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This morning theBaltimore Sun declared that Obama's "remarks on the Supreme Court went beyond criticism." Indeed they have, Obama appears to be moving into a ruthless discontent stage of his presidency -- sort of like a rebellious teenager who tears up the house because he did not get his way. The Sun concluded, " There is a time and place for such criticisms. But certainly it is not while the Supreme Court is deciding whether the president's signature piece of legislation is constitutional. Furthermore, since the Supreme Court has not yet issued its opinion, what is there to criticize? Is the president privy to a leak of the court's action in its secret session following oral arguments, and he is trying to change that vote?"
Speaking in Lexington, Kentucky, on Thursday, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell took a dim view of the president’s complaints about the Court. "[A]pparently,” he said, “President Obama didn’t like the tenor of some of the questions the justices asked about the health care law during last week’s hearings, questions that highlighted the unprecedented power that the administration now has over your and everybody else’s health care as a result of its passage . . . The truth is, if this law’s in trouble, it’s because giving the government this much power is hard to defend, not because a few justices had the temerity to suggest as much. But the President seems to be saying that you’re an activist if you’re not stretching the limits of the limited powers the Constitution gives to the federal government."
In a post on its fact-checking blog today, The Washington Post examines the arguments Obama made and finds them particularly misleading. The piece points out, "It’s clear that Obama’s ‘unprecedented’ comment was dead wrong, because the Supreme Court’s very purpose is to review laws that are passed by the nation’s democratically elected Congress — regardless of how popular or well-intentioned those laws may be." Further, "Congress didn’t pass the Affordable Care Act with a strong majority. The vote in the House of Representatives, for instance, was 219 to 212, with no Republicans supporting and 34 Democrats opposing the measure." Also, The Post adds, "It’s worth noting that the White House keeps changing its tune on how the public should interpret Obama’s comments. On Friday, a spokesman told us the president was referring to ‘major economic legislation.’ So now we’ve gone from altogether ‘unprecedented,’ to ‘economic issues’ to just ‘major economic legislation.’"
After discussing some of the Supreme Court precedent and legal history, the fact-checking article concludes, "First of all, the president has a rather distorted view of what constitutes a ‘strong majority’ if he thinks the Affordable Care Act vote makes the cut. Not only was the victory achieved by a margin of just a few votes in the House, but the supporters were from only one political party—his own. Second, Obama’s remarks implied that the Supreme Court would be acting in extreme fashion by overturning the health-care law. That isn’t necessarily true. Some would say that invalidating an economic regulation isn’t extraordinary at all. . . . On balance, the president earns two Pinocchios—which means creating ‘a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people’—for his comments about the pending Supreme Court decision."
Forbes has an editorial by Richard M. Salsman addressing "Why Progressives Like President Obama Loathe Judicial Review. Salsman rightly states,Mr. Obama violated the traditional precedent that the executive branch declines to comment on cases that have yet to be decided by the judiciary. But courtesy and circumspection are not Obama’s way. His way is the Chicago Way – bluster and intimidation. Having already spent nearly three years blathering on about the alleged virtues of his takeover of America’s health care system, Obama couldn’t hold his tongue for a single day after hearing a skeptical SCOTUS take oral arguments."
Salsman's article is worth the read and is too long to begin to summarize. But one morsel from his editorial evidences Salsman's willingness to level criticism even beyond Obama. Enjoyed seeing him shine the light on hypocrisy. To quote, "By butting in on SCOTUS’s deliberations this week, and pre-judging the case, Mr. Obama warned (threatened?) the court that it would engage in ”judicial activism” if it were to reject Obama-Care; as such, he sided with conservative judge-bashers like Gingrich: “I remind conservative commentators that for years [they’ve complained about] judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said. Did you notice his smuggled criticism? Judges, he said are “an unelected group of people.” True enough. But importantly, for a Jeffersonian-progressive like Obama (and Gingrich), that means judges are less than legitimate. Of course, hypocritical statists like Obama don’t bother to level this same criticism against the vast hordes who run the regulatory state, the millions of “unelected” bureaucrats in the sixteen U.S. cabinet departments and the scores of special regulatory agencies in the executive branch who write and impose billions of rules and fines while also acting as judges, juries and executioners, in violation of the separation of powers doctrine. Limits on state power and respect for rights is not the priority here, is it?"
Tags: Barack Obama, criticism, SCOTUS, Supreme Course, criticism of remarks To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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