By Bruce Bialosky
4/16/2012
I watched – several times – President Obama’s absurd statement on the Supreme Court’s obligation to endorse his humongous health care bill. He proved yet again that he is grossly arrogant, utterly ignorant, a shameless liar, or perhaps all three. It is now abundantly clear that this man deserves the re-election vote of virtually no American.
By now, you know that the President claimed that if the Supreme Court were to overturn the misnamed Affordable Care Act, it would be historically unique. You’re also quite aware that overturning would be a very ordinary act, having taken place almost 200 hundred times; after all, even 8th grade students have heard of Marbury vs. Madison. However, there would truly be something unique about overturning this law – because it’s Barack Obama’s law. How could mere mortals consider themselves worthy of sitting in judgment of his law? And so, we witness this pathetic act of hubris by the President.
The President doesn’t believe that he could possibly be wrong because he’s convinced that what is written in these 2,700 pages of confusing, controlling, and sometimes contradictory rules and regulations is decent and righteous. Isn’t that all that matters? Didn’t the President make clear in his appointment of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan that empathy was just as important as their knowledge of the law?
During the ensuing firestorm, the godfather of Obama’s legal philosophy jumped to his defense. You may not have heard of Ronald Dworkin, but the Journal of Legal Studies claims that he is the second most widely quoted legal scholar of the 20th century. He is credited with creating the theory of “law as Integrity,” which advocates interpreting the U.S. Constitution in terms of “justice and fairness.” In his opinion, every ruling should be based not on the written text or case law, but on the morality of the times. This is why someone like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg can travel to a foreign country and state that our Constitution is essentially outdated. Other, newer constitutions provide more latitude for omnipotent elites to establish benevolent programs on behalf of the masses. After all, they know better.
Dworkin laid out his argument in the New York Review of Books. He had previously written that “The popular assumption that justices can decide constitutional cases by just consulting the text of that document and the intentions of its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors, without relying on their own sense of justice, is simplistic and wrong.”
On the topic of ObamaCare, Dworkin wrote “The prospect of an overruling is frightening. American health care is an unjust and expensive shambles; only a comprehensive national program can even begin to repair it. If the Court does declare the Act unconstitutional, it will have ruled that Congress lacks the power to adopt what it thought the most effective, efficient, fair, and politically viable remedy—not because that national remedy would violate anybody’s rights, or limit anyone’s liberty in ways a state government could not, or would be otherwise unfair, but for the sole reason that in the Court’s opinion the strict and arbitrary language of an antique Constitution denies our national legislature the power to enact the only politically possible national program.”
This clearly is what Obama believes, and it’s why he stood in the Rose Garden and attacked the Supreme Court for even contemplating a challenge to his creation. To him, the benefits of the law outweigh any possible interpretation of an antiquated document that was written by a bunch of white guys over two hundred years ago. Even though Obama swore to uphold the Constitution, what is good for Americans in his opinion far overshadows any obligations he previously committed to uphold. This deplorable episode demonstrates yet again that to Barack Obama, there is no promise -- not even one that he makes with his hand on a Bible -- that doesn’t have an expiration date.
So now let’s get to the part where the President is a liar. He clearly knows that any law created by Congress can be challenged and overturned by the courts. On April 4, 2012 (just two days after Obama’s statement that it would be an unprecedented step to overturn ObamaCare), the U.S. appeals court in Boston started to hear arguments to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In this case, the Justice Department has decided not to defend a law enacted – unlike ObamaCare – with overwhelming bipartisan Congressional support.
So the President knew quite well that review – and possible reversal – of a law by the Supreme Court is quite ordinary. In fact, he’s counting on it regarding DOMA. So he wasn’t utterly ignorant. He was just grossly arrogant and a shameless liar.
And that’s why he should be booted from office on November 6th.
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To read another article by Bruce Bialosky, click here.
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