Former Obama Student: Obama's Ignorance of Constitution Embarrassing

Between Alinsky, Cloward and Piven's tactics, the Obots are able to twist virtually anything to get it to come out the way they want it to. The thing we are up against is that the weak minded on the left will buy into it because it's what they want to hear. As I have said before; Conservatives believe what they see and Liberals see what they believe!

Did Obama pass the Bar?

Don Surber says Barack Obama’s little temper tantrum over the Supreme Court voting down his unconstitutional takeover of the health insurance industry may have awakened a sleeping giant -- the Judiciary.

Good lawyers know better than to tick off judges. And your common graduate of Cleveland State University knows the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the law. Apparently a Harvard education was wasted on the president because on Monday, the president said it was “unprecedented” for a “group of unelected people” to tell him no. Instead of studying John Marshall, Charles Evans Hughes and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Barack Obama must have been poring over George Wallace’s tirades against that “group of unelected people” in Washington.

Like I said, don’t tick off the judge.

President Obama did and U.S. Judge Jerry Edwin Smith, a 25-year veteran of the bench, gave the president a figurative dressing down.

From Fox News:

A federal appeals court is striking back after President Obama cautioned the Supreme Court against overturning the health care overhaul and warned that such an act would be “unprecedented.”

A three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to explain by Thursday whether the administration believes judges have the power to strike down a federal law.

Cut to the chase:

“Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?” Judge Jerry Smith asked at the hearing.

Justice Department attorney Dana Lydia Kaersvang answered “yes” to that question.

A source inside the courtroom, speaking to Fox News afterward, described the questioning by Smith as pointed.

Smith also made clear during that exchange that he was “referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect … that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed unelected judges to strike acts of Congress.”

“That has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority,” Smith said. “And that’s not a small matter.”

The president’s animosity toward the Constitution is well-known among conservatives, who said this in a 2001 radio interview:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK

But, 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.

What sort of 40-year-old American who is not a socialist blathers on about “negative liberties”? He wants unlimited government. That’s socialism. Judge Jerry Edwin Smith called him on that perverted view of constitutional government. Expect more of these confrontations, not less as Barack Obama has chosen anger, hate and spite as his re-election theme.

Holder says court power to review laws "beyond dispute"

"The point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but . . ."

Read more from the "non-partisan" Politico . . .

Former Obama law student speaks out

Thom Lambert says, imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun.  Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise.  Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5.  You’d be a little embarrassed, right?  You’d worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical, economic, or mathematical literacy.
 
Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor had stated that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to “overturn[] a law [i.e., the Affordable Care Act] that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”  Putting aside the “strong majority” nonsense (the deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act got through the Senate with the minimum number of votes needed to survive a filibuster and passed 219-212 in the House), saying that it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that violates the Constitution is like saying that Kansas City is the capital of Kansas.  Thus, a Wall Street Journal editorial queried this about the President who “famously taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago”:  “[D]id he somehow not teach the historic case of Marbury v. Madison?”
 
I actually know the answer to that question.  It’s no (well, technically yes…he didn’t).  Barack Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago.  Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers — the old “structural Constitution” stuff — is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student).  Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment.  (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.)  Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks...

Read entire account here . . .
 

When clever only looks like dumb

Wesley Pruden says presidential contempt for the Supreme Court and inconvenient law is not new. But rarely has a president sounded so, well, dumb, as when Barack Obama lectured the justices on what they can and can’t do to his cherished Obamacare.

The court would take an "unprecedented, extraordinary step" if it overturns his health care scheme because it was enacted by a "strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," the president declared. Obamacare actually cleared the House by only seven votes, 219 to 212, and on their face the president’s remarks betray an astonishing ignorance of the Constitution and how the republic works.

But Barack Obama is neither dumb nor ignorant. The man praised as the greatest orator since Demosthenes celebrated hope and change in ancient Greece knows better than to bandy words foolishly. So why would he say something so foolish and dumb?

Even a community organizer knows that the authority of the Supreme Court to determine whether acts of Congress conflict with the Constitution is well and truly established. The president, who frequently describes himself (inaccurately) as a former professor of constitutional law, sounded willfully ignorant. The White House has been putting out "clarifications" every day since, arguing that Mr. Obama, once a "senior lecturer" at the University of Chicago Law School, didn’t actually say what he actually did say.

Republican politicians, pundits, lawyers and academics who leaped to lecture the president on the finer points of the Constitution missed by a mile the point of his rant. Mr. Obama’s rant was not meant for Republican politicians, pundits, lawyers and academics. He was talking to his congregation and his choir, building a fire under them and giving them an advance look at talking points for the campaign to come if the Supremes kill or wound Obamacare. He’s more than willing to sound dumb and ignorant in the greater cause of his re-election.

