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Sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds half an acorn
Sometimes it’s Dana Milkbag Milbank, sometimes it’s Ezra Klein.
We’re speaking, of course, of the random acts of accurate observation sometimes occurring in reliably liberal writers. In this case, Klein has seen the train wreck—and the bogusness of—Barack Obamacare:
During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama relied on a standard applause line, a promise that his health-care plan would “lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” Cue cheers — or jeers if you were a health-policy expert. For them, his vow was ridiculous. There was no time frame attached to the promise. There was no plan for realizing it. It was change no one quite believed in.
Shockingly, Klein says candidate Obama’s promises on healthcare were lies optimistic oversimplifications.
Although we applaud Klein for finding an acorn, we can’t help but wonder how he would characterize the issue had it been James Clapper who had offered the misrepresentation instead of the President.
And sadly, almost as soon as Klein has found an acorn of truth, it slips from his grasp into the fermented funk of predictable liberalism: that is, Klein—and America—needs Congress to do something for some reason to someone regarding something else stat:
[There should now be] an explosion of efforts in Congress to capitalize on this moment. We should be pushing further and faster to reform the health-care system, even as we argue about the expansion of health insurance under Obamacare. Instead, Congress is wasting the moment, doing an even worse job addressing the subject of health costs than Obama did in 2008.
Klein’s pleading is forced to ignore the fact it was the then-Democrat Congress—who had to pass it before they could read it—along with the President, who gave us the failed government leviathan called Barack Obamacare.
Ezra, next time try quitting when you’re ahead. Half a column—even a paragraph—that’s reasonable, accurate, and understandable is far better than a longer one that isn’t.
Obamacare’s one person death panel
From the Washington Examiner comes word of Barack Obamacare’s one person death panel:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rebuffed an appeal from Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., on behalf of a girl who needs a lung transplant but can’t get one because of a federal regulation that prevents her from qualifying for a transplant.
What’s the problem the death panel has with this case? It violates a rule.
She [Sarah Murnaghan, a 10-year-old who needs a lung transplant] can’t qualify for an adult lung transplant until the age of 12, according to federal regulations, but Sebelius has the authority to waive that rule on her behalf. The pediatric lungs for which she qualifies aren’t available.
Although the left mocked Sarah Palin for calling out the death panel provisions of Barack Obamacare, they mocked her because of who she was, not because she was wrong. Meanwhile, the other Sarah in this story has three to five weeks to live.
Speaking out of both sides on everything
President Obama likes things both ways: spilling national secrets when it benefits his re-election campaign while persecuting whistle-blowers when it doesn’t; badmouthing the Bush Administration for Gitmo while failing to close it himself; bashing enhanced interrogations while using death-by-drone; saying that big government is the way of truth and light while offering non-culpability on myriad big government scandals.
Another area where the President wants it both ways is as it regards Wall Street fat cats, who are said to be a great cause of America’s evils. And yet, the Obama Administration in enabling the very fat cats is so loathes:
White House records show that Elizabeth Fowler, then a top health-policy adviser to President Obama, met with executives from half a dozen investment firms in 2011 and 2012.
… Separately, an official in the agency that oversees Medicare and Medicaid spoke in December with managers of hedge funds, pension plans and mutual funds in a conference call.
Why is such information provided by the Administration to these seekers of insider truth? One guess.
Hedge fund executives and other investors are increasingly interested in the timing and nature of health-policy decisions in Washington because they directly affect the profits and stock prices of pharmaceutical, insurance, hospital and managed-care companies.
How can we tell the Administration is lying? 1) Their lips are moving and 2) their bank accounts are growing.
Fowler described her sessions with investors as innocuous, discussions of public information of the sort that would be supplied to any group that asked for it. “As a general principle, I met with anyone who requested a meeting,” said Fowler, who went to work for the Washington office of pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson six months ago.
Right. With anyone who requested a meeting. That’s right up there with “The President would never behave in a political manner.” All this as we watch the Administration’s revolving door continue to spin.
