Clipping blog |
- Our President Shows Off His Scholarity with Much Unintentional Hilarity
- The Delivery Presents – A Show Where I Show Off My Improv Skills.
- Wow, That’s Some Expensive Health Care
| Our President Shows Off His Scholarity with Much Unintentional Hilarity Posted: 03 Apr 2012 05:30 AM PDT
I want to give you his full answer as recorded by Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times. It’s long, so I’ll jump in once in a while with a little commentary of my own just to break the seemingly endless stream of Constitutional scholarity.
Oh, so if some legal experts agree with you, and a couple of them happen to be members of a party not your own (even if one of them voted for you and you named the other one Ambassador to Malta), your law is constitutional? We don’t need to consult the actual Constitution or anything else written on the subject by the guys who wrote the Constitution? Well, that does make things handy. The converse, of course, would mean that if we conservatives could find a couple left-wing legal experts who believed Roe v. Wade was wrongly-decided, then we could get it overturned. Do you think the President really wants that to be the standard? No. Neither do I. The bigger problem with his opinion is that he’s not really offering a learned legal opinion as befits a former Harvard Law Review President and constitutional scholar. His answer, basically, boils down to “It’s constitutional, because shut up, that’s why”. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that ipse dixit would get you laughed out of every courtroom on the planet.
Pardon my cruel conservative heart here, but so what? Not everything that is good is constitutional. I’m sure we’d all be better off if police could simply yank people off the street and search them for open warrants, drugs, or weapons. They can’t. You could make one whale of a case that America would be much improved if you outlawed pornography or Nicki Minaj albums. That’s a no-no, too. See, here’s the thing about the Constitution that the President does not understand. Our Founders were far less concerned about forcing people into subjection to bring about some nebulous “greater good” than they were in making darned sure the government didn’t drag the rights of the individual into an alley and curb-stomp them to death. The President’s litany of good things Obamacare had allegedly brought (and don’t for a second believe it didn’t bring a truck-load of bad things as well) doesn’t matter where the Constitution is concerned. When the First Amendment, for example, says “Congress shall make no law…”, there is no parenthetical exception that says “…unless it’s for a really good reason, in which case Congress can make any law it wants”.
That thing he said about the mechanism? It’s a flat-out lie. There are several ways to get less expensive health care for a miniscule percentage of people that don’t involve our government dragooning millions of people into a health insurance system in which they do not want to participate. As I wrote last week, the Democrats and Barack Obama did everything in their power to make sure we didn’t hear about those reasons. He’s doing the very same thing here. This is a version of his “some say [crazy impossible thing that no one could ever say] but I say [crazy left-wing twaddle that doesn't sound quite so crazy when compared to the previous crazy thing]” rhetorical device that he’s used in approximately every single speech he’s given for the past three years. It was fallacious the first time he did it and it’s fallacious now.
Ooo! Okay, here’s a game I know how to play! Let’s see if I do as well as the President. “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law in the case of Marbury v. Madison that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.” Wait. Maybe I can do better than that. “I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, namely the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, it’s constitutional. “Ultimately, I’m 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.” How’d I do? Did I sound just like President Obama there? Again, I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m absolutely sure that it would be neither unprecedented nor extraordinary for the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare. In fact, from 1981 to 2005, the SCOTUS has overturned 53 Federal statutes. I may have mentioned this before, but I’m no constitutional scholar. I strongly suspect, though, that the fact that the SCOTUS has overturned laws in the past means there is a rather ordinary precedent for it to do so again.
Isn’t it funny that the President decried “judicial activism” yesterday when just five years ago, he clamored for that very “activism” in the partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Carhart? I’ll note here that the law he wanted overturned back then passed both houses of Congress with 2/3 majorities, which I”m pretty sure qualifies it as “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress”. In fact, that law passed with far larger majorities than did Obamacare. After this answer, the President took a follow-up question. His answer is basically a reprise of the very beginning of his original answer, but it’s more clear and, if the GOP has any sense at all, should be in a campaign commercial tomorrow.
Behold, the mighty reasoning power of a constitutional scholar! The SCOTUS should uphold the law because it should uphold the law. How can you possibly argue with that? Well, you can’t, for the same reason you can’t argue with a child who believes that smearing poo on a wall is the height of artistic expression. There is no arguing with a mind slammed shut and bolted tight against reason. You know, I’m actually glad I’m not a constitutional scholar. If Barack Obama is the gold standard for that profession, the standards can’t be all that high.  |
| The Delivery Presents – A Show Where I Show Off My Improv Skills. Posted: 02 Apr 2012 01:49 PM PDT
Don’t be in a hurry to get to the second half, though. Teri Christoph, who you will know if you are a regular listener (and why aren’t you??), joined me for the first half to talk about her newest venture ShePAC and the “War on Women”. She and her cohorts have begun a brilliant work to push back against the talking point that conservatives hate women and progressives are their stalwart defenders by pointing out the noxious and vicious attacks on conservative women by giants of the Democratic Party. Their first exhibit is Bill Maher, who just dumped a million dollars into the President’s re-election coffers. So take a listen, tell your friends, and sound off on iTunes (please!!).  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Wow, That’s Some Expensive Health Care Posted: 02 Apr 2012 10:48 AM PDT Well smack my bottom and call me Shecky! Obamacare is actually going to drive prices higher instead of lower. Who could possibly have guessed? Note here who is going to absorb the lion’s share of the cost hikes. In a world where market forces helped set the cost of your health insurance, individual cost would be lower because individuals would be the consumers. In Obamacare, as in the system we have now, individuals — that’s you, by the way — are costs. Your health insurance company will only need to deal with you when they’re paying money out on your behalf. You will still have no power to decide what you will and will not pay for your care nor with whom you do business. You will get a government-mandated policy with a government-mandated cost that provides government-mandated (or government-permitted) care. And you will have no say in any of that. You will get what the bureaucracy gives you and pay what it tells you to pay because that’s what government-run health care does.
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