Weird, strange, infuriating. And maybe brilliant.

Chief Justice John Roberts is either the most savvy person on the Supreme Court, or an odd duck detached from his colleagues, the Constitution and the real world. Either way, he and he alone stands responsible for saving ObamaCare.

In a tortured opinion that infuriated the eight other justices, Roberts' ruling sent off a false signal that led many reporters initially to misread it as overturning the individual mandate. He eventually reached the opposite conclusion, on grounds that almost nobody saw coming, a shocker that could scramble the political fallout.

President Obama is a big winner - sort of. He gets to keep most of his signature legislative achievement.

But, thanks to Roberts' finding that the penalty attached to the individual mandate is really a tax, Obama is saddled with having imposed a huge hike on middle-class Americans, something he promised he would never do, and something he expressly said the law doesn't do.