride right now, and I'm not ready for it to end. I've got tickets to see Lady Gaga in the fall. You just can't score decent concert tickets when you're riding herd on the moral Mayflower with those other knuckleheads. I'm still faithful to my wife and all but let me tell you something, after that one health care vote it would be about this easy for me to get a little something something from one of these lefty Mamas."
The response from the Right came swiftly. "He's a traitor to all that we Americans hold sacred," said a spokesman for Mitt Romney, from the new Sheldon Adelson pavilion inside Romney headquarters. "As President, Romney will not rest until Obamacare is overturned and Israel is restored to its status as the greatest country on Earth ever, with Jerusalem as its capital, its center, its heart, its very kischkas!" Oy vey! I love it! A Mormon who speaks Yiddish!
With major legal issues upcoming on the court's fall schedule, such as a challenge to the equal protection clause, the news of Roberts' move to the political left was seen by many as a significant change in the direction of the court. We mean the Roberts Court. However, Roberts specified one area in which he would not be willing to change his opinion -- the Citizen's United ruling, which for the first time gave corporations the same free speech rights as people.
"I don't know about you but I grew up with the idea that when E.F. Hutton talked, people listened. Trying to stifle Hutton and other people like him -- well not people people but you know what I mean; it's just plain wrong. I used to LOVE those commercials!"