Tag Archive for SCOTUS

Forget Recusal, Elena Kagan Should Be Impeached

December 11, 2011 Government, Media No comments

Elena KaganCNS News, through its parent company the Media Research Center, is doing a job the State-Controlled Media ought to be doing: vigorously investigating Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement in Obamacare. Their journalistic investigations (something the media would know nothing about) are producing evidence that suggests, at the very least, Kagan should recuse herself (something I called for immediately following the Court’s decision to hear the case here and here), and makes a compelling case for impeach as far as I’m concerned.

Here is the latest:

As solicitor general, Kagan’s job at that time was to defend the administration’s position on constitutional issues raised in federal courts. Was she aware of this serious national debate arising from an underlying constitutional issue confronting President Obama’s health-care legislation just days before the House was set to take it up?

On March 16, 2010, the day after McConnell’s op-ed ran in the Wall Street Journal, Kagan sent an email to David Barron, her former colleague at Harvard Law School, who was then the acting director of DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. The Office of Legal Counsel, according to DOJ’s website, provides “authoritative legal advice to the President and all Executive Branch agencies.”

Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s email to acting Office of Legal Counsel Chief David Barron carried this subject line: “Health care q”

The text said: “Did you seee [sic] michael mcConnell piece in the wsj?”

Barron emailed back to Kagan: ‘YES—HE IS GETTING IT GOING.”

On March 17, 2010, the day after Kagan sent her email to OLC chief Barron alerting him to McConnell’s piece in the Wall Street Journal, her top deputy in the Office of Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, sent an email to Associate Attorney General Tom Perelli.

The subject line on Katyal’s email was: “Health Care.”

“Tom, I recall you were going to set up a group to deal with the inevitable challenges to this legislation,” Katyal wrote. “Now that this may be coming back, I wanted to circle back and see if you still are developing such a litigation group.”

Eight minutes later, Perrelli responded to Katyal: “Neal—I tabled it when things looked bleak, but we should do it. I’ll get something together in the next week.”

The next day, March 18, 2010, Katyal extended the email chain by responding to Perrelli and carbon copying the messages to his own boss, Elena Kagan. This new email was all about the Levin-Landmark Legal Foundation draft complaint against the prospective health-care law. It noted some of Katyal’s initial analysis of the anticipated constitutional challenge.

The subject line was now: “RE: Health Care.”

“Tom, I was just looking at the draft complaint by Landmark Legal Foundation,” Katyal wrote to Perrelli and Kagan. “It is clearly written to be filed when the House approves the reconciliation bill and before the President signs it. See paras 15-17.”

The email then includes a link to the text of the complaint posted on the website of the Landmark Legal Foundation.

“Also para 27 says the action is being brought before it is signed by President so that no expectations of regularity can be asserted, etc.” wrote Katyal.

“As such we could be in court very soon,” he wrote.

“In light of this, for what its worth,” Katyal continued to Perrelli and Kagan, “my advice (I haven’t discussed this with Elena, but I am cc’ing her here) would be that we start assembling a response, [here about three-quarters of a line of text is redacted] so that we have it ready to go. They obviously have their piece ready to go, and I think it’d be great if we are ahead of the ball game here.”

Now let’s go back to Kagan’s confirmation process:

Then, during Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation process four months later, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her in writing if she had “ever been asked about your opinion” or “offered any view or comments” on the “the underlying legal or constitutional issues related to any proposed health care legislation, including but not limited to Pub. L. No. 111-148 [PPACA], or the underlying legal or constitutional issues related to potential litigation resulting from such legislation?”

Kagan answered both questions: “No.”

How is that not perjury?

She should be impeached immediately in my opinion. Of course, she won’t be impeached and she probably won’t be forced to recuse herself. After all, she even has former Republican officials supporting her. Read what former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey wrote about Kagan last week in the Wall Street Journal:

But upon even a cursory examination of the facts it is clear that neither justice should step aside. The court we have should decide the case.

Justice Kagan served as solicitor general in the Obama Justice Department before she was nominated to the bench. The solicitor general heads the small team of lawyers who represent the federal government before the Supreme Court, and coordinates and controls the government’s litigation positions in the various federal courts of appeal and occasionally even in district courts.

