ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Yogi Berra said that when you come to a fork in the road, take it. When supposed-conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. came to a judicial conservative-liberal fork in the road, he veered left.

With Chief Justice Roberts‘ vote to save Obamacare, I was reminded of what my dad told me more than 50 years ago: Never trust a man who wears a black robe. He might be naked under there.

Unlike other conservatives, I don’t care if his vote to save Obamacare turns into a cash cow for the Mitt Romney’s presidential political machine and galvanizes the GOP. There are some things more important than politics and elections. Striking down un-American, Constitution-violating Obamacare is one of them.

Had Chief Justice Roberts voted along with Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia like everyone expected, Obamacare would have been struck down by the Supreme Court. That would have put even more wind in the sails of the Romney campaign.

The bottom line is that Chief Justice Roberts‘ traitor vote will ensure more monumental spending and wasted taxes and put almost 15 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) under one of the world’s most bureaucratic, ineffective, incompetent and grossly expensive systems ever devised by man: our out-of- control federal government.

Chief Justice Roberts squandered the opportunity to restore judicial, financial and legislative sanity to a government that by any sane person’s standards is insane and addicted to centralized federal control of our lives.

Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers’ concept of limited government is dead.

Because of the chief justice’s vote, Fedzilla just burped and is now prepared to gobble up even more of our tax dollars, more of our GDP and limit even more opportunity in the private sector.

Chief Justice Roberts‘ opinion was that Obamacare was a tax, not a mandate under the Commerce Clause to purchase a product, and that Congress can levy any tax it wants.

As I recall, the president and the government’s very own attorney who argued the case before the Supreme Court said that Obamacare was not a tax. Fascinating, Mr. Chief Justice, that you legislated from the bench that Obamacare is a tax.

Following the chief justice’s logic, our professional political punks in Washington can mandate any tax-penalty they choose. For example, if you don’t buy an Obama-approved green energy automobile, our Fedzillacrats could tax us for refusing to do so. That’s the essence of this ruling.

Obamacare will now join Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as another unaffordable, unsustainable, runaway, unaccountable social program.

Our entitlement programs have bankrupted America. We have dug a financial crater so deep that many doubt we can ever climb out. With his vote, Chief Justice Roberts didn’t give Fedzilla an even bigger shovel, he gave Fedzilla an earth mover with which to dig bigger financial holes.

Quite possibly, with his vote, Chief Justice Roberts just engineered the ultimate demise of this great experiment in self- government. If you think we are skating on financial thin ice now, just wait until 2014 when the full financial tsunami of Obamacare comes crashing down.

The president should have Chief Justice Roberts over for dinner, give him a ride on Air Force One and apologize for not voting for him during his confirmation hearings. It’s the least the community-organizer- in-chief can do for the turncoat chief justice who saved the president’s socialist health care program.

Limited government is dead. The smothering era of socialism is here.

Ted Nugent is an American rock ‘n’ roll, sporting and political activist icon. He is the author of “Ted, White, and Blue: The Nugent Manifesto” and “God, Guns & Rock ‘N’ Roll” (Regnery Publishing).

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