He actually appropriated battle-tested language of assaults on earlier Supreme Courts, berating "judicial activism" of "an unelected group of people" trying to "somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law." The president had clearly been reading about the campaign to "Impeach Earl Warren" on billboards and bus-stop benches in the wake of the desegregation rulings a generation (and more) ago. These billboards flourished like azaleas in April along highways and byways across the South.

No one actually expected to see the chief justice dispatched in shame and ignominy, but the vision of such a spectacle, cultivated by segregationist politicians in Richmond and Birmingham and Little Rock to keep hope alive, propelled white voters to the ballot box to preserve the politicians. Maybe this court’s conservative majority could be demonized, too.

Barack Obama’s rant against the court was of a piece with his earlier joining the Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson -- and much of the mainstream media -- in race-baiting tragedy in the death of Trayvon Martin. Instead of quietly assigning the Justice Department to determine the facts and whether Trayvon Martin’s civil rights in federal law were violated, the president suggested the tragedy was all about race when there is still no evidence that it was about race at all. Race-baiting, ugly but often effective, was once the exclusive province of the right; it has become the default tactic of the left.

Obama uses the tactic skillfully. He put his remarks about the Trayvon Martin tragedy in the most calculated and emotional terms -- "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin" -- and his lecture to the Supreme Court was carefully calibrated, with lawyerly ahs, umms and pauses suggesting that he had given his remarks careful thought and was determined to be precise and specific (like Demosthenes). The later "clarifications" put out by the White House retracted nothing.

Attorney Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. delivered at the end of Mr. Obama’s remarkable week the "three-page, single-spaced letter" requested by a U.S. appeals court judge in Houston, affirming that the Justice Department agrees, even if the president appeared not to, that "the power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute." No surprise there, and we can be sure that the president himself vetted the letter, if indeed he did not write it himself.

One outraged pundit decides that Mr. Obama has revealed himself to be "no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one." This misses the point, too. Barack Obama never was.

Obama v. Supreme Court

Jeffrey T. Kuhner says Barack Obama is undermining the rule of law. On Monday, he openly attacked the Supreme Court. He fears that the high court will overturn ObamaCare. It is the president’s signature domestic achievement - the jewel in his socialist crown. To repeal parts or all of it would be a humiliating repudiation. Hence, Obama is resorting to bullying.

"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," he said.

Moreover, Obama argued that nullifying ObamaCare would amount to "judicial activism," whereby "unelected" judges trump the will of legislative representatives. His warning was clear and unequivocal: Supreme Court justices must not rule against his administration. The president fired a shot across the high court’s bow.

His remarks were astonishing - and chilling. It is rare for a president to comment on a case before the Supreme Court renders a decision. Presidents often have fulminated about rulings with which they disagreed (usually in private), but hardly ever while the justices are still deliberating. The reason is simple: to prevent undue influence - political lobbying - on the independent judiciary. This goes to the heart of America’s constitutional structure of separation of powers and checks and balances. Yet Obama is willing to intimidate the high court, warning that a political price will be paid if they overturn ObamaCare. He is behaving like a strongman who believes he can bend the Supreme Court to his will.

Obama’s comments reflect the panic spreading throughout the liberal establishment. Last week’s oral arguments in front of the high court devastated the constitutional basis of ObamaCare, especially its individual mandate that compels almost every American to purchase insurance or else pay a penalty. Conservative justices made the obvious point: If the federal government can force a citizen to purchase health care insurance, then it can mandate almost anything - including eating broccoli. It is state coercion masquerading as social justice, a massive expansion of government intrusion at the expense of basic freedoms and a naked - and unlawful - power grab. No one knows how the Supreme Court will rule. Yet, based on the skeptical tone and line of questioning, the health care overhaul looks to be in deep trouble.

This is why the legal left has engaged in a full-scale effort to demonize the court. Liberal commentators are now portraying conservative justices as Republican-appointed hacks, bent on repealing ObamaCare simply for political reasons. Their goal is to paint Supreme Court justices in a potential majority as villains in order to galvanize Democrats for the November election season. Instead of dealing with the merits of the case, liberals - led by the president - want to weaken a pivotal institution of our democracy.

Obama’s comments are false. It would not be "unprecedented" or "extraordinary" if the Supreme Court overturns ObamaCare. For more than 200 years, the high court has struck down countless laws passed by Congress or state legislatures, many of them with much stronger majorities than the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court’s role is not to devise health care policy or take into account the political ramifications of its decisions. Rather, it has one overriding purpose: to uphold the Constitution. Nowhere does our founding document give the federal government the authority to impose and regulate a nationalized health care system. This is why ObamaCare is illegal and unconstitutional. It deserves to be swept into the ash heap of history.

