http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=1571360
One of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring.
That talent was displayed just this week when he was asked whether he thought the Supreme Court would uphold ObamaCare as constitutional or strike it down as unconstitutional.
He replied: "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."
But how unprecedented would it actually be if the Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional if it was passed by "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress"?
The Supreme Court has been doing precisely that for 209 years!
Nor is it likely that Barack Obama has never heard of it. He has a degree from the Harvard law school and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. In what must be one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history -- Marbury v. Madison in 1803 -- Chief Justice John Marshall established the principle that the Supreme Court can declare acts of Congress null and void if these acts violate the Constitution.
They have been doing so for more than two centuries. It is the foundation of American constitutional law. There is no way that Barack Obama has never heard of it or really believes it to be "unprecedented" after two centuries of countless precedents.
In short, he is simply lying.
Now there are different kinds of liars. If we must have lying Presidents of the United States, I prefer that they be like Richard Nixon. You could just look at him and tell that he was lying.
But Obama is much smoother. On this and on many other issues, you would have to know what the facts are to know that he is lying. He is obviously counting on the fact that, in this era of dumbed-down education, many people have no clue as to what the facts are.
He is also counting on something else -- namely, that the pro-Obama media will not expose his lies.
One of the many ways of lying smoothly is to simply redefine words. Barack Obama is a master at that as well.
In the comment on the case pending before the Supreme Court, President Obama said that he wanted to remind "conservative commentators" that they have complained about "judicial activism" -- which he redefines as the idea that "an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law."
First of all, every law that the Supreme Court has overturned for the past 209 years since Marbury v. Madison was "a duly constituted and passed law."
Second, the "judicial activism" that conservatives have complained about was judges making rulings based on how they felt personally about the issue at hand, rather than about what the Constitution of the United States said.
In recent years, great efforts have been made to redefine "judicial activism" in terms of judges declaring laws unconstitutional, instead of "deferring" to Congress or other government institutions.
But what is the Constitution's Bill of Rights supposed to protect the ordinary citizen from? Government institutions! If judges are to defer to the very institutions that the Bill of Rights tries to protect the citizen from, what is the point of having a Bill of Rights?
As for Supreme Court justices being unelected, that has been true since the Constitution was created. That was done deliberately, so that they could render their judgments without fear of political repercussions. If unelected Supreme Court justices are to automatically defer to elected officials, that again raises the question of why they are there at all.
Why are the taxpayers paying their salaries and housing them in an expensive marble building -- just so that they can go along to get along?
It would be hard to become nostalgic about Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign in disgrace. But at least you could tell when he was lying. Obama's lies are just as big but not as visible, and the media that exposed Nixon is covering for Obama.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 7:25 AM.
There is little I can add to this powerful commentary. Please send this to anyone you know who is capable of comprehending the ramifications of what we face very soon.
April 4, 2012
FDR Redux: Obama Challenges SCOTUS
By Fay Voshell
Who is this president who darkens counsel with ignorant words concerning the balance of power established by the Constitution of the United States?
Monday, by declaring that the "unelected" Supreme Court had better rule in favor of the 2,700-page health care act of 2010, the president of our country revealed not only his hypocrisy, but the extent he will go to in order to preserve the key accomplishment of his administration. He seems fully to intend to intimidate the Court into rubber-stamping the Affordable Care Act of 2010 as constitutional.
First, the hypocrisy.
Who is this man making noise about "unelected" bodies of government?
Isn't this the guy whose unelected 45 czars, innumerable agencies, and other bureaucratic entities have already made Congress a joke and an increasingly paralyzed symbolic rump of its former self? Isn't this the guy whose continual attacks on states like Arizona are making true federalism and state sovereignty a thing of the past? Isn't this the guy who has openly declared he will bypass an elected Congress by means of executive order and unelected entities such as the EPA? Isn't this the man who has just ridiculed the opposition's budget plan as "Social Darwinism," thus once again refusing even to attempt to reach across the aisle to duly elected representatives who happen to be Republicans? Even more importantly, isn't this the president who, by utilization of supra-constitutional entities, has effectively created a substitute government in thrall to the executive branch? Last, isn't this the guy who has shown distaste for the slowness of elected representatives, expressing admiration for and imitating the centrally planned command economy of China?