Although critics have portrayed Justice Kagan during her tenure as a “cheerleader” for the health-care bill, and although she did send an email to a former faculty colleague that applauded the legislation, the solicitor general ordinarily is not called on to advise on issues of constitutionality of proposed legislation; that task usually falls to the Office of Legal Counsel. There has been no evidence that she acted personally in her official capacity as solicitor general in connection with any issue in the case.

A Beltway Republican at his finest!

Rest assured, I will not relent on my insisting Kagan recuse herself, and I will continue to call for her impeachment.

Obamacare Headed to Supreme Court

November 14, 2011 Business and Economy, Government, Policy 2 comments

Surpeme CourtAs I predicted last spring, the constitutionality of President Obama’s socialist take over of the healthcare industry will be decided decided by the highest court of the land — the Supreme Court.

The justices voted to hear the case and allotted 5.5 hours of oral argument, which will probably take place in the spring paving the way for a decision just moves before next Novembers election.

Now that the case has finally arrived to the SCOTUS, the push will begin in earnest to get Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself. Kagan was Solicitor General during Obamacare’s passage. She was an ardent supporter of it. In fact, there was an email exchange that took place between Lawrence Tribe and Kagan in which she express excitement over Obamacare’s passage:

I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.

Sounds very impartial, doesn’t she?

I’ll now refer you to 28 USC 455:

(a) Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States
shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his
impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
(b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following
circumstances:
(1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a
party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts
concerning the proceeding;
(2) Where in private practice he served as lawyer in the matter
in controversy, or a lawyer with whom he previously practiced law
served during such association as a lawyer concerning the matter,
or the judge or such lawyer has been a material witness
concerning it;
(3) Where he has served in governmental employment and in such
capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness
concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the
merits of the particular case in controversy;

If Justice Kagan has any integrity she will recuse herself from this case.

Republican turncoats who voted for Elena Kagan

August 5, 2010 Government 2 comments

These are the so-called Republicans who voted to confirm one of the most dangerous, unqualified Supreme Court Justice nominees in history:

  • Susan Collins (R-ME)
  • Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
  • Judd Gregg (R-NH)
  • Richard Lugar (R-IN)
  • Olympia Snowe (R-ME)

They are the usual suspects. They must go. It’s that simple.

Judge Susan Bolton’s specious argument for blocking Arizona immigration law

July 29, 2010 Government, Policy One comment

National Review’s Andrew McCarthy has a great post today over at The Corner demonstrating Clinton-appointed Judge Susan Bolton’s specious argument — based on a misapplication of case law — for blocking Arizona’s new immigration law.

There are three key flaws in Judge (so-called) Bolton’s decision:

  1. In essence, Judge Susan Bolton bought the Justice Department’s preemption argument — i.e., the claim that the federal government has broad and exclusive authority to regulate immigration, and therefore that any state measure that is inconsistent with federal law is invalid. The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. The judge, however, twisted the concept of federal law into federal enforcement practices (or, as it happens, lack thereof). In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can’t do it either because doing so would transgress the federal policy of non-enforcement … which is nuts.

  2. The judge also employs a cute bit of sleight-of-hand. She repeatedly invokes a 1941 case, Hines v. Davidowitz, in which the Supreme Court struck down a state alien-registration statute. In Hines, the high court reasoned that the federal government had traditionally followed a policy of not treating aliens as “a thing apart,” and that Congress had therefore “manifested a purpose … to protect the liberties of law-abiding aliens through one uniform national system” that would not unduly subject them to “inquisitorial practices and police surveillance.” But the Arizona law is not directed at law-abiding aliens in order to identify them as foreigners and subject them, on that basis, to police attention. It is directed at arrested aliens who are in custody because they have violated the law. And it is not requiring them to register with the state; it is requiring proof that they have properly registered with the federal government — something a sensible federal government would want to encourage.

  3. Judge Bolton proceeds from this misapplication of Hines to the absurd conclusion that Arizona can’t ask the federal government for verification of the immigration status of arrestees — even though federal law prohibits the said arrestees from being in the country unless they have legal status — because that would tremendously burden the feds, which in turn would make the arrestees wait while their status is being checked, which would result in the alien arrestees being treated like “a thing apart.”The ruling ignores that, in the much later case of Plyler v. Doe (1982), the Supreme Court has emphasized that:

    Although the State has no direct interest in controlling entry into this country, that interest being one reserved by the Constitution to the Federal Government, unchecked unlawful migration might impair the State’s economy generally, or the State’s ability to provide some important service. Despite the exclusive federal control of this Nation’s borders, we cannot conclude that the States are without power to deter the influx of persons entering the United States against federal law, and whose numbers might have a discernible impact on traditional state concerns. [Emphasis added.]

