I really don't like Linda Greenhouse. Her end of SCOTUS term on Chief Justice John Roberts is a classic example of why. She opines:
In saving the mandate’s penalty provision as a tax, he followed his head. In denouncing the very notion that Congress might require people to buy health insurance, he followed his heart. In the term that just ended, head and heart were no longer at war.
First, there's the implicit claim that she is able to divine the inner workings of Roberts' decision making processes. She knows what's in his "head" and "heart," as if she were some psychic shrink. In fact, as has been her pattern over the years, this column reflects her complete inability to understand the thoughts and feelings of anyone to the right of William Brennan.
Second, there's the implication that oppositon to the Obamacare mandate must be emotional rather than logical. Apparently, no thinking person using their noggin instead of their gut could possibly oppose that mandate.
It's this sort of nonsense that makes Greenhouse unreadable.