Most transparent Administration ever.
Not.
In Obamaland, the fish rots from the tail
“The buck stops there,” is the underlying message President Obama’s myriad mouthpieces are pushing. Or translated into Biden-speak, “Yes, he don’t.”
The HHS fundraising scandal? An underling who didn’t first seek permission to shakedown industry.
Benghazi? Well, maybe mistakes were made… but not at the White House.
Tapping the AP’s phone lines? You’ll have to talk to Justice about that.
The IRS targeting conservative groups? An isolated event involving only a few people.
In Obamaland, with the President’s policy goal of all government all the time, the fish rots from the tail and not the head.
The study that explains Obamacare’s genesis
Fortune has a piece which explains the genesis of Obamacare: stupidity.
Stupidity can increase efficiency, claims Mats Alvesson, professor of organization studies at Lund University in Sweden. In a Journal of Management Studies article titled “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organisations” Alvesson and colleague André Spicer explain how what they call “functional stupidity” generally helped get things done. “Critical reflection and shrewdness” were net positives, but when too many clever individuals in an organization raised their hands to suggest alternative courses of action or to ask “disquieting questions about decisions and structures,” work slowed.
The study’s authors found that stupidity, on the other hand, seemed to have a unifying effect. It boosted productivity. People content in an atmosphere of functional stupidity came to consensus more easily, and with that consensus came greater roll-up-our-sleeves enthusiasm for concentrating on the job.
As Nancy Pelosi infamously explained, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it.”
So what America saw in the Democrat rush to Obamacare was a display of functional stupidity and its unifying effect on the left. Like lemmings.
While stupidity may be useful on occasion, when it profoundly impacts one-sixth the U.S. economy, it’s dangerous. So with Obamacare, it seems we had a grouping of idiots with initiative, the worst of all possible situations, followed by a predictable outcome.
Save money on your Obamacare premiums!
Should the Supremes rule that marriage is not limited to the centuries-long natural marriage model that’s stood the test of time—until now—how about these to save some money on your Obamacare charges: consider lawsuits to allow for polygamy, multi man-woman-child “marriages,” or even to have entire multiple families “marry” one another?
With such lawsuits—if upheld—one member of the “marriage” could pay the “family rate” for the Obamacare premiums and everyone else could ride free as a “wife, husband, or partner” of some sort.
Why, extend the thought, ad infinitum: whole towns could “marry” one another, or even states, or even all Americans. Think of the possibilities, with all Americans—or even the whole world!—united to one another in holy matrimony! Exciting!
(To say nothing of the incredible economies of scale we’d no doubt see with nearly free world-wide healthcare! Such a program would likely save the global economy, disprove the “free lunch” theory, and debunk the bogus claims of anti-Keynesians once and for all! Exciting!)
“But that’s all absurd,” you say. Perhaps, but as long as foundational terms are being redefined, why stop with same-sex “marriage”? Why not a rabbit and a man (as pictured above)? Why not a man and a man and a pig (and ponder the predictive power of Deliverance)? Or an entire women’s softball team? After all, where is the love, or where is the love (Seventies version), or even if loving you (all) is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
“But it’s against the law,” you say. “There are laws, conventions. It’s just not been done.”
Good point. As was sodomy once upon a time.
Another lefty writer made ill by Democrat’s hypocrisy
I’m shocked, shocked!
Now that the election is safely behind them, the left feels it is safe to bravely critique the President and his fellow travelers. Not on anything as substantive as the Benghazi debacle or Fast and Furious, but on other more tangential items like crony politics and the Democrat’s ever revolving government-industry door.
Before the election the lefty writers were all-in for Barry and anything associated with a parenthetical D. But now that Mitt Romney has been vanquished, some libs are starting to see that Obamaworld ain’t all it’s cracked up to be (or maybe they’re just exercising some sort of pent up frustration/concern that Dear Reader’s leadership may be poisoning the well for 2014 and 2016, when it’ll finally be Hillary’s turn).