Yes. That's the same guy.
Now he has the unmitigated gall to target the Supreme Court as an "unelected" body, the members of which were forewarned about any intransigence they might display against the executive branch during his State of the Union speech of 2010. It was at that time President Obama publicly dressed down the sitting judges in front of the entire legislative body, and indeed, the nation, for a ruling he disagreed with. He said:
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the supreme court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections[.] ... I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.
This is not the first time a president of the United States has declared war against the Supreme Court of the United States. Obama is an admirer and imitator of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose own tangles with SCOTUS were legendary. FDR attacked the high Court in his fiery "fireside chats," rebuking the Court for not being in tandem with the executive and legislative branches, explaining to the American public why the court was essentially an excrescence on the body politic because it dared to declare unconstitutional key elements of the Roosevelt agenda in 1935 and 1936. Roosevelt even tried to pack the Supreme Court with justices favorable to his makeover of American society. Impervious to the president's threats, the court still struck down eight pillars of Roosevelt's New Deal.
But that is precisely what the high Court is supposed to do -- namely, strike down unconstitutional legislation. That is one chief reason why the court is an "unelected" body. It was created to stand as an institution that subscribes to the rule of law and to the U.S. Constitution. The members have lifelong tenure in order that the august Court remain the one branch of government which leavens, withstands, and/or tempers the vicissitudes and overreaches of the legislative and executive branches of government. The high court acts as a salutary brake on the nostrums of any one particular administration by subjecting legislation and lower court decisions to tempered and, yes, judicious review of the Constitution.
At this time, the Supreme Court is one of the only effective forces remaining as a deterrent to the unbridled overreach of an overweening executive branch. It is also one of the most respected institutions in the United States. Its rulings still mean something.
President Obama knows the respect in which the court is held, and he has learned from FDR's example. That is why, like FDR, he is seeking to belittle its status by essentially declaring it merely a body of nine unelected officials who are unresponsive to the American people. The prestige of the Court is one reason why the president has gone on the attack from day one and now appears ready to defy the Court's ruling because it is "unelected" and doesn't reflect the will of the people. The battle is now fully enjoined, and a pre-emptive strike has been made.
Now, for perhaps the first time in Obama's administration, the president is looking at potential serious resistance from SCOTUS. The Court might strike down part or all of the president's key legislative victory. In response to that possible eventuality, the president has taken the extraordinary measure of publicly chastising and warning the high Court before it issues its ruling in June of this year. He doubtless is so doing because the justices' questions indicate the unease with which certain members of the court regard the individual mandate as well as other questionable aspects of the law.
For conservatives, the handwriting is on the wall. If the justices cave under the intimidating rebuke of the president and uphold the Affordable Care Act in full or in part, the end of a viable conservative resistance may follow, as the prospect of some 159 controlling, regulation-producing agencies, commissions, and boards governing the most private aspects of our lives essentially would end meaningful representative government and would vitiate the balance of powers as established by our venerable Constitution.
Should Obama be successful in his attempts to intimidate the Supreme Court or attempt to defy a negative ruling on ObamaCare, conservatives face the possibility of being reduced to mere tinkerers on the fringes of a socialist Leviathan that would encompass every aspect of American life.
As I predicted a year ago:
The ultimate battle will be enjoined should the Supreme Court declare Obama Care unconstitutional. When and if the administration chooses to defy the ruling of our most august judicial body, FDR's attempt to pack the court will seem a picayune maneuver compared to what will be an all out assault on the Republic, an assault which could conceivably send it to the graveyard of history.
Conservatives of all stripes, Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike, would do well to heed the warnings emanating from the White House, strongly confront the president, and pray fervently that the Court strikes down at least the individual mandate that is the underpinning of the grotesquerie known as ObamaCare.
Fay Voshell, a frequent contributor to American Thinker, may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.
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