Hot Air rounds up some of the Republican reaction to President Obama’s harsh broadside against the Supreme Court Monday. The gist of that reaction is that the president is attempting to intimidate SCOTUS to influence its decision regarding ObamaCare.
Perhaps of more significance in determining the ultimate impact of the president’s attack, though, liberal WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus also finds herself disturbed by what she saw and heard:
Obama’s assault on “an unelected group of people” stopped me cold. Because, as the former constitutional law professor certainly understands, it is the essence of our governmental system to vest in the court the ultimate power to decide the meaning of the constitution. Even if, as the president said, it means overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”
Of course, acts of Congress are entitled to judicial deference and a presumption of constitutionality. The decision to declare a statute unconstitutional, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1927, is “the gravest and most delicate duty that this court is called on to perform.”
But the president went too far in asserting that it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the court to overturn “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” That’s what courts have done since Marbury v. Madison. The size of the congressional majority is of no constitutional significance. We give the ultimate authority to decide constitutional questions to “a group of unelected people” precisely to insulate them from public opinion.
Marcus is an Obama ally who supports ObamaCare and thinks the individual mandate is dandy. Yet even she found Obama’s behavior a bit creepy. She also called out his dishonesty on a couple of points. The president cited ObamaCare’s “strong majority” when it passed, but Marcus highlights the fact that that is constitutionally meaningless. She notes that the courts have overturned laws passed by congressional majorities since Marbury vs Madison, so what the president called “unprecedented” is very precedented, since shortly after the republic’s founding. She didn’t note that even the “strong majority” itself didn’t exist: ObamaCare barely passed at all, by just a few votes, on pure partisan lines. Barack Obama evidently believes that he is entitled to reject reality and substitute his own.
Marcus would do well to note this. The president’s attack is part of a concerted Democrat campaign to browbeat the court to do their party’s bidding.
Democrats have waged a not-so-subtle pressure campaign on the Supreme Court in recent days by warning a ruling against the healthcare reform law would smash precedent and threaten popular social programs.
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Senior Democratic lawmakers have warned the court would upend the legal precedent that gives Congress the power to provide for the nation’s general welfare if it rules that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause does not allow for the mandate to have insurance.
“If they were to throw out the healthcare law, things like Medicare, Social Security, food-safety laws could be in jeopardy on the very same grounds,” Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking Senate Democratic leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “It would be a dramatic, 180-degree turn of the tradition of the Commerce Clause.”
Via Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it can be argued that the president has already effectively subsumed the Senate. It does nothing without his say-so. Via his czar appointments, he has circumvented the Senate’s advise and consent role on a scale no previous president has done. By short-circuiting the federal budgeting process, he has taken away one of the prime powers invested in the US House. He has used the power of the federal bureaucracy to assert sweeping policy not passed or signed into law, powers that put the federal government more and more in control of the private sector. ObamaCare is a similar partisan assertion of raw power, and he seems to be daring the court to throw ObamaCare out. The president is leading the band that seeks to delegitimize the US Supreme Court. His is the behavior of a dictator on the march.
OBEY ME!
My kingdom come, my will be done.
A dictator. Indeed.
Not that it matters, but it wasn’t passed by a “strong majority”; it was a squeaker, without a single Republican vote. He lies even when he says things that are irrelevant.
“If they were to throw out the healthcare law, things like Medicare, Social Security, food-safety laws could be in jeopardy on the very same grounds,” Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.),
You say that like it’s a bad thing Chuck.
Yes, we just can’t wait to challenge those evil food safety laws. It’s clearly unconstitutional to deny American citizens access to tainted meat and carcinogens.
Bad form to insult the court as unelected power brokers who need to be slapped down just before they decide to approve your legacy or to toss it in the rag bin. Flattery or bite the hand. One makes more sense after the decision is rendered. One doesn’t. And vice versa. You do the math.
Obama’s ranking as an intellectual giant takes, for me, another big step down.
God help us all, Bryan, to survive this horrible regime and throw this administration out of office before it and he does irreparable damage to our country and its three branches of government with its checks and balances.
Good piece!
After The One and Hillary’s performance re the Honduran Supreme Court in their contretemps’ with their president, who was insisting that his term in office being over in no way required him to actually give up said office, the only surprising thing about this is that anybody is surprised. This President does not recognize any limit on the power of a chief executive he defines as being a “good guy”, which basically means anyone as steeped in socialist dogma as he is personally.
If the decision goes against the President, as seems likely, I expect him to sign an Executive Order overriding the Court’s decision and ordering ObamaCare, in all its provisions, to be enforced, probably by HHS. Never mind that it would be illegal to do so; see above.
When the Supreme Court finds him to be in contempt, expect him to order the Court to be arrested by U.S. Marshals. And be very surprised when they refuse to obey an order that violates their oath.
From there I expect things to go downhill rather quickly.
clear ether
eon
“If they were to throw out the healthcare law, things like Medicare, Social Security, food-safety laws could be in jeopardy on the very same grounds,” Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking Senate Democratic leader, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “It would be a dramatic, 180-degree turn of the tradition of the Commerce Clause.”
…reversing an equally dramatic, 180-degree turn of the tradition of the Commmerce Clause erroneously made in 1942. 70 years of such social experimentation is more than long enough to see what a dangerous failure it can become.
“The president cited ObamaCare’s ‘strong majority’ when it passed…”
It was so strong they had to have Cornhusker Kickbacks and Lousiana Purchases in the senate and put off the vote into the middle of the night so Botox Pelosi could buy off clowns like Bart “Can’t Fix” Stupak. And they still had to “deem and pass”…
Seriously, is Obama more delusional than mendacious or vice versa?
Scare tactics.
The fact that Vanilli could not cite any existing programs as precedent for forcing Americans to enter a market against their will, proves that these prior programs were not precedents for ObamaCare; and hence overturning ObamaCare won’t overturn these prior programs.
But you know how the Dems are. Whenever anybody disagrees with them, they start accusing that person of trying to throw grandmas off of cliffs.
I understand that over at the Daily Beast they are calling for impeachment of the five conservative justices if they overturn. I enthusiastically support this idea.
If Mitt Romney wins, that is….it would refresh the battery for the next thirty years…