From The Guardian:
It’s difficult to find someone who embodies the sleazy, anti-democratic, corporatist revolving door that greases Washington as shamelessly and purely as Liz Fowler.
Who is Liz Fowler?
When the legislation that became known as “Obamacare” was first drafted, the key legislator was the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, whose committee took the lead in drafting the legislation. As Baucus himself repeatedly boasted, the architect of that legislation was Elizabeth Folwer, his chief health policy counsel; indeed, as Marcy Wheeler discovered, it was Fowler who actually drafted it. As Politico put it at the time: “If you drew an organizational chart of major players in the Senate health care negotiations, Fowler would be the chief operating officer.”
What was most amazing about all of that was that, before joining Baucus’ office as the point person for the health care bill, Fowler was the Vice President for Public Policy and External Affairs (i.e. informal lobbying) at WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance provider (before going to WellPoint, as well as after, Folwer had worked as Baucus’ top health care aide). And when that health care bill was drafted, the person whom Fowler replaced as chief health counsel in Baucus’ office, Michelle Easton, was lobbying for WellPoint as a principal at Tarplin, Downs, and Young.
I live in Montana where the phrase is something like this: “That’s Max (D, MT) being Max.” And having participated in the sausage being made, I’d be surprised if WellPoint didn’t draft Obamacare on behalf of the Finance Committee and provide it to Fowler, gratis. Then Fowler sticks a cover sheet on it with Baucus’ name prominently on the cover and bam, you got your draft legislation.
The Administration’s well-practiced crony capitalism is just as unsustainable as the debt-bomb it’s building and refuses to help dismantle. Things that can’t continue forever won’t.
Two Johns walk into a bar…
What’s the difference between John Roberts and John Kerry?
Roberts was against Obamacare before he was for it; Kerry voted for the bill before he voted against it.
While I hold out no hope for Kerry, I still hold out hope for Roberts—a mind is a terrible thing to waste.
The good news of Obamacare
I read the news today, oh boy.
The good news of Obamacare? In the long run, we’re still all dead.
The bad news of Obamacare? For most the long run will be shorter, have more suffering, and will be at a greater cost.
Other than that, it’s all seashells and bubbles.
The iron logic of John Roberts
Let’s see:
- John Roberts feels the need to preserve the credibility of the Supreme Court.
- As a result of this perceived need, he makes a mockery of the Constitution and is forced to redefine Obamacare.
- In making a mockery of the Constitution and redefining Obamacare, he further damages the credibility of the Supreme Court.
Did you think this one all the way through, John?
Obama lies, Americans die
If it’s free, it’s for me
It seems we are currently governed by those who feel there really is a free lunch. That is, they fail to grasp the simple fact that, at the end of the day, someone has to pay. Yes, lunch may be free for me, but ultimately, someone is paying. Something that can’t be continued forever—like a Ponzi scheme—won’t.
With that past as prologue set-up, what are the Administration lies regarding Obamacare? Let us count the ways.
Lie number one: it’s not a tax. Reality: it is a tax. That’s why the IRS is hiring and why across ten years, Obamacare will cost Americans an extra $400 billion dollars. And by the time the dust settles (and since Obamacare is backloaded), chances are the tax will be far higher than a mere $400B; the government—and those that are paid by the government—are generally terrible at cost estimating. See space shuttle, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and California for examples.
Lie number two: you can keep your old plan. Reality: it depends how you define old plan. Regardless, expect your old plan to be worsened in terms of care provided and know that it will cost more. Perhaps the SCOTUS will rule you can keep your old plan—even if it’s substantively changed—thereby making it so (see doublespeak).
Lie number three: nothing is going to change. Reality: costs, and therefore, care provided per dollar will worsen. As Jim Powell at Forbes reports, “Starting in 2013, there will be an Obamacare tax on medical devices such as intra-uterine devices, artificial hips, heart pacemakers, breast implants, coronary stents, ear tubes, traumatic fracture repair devices and artificial eye lenses for people with severe cataract problems.” The rule of thumb (all else being equal) is tax something and people will buy less of it.