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) has already filed an expedited appeal with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the most liberal and, ipso facto, the most overturned appellate court). So don’t be optimistic about this decision getting overturned. Because it won’t–at least not by the Ninth Circus. But then Arizona will appeal to and petition the Supreme Court to take the case. It will because of the case’s national importance . And I believe Arizona will prevail by a 5-4 decision, paving the way for any of the other 49 states to enact replicate legislation.

Kagan blows fundamental judicial question

July 10, 2010 Government No comments

Ellis Washington

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

–Thomas Jefferson

The Senate Judiciary hearings for President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, revealed perhaps the pivotal constitutional question of modern times: Is there a Higher Law that is the foundation of all our fundamental rights … laws that transcends even the Constitution? The Founding Fathers answered this question in blood and staked their lives and their sacred honor on this very principle by waging a protracted war against Great Britain, the superpower of the 18th century.

Look at the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which essentially incorporates the Declaration of Independence (natural rights) into the Constitution. On this point Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn gave a speech at the White House in 2000 on the subject of the Ninth Amendment. Professor Bailyn said that the Ninth Amendment refers to “a universe of rights, possessed by the people – latent rights, still to be evoked and enacted into law … a reservoir of other, unenumerated [natural] rights that the people retain, which in time may be enacted into law.”

During the Kagan Supreme Court hearings, an interesting exchange occurred on this very question of natural rights when Elena Kagan sidestepped Sen. Tom Coburn’s question of whether she believes Americans have a “fundamental, pre-existing” right to bear arms, choosing instead to say she would follow the law. Here is their exchange:

Kagan: To be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution, and my job as a justice will be to enforce and defend the Constitution and other laws of the United States.

Coburn: I’m talking about Elena Kagan. What do you believe? Are there inalienable rights for us? Do you believe that?

Kagan: I think that the question of what I believe as to what people’s rights are outside the Constitution and the laws, that you should not want me to act in any way on the basis of such a belief.

I think you should want me to act on the basis of the law.

Obviously, Kagan’s handlers anticipated this Higher Law line of questioning and gave her an answer that had a constitutionalist ring to it; however, it’s all sophistic rhetoric.

Elena Kagan’s radicalism was evident in 1997 when, serving as the deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council during the Clinton administration, she manipulated a medical association recommendation to pursue her agenda of partial-birth abortion.

Is partial-birth abortion an inalienable natural right, according to Elena Kagan?

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a legal commentator on Fox News, wrote about our inalienable natural rights in his 2006 book, “The Constitution in Exile”:

The Bill of Rights consists of ten amendments that, like the Constitution itself and the Declaration of Independence before it, are grounded by Natural Law. These ten amendments are designed to protect individual freedoms that the founders considered natural rights, thus God-given, but feared that the new federal government might ignore. The Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent the federal government from denying these fundamental rights to any person. They reflect human nature in the absence of a tyrannical government.

Why is Kagan faking being a constitutionalist? (“[O]utside the Constitution and the laws, you should not want me to act in any way on the basis of such belief.”) Liberal judicial activism, including radical right to privacy, the incorporation doctrine, the living-Constitution doctrine, are ipso facto perversions of the Constitution. Kagan will certainly engage in social justice (Marxism) in the tradition of a Brennan, Blackmun, Marshall and Ginsburg: justices who throughout their entire judicial careers showed utter contempt against theConstitution.

There is very little black-letter law written in the Constitution that a liberal legal academic like Kagan or a liberal activist judge actually believes – otherwise they wouldn’t work so hard to make unconstitutional what is plainly written in the text while legitimizing constitutionally bizarre ideals of radical social policy like separation of church and state, FDR and LBJ’s welfare state, denying corporations free-speech rights, radical gun control, abortion, gay marriage, the primacy of international law over theConstitution, amnesty for illegal aliens, federal takeover of private industry and anti-states’ rights, just to name a few.

