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Fellow SLOB, W.C. Varones sent us a link to the President's SCOTUS/ObamaCare comments from yesterday as he felt said comments were tremendous fodder for a Sarah Sez segment such was their idiocy. We couldn't agree more, but alas, we ran with a straight blog post as we didn't see the link until it was too late. As a way of thanking W.C., we have published below what he said regarding those comments. Link to post can be found here (to save confusion, our running commentary will be designated by "ed. note:":
Does he think we don't remember what happened? And that we can't check facts on the Internet?
CBS News:
"Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," Mr. Obama said in the Rose Garden appearance.
Strong majority? It passed 219-212 after months of backroom deals, bribery, arm-twisting, and lies. That's a strong majority?
(ed. note: And let's remember it took a Christmas Eve vote and a dangling of all sorts of goodies in front of Arlen Specter (D-R-D-PA) to get that thing snuck past the Senate.)
Unprecedented? How about the Flag Protection Act of 1989? It passed the House 380-38 and the Senate 91-9. Now that's a strong majority. And then the Supreme Court went ahead and precedented all over it..
Want another precedent? How about McCain-Feingold? That passed 240-189 and then got struck down by a Supreme Court that could read the First Amendment
(ed. note: Why not start with the grand-daddy of them all with respect to judicial review: Marbury v. Madison? And if we extend the President's "activism" argument to its logical conclusion, might he have applauded the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court?)
I'm no Constitutional law professor, and I came up with those two precedents off the top of my head. What the hell are they teaching at Harvard Law?
Being willfully ignorant of historical precedent is bad enough. But Obama's statement indicates he doesn't even understand the basic concept of having a Constitution. His argument would mean that the Supreme Court and the Constitution are completely irrelevant and Congress can always do whatever it wants. If you went to Chicago and Obama was your professor for Constitutional law, you might want to take a refresher course.
(ed. note: The President is getting slammed for these comments and rightfully so. Despite his Harvard education, we can't imagine he is that ignorant of the fully-formed precedent for the court to rule laws of Congress unconstitutional if they see fit. We can only surmise, then, that he is using the bully pulpit of his office to intentionally mislead the American public to either a) influence the Justices towards a favorable decision in upholding the individual mandate or b) begin laying the defense plan should the Supremes strike down the mandate.
What is indeed unprecedented, or nearly-so if recent history is any indication, is a sitting President lashing out at the Supreme Court in this manner. And this isn't even the first time: recall the President whining about the Citizens United decision with the Supreme Court Justices in the audience during his State of the Union address in January of 2010.
The man is proving himself to be quite petulant to go along with this known ignorance and incompetence.)
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11 comments:
a know-nothing know-it-all.
just an update: AP lobbed up a few softballs in which he could walk his statement back and maintain the appearance of being right.
but he fucked it up again (sorry for the language, but this is just so sad;Harvard better consider disowning him).
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/obama-walks-back-supreme-court-threat-still-gets-it-wrong.php
it also seemed the number of uninsured jumped from 20 to 30 million.
He's still taking his queues from FDR.
drozz: In terms of your spicy language, I have this to say -- When Obama's term is done and he is gone, the phrase "fucked up" is going to seem like golden praise compared to the rest of the analysis.
Great dual blogging WC and Dean. I will link to your awesomeness tomorrow.
The President's comments are disgusting. As to his education, I have always maintained that he should sue Harvard to get his money back, since clearly he learned nothing of economics nor of constitutional law there.
It doesn't matter if it passed by 1 vote or 1 million votes... is it Constitutional or not?
I love how Obama tries to change the subject from whether it's within the Government's powers to compel people to buy something to how many votes it passed by.
Great comments, gang!
Question: why do we give so much deference to Harvard or any other Ivy League instituion?
Whose done more for the advancement of technology, employment, the economy and quality of life in this country: the likes of DIYers Steve Jobs and Sam Walton or two or three generations that have matriculated through the Ivy League, possessed the levers of power in D.C. and Wall Street and then proceeded to, ahem, fuck up the American dream?
I despise the Ivy League and the political/ruling class it has spawned.
The separation of powers is taught in high school. "that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law," is a quote more disturbing than believing the law is constitutional.
I think this is too much analysis of what seems to be a simple portion of red meat for the guy's base.
KT, that very well may be, but is there anything the guy has said or done that would leave you to believe he has absolutely nothing but contempt for the concept of separation of powers?
pleased to see all news outlets, even locals, touching in this story...and the call for the Justice Dept to justify the President's comments. Pop culture win.
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