Lie number four: it’s an issue of fairness. Reality: 75% of the added costs will be borne by Americans making less than $120,000 per year.
The result? Unless the leviathan called Obamacare is rolled-back, the American people, writ large, will experience increased suffering and will live less full lives. And most will pay more to do so.
Obamacare: from the Administration that brought you hits like Fast & Furious, Solyndra, Nuclear Iran, Government Motors and Spiderman 3 the Musical (just kidding—I think—on the last one).
Obamacare: the umpire strikes out
While John Roberts may be playing chess while the rest of the world is playing checkers—or something like that—it’s a darn poor strategy when the game everyone else is playing is checkers.
Basically, playing chess while the rest of the world plays checkers makes Roberts no different than an ordinary, garden-variety out-of-touch liberal.
There is much weird post-Obamacare irony as the many columns are parsed through this day including this:
- You can still opt out of Obamacare. Just pay the fee. Or penalty as the Administration describes it. Or tax, as John Roberts would call it. Except it isn’t a tax because income has not been generated, nor has a transaction occurred.
- But if you believe this is a tax, congratulations on your self-delusion. And then congratulate the President for one of the biggest tax increases of all time.
- There will be an estimated 21 million uninsured following full implementation of Obamacare.
- The media and political whining from the left seems to have paid off. Roberts caved and had to tie himself in ethical and intellectual knots to do so. The lesson: pressure works with great regularity. For exceptions, start with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Those who say the Obamacare court decision will drive us back to elections regarding governance issues seem to forget that the House, Senate, and Executive Branch were all performing their electoral function, even as it was highly detached from the will of the people.
What explains the Roberts Obamacare decision?
Yes, just what does explain the Roberts Obamacare decision?
While the effect of his epilepsy meds have been hypothesized, a far simpler explanation would be that Roberts was worried about his legacy and caved to the pressure.
“I think he [Roberts] was determined to try to uphold some key parts of the law, if he could find a way, partly because…he has grown concerned about the public perception that his Court is a partisan-driven Court.”
He has grown concerned about the public perception is disconcerting. After all is the law king or is public perception king? Still, without public support, regardless of our founding documents—think prohibition—can any law possibly fulfill its intended purpose?
Some think the Court’s decision bodes well for conservative causes (and actually, Obamacare will not survive, regardless; based on higher costs and worsening healthcare outcomes, socialized medicine Obamacare is certain to be an epic, if slow-motion, fail).
Conservatives understand the patience requisite for the politics of democracy — the politics of persuasion. Elections matter most; only they can end Obamacare. But in Roberts’s decision, conservatives can see that the court has been persuaded to think more as they do about the constitutional language that has most enabled the promiscuous expansion of government.
For today, finding a conservative “silver-lining” in the Court’s rulings seems a bit like digging through the manure pile with the knowledge a pony has to be in there somewhere.
The mandate revised?
(A silver lining? Or is it a lead-based paint lining?)
If the mandate is really just a tax, is this true?
Lurking in the background is a way to decide the case on tax law grounds. No one can be prosecuted, punished or fined for violating the mandate. In fact, the word “mandate” does not appear in the law. In “practical operation,” the administration argued, it’s just a tax law.
If the mandate is really just a tax, that would be supported by the Constitution, which says Congress “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes … to provide for the common defense and general welfare.”
So, in the end, the justices could agree the law’s required tax payments are constitutional, while also making clear the government does not have broad power to mandate purchases.
If true, this would all make Obamacare turn on what in practical operation means.
Could such a tax be overturned—or reduced to the point of insignificance—by a simple Congressional majority?
And generally, don’t you have to have a transaction to have a tax (taxes on held property perhaps being the exception)? How can the government tax income, death, sales, capital gains, or dividends if there are none?
Or does Obamacare now allow the government to squeeze blood from a turnip?