Make no mistake about it: Kagan is nothing less than an Obama shill. Her radical judicial views on social justice (Marxism) will do exceeding harm to the Constitution by reflecting Obama’s fanatical hatred of America – a comprehensive judicial policy of vengeance against a country and a Constitution he has sworn to uphold and protect, yet utterly despises.

Remember that despite Kagan’s ignorance and mockery of natural rights found in the Declaration (“the law of Nature and of Nature’s God”; “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”), without them none of the other enumerated rights in the Constitution could exist – for either rights come from God, or rights come from the State.

If the State gives rights, the State will take them away.

I believe Kagan to be an intellectual lightweight with an unremarkable judicial and academic record who was cynically put on the fast track to the highcourt because she, like President Obama and his former nominee, Justice Sotomayor, wants to put America on her knees domestically and internationally and, through their progressive judicial activism, has vowed to pervert the Constitution at every opportunity.

We can only hope that the GOP will filibuster Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination and force Obama to choose someone who understands and respects the Constitution, judicial restraint and natural rights, which, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, are “derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of [the people's] chief magistrate.”

These inalienable and sometimes unenumerated natural rights under this republic are the fundamental liberties all mankind enjoys, not by virtue of the State, but by our very humanity as holy creations of God.

The natural rights God giveth man cannot taketh away.

Report from Washington for June 21, 2010

June 21, 2010 Government, Interviews, Podcast, Policy No comments

On this week’s edition of the Report from Washington with Ellis Washington, Ellis and Conservative Beacon’s Josh Price discuss:

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Simplistic David Souter

June 19, 2010 Government 2 comments

Ellis Washington


Justice Souter actually provided a primer on how not to be a judge. He made up a Constitution that never was to justify a kind of judicial power that was never intended.

–McGinnis & Rappaport, “Souter’s Bad Constitutional History”

Recently retired Justice David Souter delivered the commencement address at Harvard where several statements were direct attacks against the originalist understanding of the Constitution as held by Justices Thomas and Scalia, calling originalism a “simplistic” model of giving the Constitution a “fair reading.”

Law professors John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport in a Wall Street Journal article offer the reader a brilliant retort to Justice Souter’s liberal “living Constitution” jurisprudence, wherein the judge makes up the Constitution as he goes along based on his own personal policy preferences instead of relying on the plain meaning of the document, which is the original intent of the framers.

McGinnis and Rappaport wrote:

One of Justice Souter’s two primary examples of the need for justices to avoid simplistic judging (i.e., originalism) is Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 case barring public school segregation. A central premise of Justice Souter’s praise of Brown is that it was dictated not by the Constitution’s original meaning but by new social realities.

Indeed, but what were these “new social realities” invented by Brown v. Board of Education? One was based on a doll study conducted by Howard psychology professors Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark, where children were asked which of the various colored dolls were their favorite. Because the majority of black children tested chose white dolls, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall (and future justice of the Supreme Court) was able to use to this research to convince the Supreme Court that their findings revealed that racial discrimination was so endemic in society as to be psychologically damaging to the educational development of black children.

While psychological speculations may impress most liberal activist judges, a Natural Law/original intent reading of the Constitution demonstrates to me that America didn’t really need the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education. Why? If Congress had simply followed the original intent of the framers, which was based on Natural Law and expanded Thomas Jefferson’s admonition in the Declaration of Independence that “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal,” then Brown wouldn’t have been necessary. Such a singular statement of equality for all should have been enacted into constitutional law via the Reconstruction-era amendments, or by the Supreme Court resurrecting this Natural Law precept as a fundamental principle of federalism.

In my law review article “Brown v. Board of Education: Right Result, Wrong Reasoning,” I outlined what Brown should have said based on the arguments the abolitionist used to combat slavery 100 years earlier:

Until the early 20th century, the Supreme Court followed societal presumptions [based] on an integration of legality and morality. These presumptions were both impliedly and overtly expressed in many of the Supreme Court opinions dealing with issues of morality, religion and the elements of a civilized society. Since its earliest decisions, the Supreme Court had formulated its ideas on morality, liberty, justice and equality. The Court affirmed the dignity of all God’s creation; that all people had certain, basic natural rights that were guaranteed to them by their very humanity – an inalienable or natural right that transcends the mere laws of man. In the context of Brown, these inalienable rights should extend toblack people. …

“In the 19th century, Supreme Court decisions quoted philosophers at greater length than more contemporary opinions, but virtually all references were to Montesquieu, whose L’Esprit des Loix (“The Spirit of Laws”) was repeatedly cited for propositions of limited government, balance of powers and the need for virtuous citizens. … The Court’s reference to such thinkers seems natural and appropriate, especially because many references were to the principles of separation of powers and the institutional limits of the Court.” The Court thought that the abolitionist’s reasoning aboutblack people being equal to white people on natural law, moral, religious, or humanitarian grounds to be, at best, provincial and unsophisticated; at worst, fanatical, medieval, and hyper-religious.