Finally, in plain the language of the Beltway, is this a simple case of if it ain’t funded, it ain’t? (Sorry for all the questions.)
In practice I doubt the above arguments/questions will carry the anti-Obamacare mandate tax day. Unless intervened on by reality, the government only ratchets in one direction: more.
Are you ready for the broccoli mandate?
What kind of laws are being written when so many Supreme Court rulings are determined 5-4? Laws that are controversial, poorly structured, and don’t clearly possess fundamentally correct (Constitutional and Bill of Rights) strategies as their intellectual foundation.
The result today? The Supremes ignored the Administration’s own words and ruled that Obamacare’s individual mandate is a tax and not a mandate. Between the commerce clause, the ability to seize property, and the ability to tax, what are the limits to governmental power? Only the courts, which seem predisposed to roll over, ignore, or even expand government authority via their awesome judicial wisdom.
This means (albeit by a 5-4 vote; hopefully Justice Roberts will soon enough find his mind which has perhaps been misplaced and not lost) there’s really almost nothing the government can’t make you do (or not do). And it means the Ponzi game of government transfer programs continues unabated.
Get ready for the broccoli mandate tax (thou shall eat the broccoli or face the penalty of tax…).
And get ready for the economic “recovery”—weak as it was—to pull back into its shell.
The New Republic’s Badge of Honor
When the foot soldiers of the left, including those at The New Republic, attempt to smear conservative judges, they laughably use the phrase judicial activism. While the issue at hand is largely Obamacare, more fundamentally, it’s this: what can’t the government make you do?
President Obama understands these constitutional stakes. In a press conference following the health care reform oral arguments, he reminded conservative commentators “that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint—that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”
TNR conveniently ignores the fact the President was universally mocked for his constitutional cluelessness following that statement (along with others such as the “unprecedented” issue of judicial review).
I know the President’s records are sealed, but did he really pass the bar? Not even in the hothouse of the faculty lounge (where Barry Oh! developed his intellectual chops) is such foolishness asserted.
The reality is judicial de-activism, rolling back bogus legislation, is the opposite of judicial activism which is the creation of new “rights” and entitlements.
So it is with great hilarity that TNR asserts this:
This, then, is John Roberts’s moment of truth: In addition to deciding what kind of chief justice he wants to be, he has to decide what kind of legal conservatism he wants to embrace. Of course, if the Roberts Court strikes down health care reform by a 5-4 vote, then the chief justice’s stated goal of presiding over a less divisive Court will be viewed as an irredeemable failure. But, by voting to strike down Obamacare, Roberts would also be abandoning the association of legal conservatism with restraint—and resurrecting the pre–New Deal era of economic judicial activism with a vengeance.
So not only does TNR have the issue of judicial activism backwards, they also fail to consider the importance of judicial review to the Constitution and American life, and they finally offer less decisive has greater importance than law itself.
Rodney King wondered why we all can’t get along. The answer is this: going along with idiocy is always a bad strategy.
(Awesome image via The People’s Cube.)
Why I Hate the Supreme Court: the Secret Thoughts of Maureen Dowd
The deepest, darkest, innermost secret thoughts of intrepid columnist and aging snark-queen Maureen Dowd.
Why did President Obama dare to bash and threaten the Supreme Court?
Has our former community organizer, argument for affirmative action, and constitutional law instructor no respect for our venerable system of checks and balances?
Nah. He’s ignorant. We all know that. We’ve known it for years. And we don’t care. What we do care about is his politics.
So the big issue is not how the President managed to pass the bar—assuming he did; after all, all the records are still sealed—but rather, regardless of his ignorance, why shouldn’t he bash the court? What have they done for him, hmm?
This despicable and conservative court is hermetically sealed in judicial la-la land, protected by their white pillars and layers of homeland security. From this sealed location, where too few in the liberal media know what they really do, why they do it, or how to influence them, they are well on their way to becoming the most divisive court in history. How so? Duh: they’re going to roll-back Obamacare.
While I long ago squandered even the semi-illusion that I am an unbiased, objective journalist, the Supreme Court is supposed to be the honest guardian of the Constitution. Instead, it’s run by law thugs dressed in black robes (and if Robert Byrd were still alive and were a member of the court, I’ll grant there would also be one white robe).
But all the fancy-pants diplomas and supposed credentials of the conservative majority cannot disguise the fact that its reasoning on the most important decisions affecting Americans seems shaped more by a political handbook than a legal brief.
Still, Barry should never have waded into the health care thicket back when the economy was teetering. Instead, his failure to bother explaining the plan was both bizarre and self-destructive, but that’s all water over the dam now. And certainly he needs a more persuasive legal case. But the Administration’s idiocy still doesn’t exempt the court, which is the burr in my thong.
It was stunning to hear Justice Scalia talking like a Senate whipper-snapper during oral arguments last week on the constitutionality of the health care law (I guess ignore my earlier comment that the court is hermetically sealed). And, sounding like a Republican opposition-research brown shirt, he dropped politically charged terms like “Cornhusker Kickback,” referring to a sweetheart deal that was only a part of the run-up to the law. Doesn’t anyone understand only the President is allowed to use politically charged terms? (Ezra Klein even told me it’s in the oath of office.)
If Scalia is so brilliant, why is he drawing a parallel between buying health care and buying broccoli? Couldn’t he make a sophisticated point about a cable TV monosopy or monopoly or whatever it is?
The justices want to be above it all, beyond reproach or criticism. But why should they be when it too many of them were appointed by conservative drek?
And I’m still smarting from 2000, when the court’s Republican majority ignored the will of the people and instead ruled with the law. The result? We missed out on having President Gore—even if he is a sex poodle—and instead had to suffer from the George W. Bush induced Hurricane Katrina and all that other stuff as well. You know: war, the economy, massive unemployment and all that.
Regarding the 2000 election case, Anthony Lewis, a man I’m willing to quote when he helps my cause, wrote, “Not making Gore president, with such disregard for the media, invites us to treat the court’s aura of reason as an illusion.”
The 2010 House takeover by Republicans—voters are such idiots unless they vote Democrat—have shown what a fiasco the Citizens United decision is, with self-interested sugar daddies and wealthy cronies overwhelming the traditional Democrat process of vote early and vote often. The only ones who really should have a voice are the media, with our own self-interested (and enlightened) sugar daddies and our own wealthy (and enlightened) cronies. Otherwise, it’s too close to being fair.
On Monday, the court astoundingly ruled — 5 Republican appointees to 4 Democratic appointees — to give police carte blanche on strip-searches, even for minor offenses such as sexual assault by a former president from Arkansas (you know who you are), driving while blind, or violating federal anti-bazooka laws. Justice Stephen Breyer’s ice cream warning that wholesale strip-searches were “a serious downer for former presidents from Arkansas” fell on deaf ears. So much for the conservatives’ obsession with their so-called “liberty.” (Yes, those are sneer quotes.)
The Supreme Court mirrors the setup on Fox News: yes, there are liberals who make arguments, but they appear to be complete idiots, incapable of making sense, failing to draw on President Obama’s transcripted speeches or DNC talking points, and are far too often relegated to the background.
Just as in Teddy Kennedy’s Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, the liberals on the court focus on what feels good (or bad) and the conservatives focus on the constitution. John Roberts Jr.’s benign beige facade is deceiving; he’s a crimson tide partisan, more cloaked than the ideologically rigid and often venomous Scalia (who reminds me of the Emperor in Star Wars).
Just as Scalia voted to bypass that little thing called the media’s mob power and crown W. president, so he expressed phooey-ennui at the idea that, even if parts of the health care law are struck down, some provisions could be saved: “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” he asked, adding: “Are you stupid?”
Well I’ve been accused of being stupid and it hurts.