The increasing arrogance and fascist tendencies of liberalism amaze me. What gives Justice Souter and his other liberal activist colleagues like Ginsburg, Stevens, Sotomayor, Breyer and even Kennedy the right to place their own personal policy preferences (Positive Law) above the original intent of the constitutional framers (Natural Law)? If anyone is being “simplistic” here, it is these socialist judges who follow unconstitutional traditions derived from the substantive due process jurisprudence beginning with Dred Scot v. Sanford (1857), a false doctrine the Court first created out of whole cloth to justify a “natural right” to slavery and de jure discrimination under Plessey v. Ferguson (1898).

Should the Constitution be determined by liberal jurists like Justice David Souter, a man who after 19 years on the high court did irreparable harm to the Constitution and had not one memorable utterance or judicial principle, or should the Constitution be determined by the constitutional framers, men who put their lives on the line to found this republic: Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and Hamilton? Here, Justice Souter’s “current social realities” must never trump the Constitution’s original meaning.

Had Natural Law jurisprudence governed, would Brown v. Board of Education have been necessary? McGinnis and Rappaport don’t answer that question directly but write: “While we believe that an originalist reading of the Constitution also supports Brown, the salient point here is that Brown would not have had such central importance had the Reconstruction-era [13th, 14th and 15th] amendments been enforced according to their original meaning.”

Just as the legions of liberal and Marxist professors currently occupying Harvard are intellectual squatters of the original house of Harvard founded in 1636 by ultra-conservative Christian Puritans, likewise Justice Souter’s 19-year tenure will be viewed by honest legal historians as that of a judicial simpleton and an unremarkable squatter in the august halls of the Supreme Court.

Obama nominates inexperienced, unqualified Elena Kagan to SCOTUS

May 10, 2010 Government 4 comments

Elena KaganFirst of all, doesn’t she look eerily like Janet Napolitano? I digress…

The inexperienced, unqualified community organizer Barack Obama has nominated, shockingly, an inexperienced person with absolutely no judicial record to the Supreme Court: current Solicitor General Elena Kagan. (As an aside, Kagan was also unqualified for Solicitor General but that didn’t stop 7 Republican Senators, including Tom Coburn and John Kyl, from voting to confirm her).

We don’t know much about Elena Kagen seeing as how she has no judicial record whatsoever. What we do know is that while Dean of Harvard University Law School, Kagan barred military recruiters from campus because the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy towards homosexuals violated Harvard’s anti-discrimination policy.

Even without a paper trail and despite claims to the contrary, I think it’s safe to infer that since Obama apparently agrees with her judicial philosophy, Kagan must be a radical leftist.

The silver lining in this is that because Justice Jon Paul Stevens turned out to be very liberal, Kagan’s confirmation will not substantially alter the court’s current conservative ideological slant. We’re exchanging one liberal for another.

The singular Supreme Court qualification

April 19, 2010 Government One comment


Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

–Thomas Jefferson

John Paul Stevens, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for 35 years, announced his retirement earlier this week. Court watchers, political prognosticators and media mavens are speculating about whom President Obama will appoint to this godlike position.

Below are Obama’s nine probable nominees to the Supreme Court:

  • Hillary Clinton (secretary of state; Obama would love to put Hillary on ice at SCOTUS to block her from running against him in 2012 and against Michelle Obama in 2016)
  • Merrick Garland (on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, a doctrinaire liberal who believes in social justice [Marxism] and liberal activism)
  • Elena Kagan (former dean of Harvard Law School; Obama burnished her resume by appointing her solicitor general in 2009)
  • Janet Napolitano (former governor of Arizona who twice vetoed a state ban on partial-birth abortion; as secretary of DHS Napolitano has proven to be an intellectual midget with fascist tendencies who is philosophically most like Obama)
  • Deval Patrick (an unremarkable black socialist governor of [Tax]achusetts)
  • Kathleen Sullivan (protégé of Harvard “living and evolving Constitution” professor Laurence Tribe; a Marxist activist jurist to the core)
  • Leah Ward Sears (former chief justice of Georgia Supreme Court and a friend of Justice Clarence Thomas; a liberal jurist whose has written nothing memorable)
  • Jennifer Granholm (Harvard Law grad; most incompetent governor in Michigan history)
  • Cass Sunstein (regulatory czar, prolific author whose oeuvre makes him a second-rate Leon Trotsky [Permanent Revolution] and a third-rate Josef Goebbels [Big Lie propagandist])
  • Diane Wood (a radical left judicial activist on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals).

    • President Obama, who fashions himself as a constitutional law scholar, should only consider this singular qualification to the Supreme Court: Does the jurist have a self-evident belief and demonstrable record in constitutionalism, Natural Law and the original intent the framers?

    When reviewing the body of work of each candidate, if it can be clearly and unmistakably ascertained that the answer to this question is no, then under our Constitution that person is unfit to serve on our nation’s highest court. Period!

    Americas’ paradox is this: Seventeen months ago, America suffered a de facto revolution by electing this regime without adequate vetting. Obama has repeatedly shown his utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution, preferring activist judges who legislate from the bench and his bizarre belief that the Warren Court (1953-69) didn’t go far enough in enshrining “redistributive change” (i.e., integrating Marxist socialist ideas into the rule of law and into every sector of society, thus making the Constitution a dead letter).

    In a 2001 radio interview, Obama gave America a glimpse into the perverse mind of The Regime and what type of characteristics he considers in an ideal judge:

    … The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

    And that hasn’t shifted, and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

    I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

    Has the man never heard of the separation-of-powers doctrine and judicial restraint? President Obama believes that a judge must be an agent for social change, a super-legislator, an unelected dictator. That’s diametrical to what the framers believed. Jefferson said, “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” Remember that Lady Justice is blind because judges are not to consider rich or poor, black or white, Jew or gentile, but to interpret the law according to the Constitution. Period!

    I believe Obama’s actual nominee will be either Diane Wood or Elena Kagan; however, Napolitano would be Obama’s dream pick because perhaps no other person in his administration is so utterly aligned philosophically with his radical, fascist, anti-American views than she. Remember that it was Napolitano who in December 2009, the day after the Christmas Day bomber failed to set off his bomb in an airplane over Detroit, proudly said, “The system worked.”

    In an April 2009 classified memo, Secretary Napolitano focused on labeling political opponents of the president, including ex-military, as terrorists and “right-wing extremists” while downplaying Islamic fascism against the United States by calling them “man-caused disasters,” even purging phrases likes “Islamic fascist” and “Muslim terrorist” from all official policy documents.

    This treason is epidemic in Washington, D.C., for there is not one Democrat in Congress that really believes in Natural Law, original intent, originalism or constitutionalism according to the transcendent ideas the framers of the Constitution held sacred – liberty, freedom, morality, market capitalism, Veritas (truth).

    What is the singular Supreme Court qualification President Obama should rely upon? Hearken to the words of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson who prophesied hundreds of years ago: Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him [President Obama] down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Roberts calls President Obama’s, Congressional Dems’ behavior at State of the Union “very troubling”

March 10, 2010 Culture, Government, Media No comments

Remember this?

Justice Samuel Alito wasn’t the only Supreme Court member to take umbrage with President Obama’s dsplat of willful and utter disregard for decorum at this year’s State of the Union (SOTU). Chief Justice John Roberts is calling out President Obama’s and congressional Democrats’ unprofessional behavior at SOTU:

Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

“So I have no problems with that,” he said. “On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. This is outstanding. Apparently Chief Justice Roberts has more political backbone than Republican congressional leadership.

Chief Justice Roberts went on to make a larger, more important point stating that the SOTU has degenerated to a political pep rally. He is exactly right. Both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of turning the SOTU into a political pep rally. That’s not what the Founders inteded the SOTU to be.

Let me direct your attention to Article II, Section 3 of The Constitution of the United States:

He [the President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; (My emphasis)

The State of the Union is supposed to be informative and advisory, not serve as a forum for political bullying.

When are we going to get back to serious debate in this country? Or are we destined to remain in a political climate of punchlines and soundbites?

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