Inexplicably mute 20 years after he lied his way onto the court, Clarence Thomas, a black man I despise, proving I’m not ideologically rigid, didn’t ask a single question during oral arguments for one of the biggest cases in the court’s history. The fact he could sit there and listen is simply beyond my credulity.
When the Supreme Court building across from the Capitol opened in 1935, the architect, Cass Gilbert, played up the pomp, wanting to reflect the court’s role as the national ideal of justice.
With conservatives on that court trying to block F.D.R., and with Roosevelt prepared to make up his version of the Constitution as he went, the New Yorker columnist Howard Brubaker noted that the new citadel had “fine big windows to throw the New Deal out of.”
Now conservative justices may throw Obama’s hard-won and above-the-law law out of those fine big windows.
Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and the insufferable Samuel Alito were nurtured in the conservative Federalist Society, which asserts that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.” But it isn’t fair to overturn a major law passed by Congress in the middle of an election. The majority’s political motives seem as dark as my own soul and that’s pretty dark.
Finally, if I’ve made my word count, I’m off to lunch. Otherwise, I’ll stick in a paragraph about Dick Cheney.
(If you must, read the original here.)
The Politico and the Court
What would prompt the President to make his ominous warnings regarding the unelected (and by implication, scary) black robes of the Supreme Court (the reliably liberal justices are, of course, excluded)? Some ideas:
1. The President can’t help help himself. Like his previous no-value added comments on Trayvon Martin, Henry Louis Gates and the police, the Sandra Fluke weigh-in, et al, the President’s self-censor too often trails his brain waves.
2. The President was tipped off that the court is leaning towards rejecting part or all of Obamacare and he attempted to get off a preemptive strike on the Supremes to delegitimize them.
3. The President is attempting to influence the court to uphold Obamacare in its totality through his warnings.
4. The President does not understand the Supreme Court is doing its job in reviewing the case.
5. The President does not understand the Court has the authority to overturned unconstitutional legislation.
6. The President does not understand the balance of power arrangement between the branches of government.
No matter the answer, the President’s comments reflect poorly on his judgment, leadership, and discretion.
Yawn: Obama shills for Obamacare
The Obamacare fail light is illuminated steadily and the President is trying to tell us—that is, the Supreme Court—that all is well. From Politico:
In a rare instance of a president weighing in on a high court case in which the ruling has not yet been released, Obama suggested that the high court would be guilty of “judicial activism” if it overturned the law. He also argued that the justices should uphold the individual mandate, saying it’s a key — and constitutional — piece of the law.
A rare instance? Consider that the President is following the hallowed advice of his intellectual mentor, who gave him some advice—actually, a rule—on the issue at hand.
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Although it would be exceedingly poor form, the President didn’t name the names of the Supreme Court justices in question.
Back to Politico:
Overturning the law would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” since it was passed by a majority of members in the House and Senate,” he said. “I just remind conservative commentators that for years we’ve heard that the biggest problem is judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That a group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step.”
In the mind of the President, legislation and judicial decisions are only appropriate if they ratchet in one direction—to the left.
This means the President’s position on judicial activism depends on how the ruling rendered aligns with his worldview. If it aligns with his worldview, he’s down with judicial activism and nothing is said; if it doesn’t, it’s judicial activism (as a pejorative).
The President is sometimes described as a “constitutional scholar” (due to his part-time employment at the University of Chicago), despite a complete absence of evidence, that is, any academic writings, that would form a basis for such an assertion. Describing him as a constitutional scholar is a reflection on our societal trend towards credentialing and away from knowledge.
Obamacare’s reductio ad absurdum
The ruling on Obamacare isn’t even in yet and already the liberal scribblers are reduced to weeping, gnashing of teeth, and denigrating the Supreme Court.
The headline and sub-headline from Robert Schrum says it all:
Will a Tea Party Supreme Court guarantee Obama a second term?
The court’s conservative wing appears ready to engage in some despicable judicial activism on ObamaCare. Politically, at least, the justices are doing Obama a favor
Somebody call the whambulance.
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