The legislation also signifies a betrayal of American democracy. Contrary to Obama’s spin, the Affordable Care Act was jammed through Congress. It passed the House by a narrow vote of 219-212, even though the Democrats had an overwhelming majority of 75 seats. In the Senate, it barely crossed the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster and passed without a single Republican vote. The law was deeply unpopular with the electorate. Obama Democrats desperately rushed it through Congress, abusing parliamentary procedures and bribing key members of the Senate. It is today even less popular with voters. No one - including Obama - bothered to read the 2,700-page monstrosity before putting it into law. The entire enterprise reeked of contempt for democratic values and constitutional government.

This is not the first time Obama has sought to intimidate the Supreme Court. In his 2010 State of the Union Address, he publicly scolded the justices sitting before him for their Citizens United decision, which overturned campaign-finance restrictions. The justices were obviously shocked - the president was using the bully pulpit to berate and smear them. His message was a simple one: Toe the administration line or become a political target. This is the kind of behavior common in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. It has no place in America.

Obama has declared war on the Supreme Court. He is a shameless demagogue who will say and do almost anything to retain his grip on power. ObamaCare is his greatest legacy. He has achieved what his liberal predecessors - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton - could only dream of: universal government-run health care. It marks the culmination of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, implanting European-style social democracy on American soil. Nothing - not the Constitution, the Supreme Court or public opinion - can be allowed to stand in its way. Obama is waging a scorched-earth campaign in order to achieve his goals. Future historians will condemn him as an arrogant leader who pursued a cynical strategy, assaulting the very pillars of our republic.

Obama -- Saul Alinsky's star student

Mychal Massie says that many say Barack Obama is the most divisive, egocentric megalomaniac ever to hold his office. Others say he is the most ruthless and defiantly determined Marxist-Leninist ever to become president. I say he is, by definition and actions, both. I do not believe he misspeaks or stumbles legislatively, and I certainly do not believe he misspoke or was misunderstood pursuant to his statements against the justices of Supreme Court of the United States.
 
His attacks against the court were not simply reflexive, they were instinctive, calculated components of his training by his mentor, Saul Alinsky. In 2008, Alinsky’s son, David, said: "Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness. It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lessons [from my father] well." ("Saul Alinsky’s Son: Obama Learned His Lesson Well," Sept. 2, 2008, Judi McLeod, Canada Free Press)
 
Alinsky continued, saying that he was "proud to see" his communist father’s model for Marxist takeover successfully impacting "the [Democratic] campaign in 2008," adding, it was "a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky."
 
That is precisely why I argue that his SCOTUS attack was just that -- an attack -- and he meant every word he said. His attacks were not pulled out of thin air.

People asked why it took a month for the Trayvon Martin incident to become an issue. I submit it was because his minions were waiting for the high court to begin hearing his health-care legislation. Using tragedy as a means to foment rage, and then using that rage as a match to ignite dried grass, is what communists like Alinsky taught. Obama honed this skill by following Alinsky’s teachings to the letter as he helped build the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) while in Chicago. As McLeod reminded us, both of those groups were built following Alinksy’s model of community agitation, or as Alinsky taught, by "rubbing raw the sores of discontent."
 
That is what Obama did -- he helped fan the flames of controversy in Florida and then took that contempt and turned it toward the courts. In military terms, he was softening the ground, i.e., heavy bombing runs, before sending in the ground troops. He knew full well the things he was saying were outright lies, and he knew that he would be criticized for his intentional dishonesty.

But he also knew that it wouldn’t matter to those who will follow anyone preaching discontent and immiseration -- his objective being to use this seething undercurrent of rage to ignite national unrest if the high court doesn’t vote as he wants. And have no doubt that when I say "as he wants," I am saying "as he demands." He has already selected and framed those justices he intends to blame and attack, which is why we are hearing that the court’s vote will be 6-3 in favor of retaining Obamacare. It is why he’s talking about unelected justices and calling them judicial activists.
 
Last November, I wrote: "If the high court rules Obama does not have the constitutional authority to force us to purchase health insurance, will Obama abide by the ruling, or will he pull a Franklin D. Roosevelt and attempt to overrule the court’s decision?"
 
I am prepared to say he will find a way not to obey the SCOTUS if he doesn’t like its ruling. He’s already arbitrarily decided which laws he won’t enforce. And acting like a tin fuehrer, he has traveled around the country telling people he was going to take executive actions on a regular basis, with or without Congress. In other words, spit on the Constitution, he’ll do as he pleases.
 
Obama is a hardcore Marxist-Leninist. He was one of Alinksy’s best disciples and, as Alinsky’s son proudly boasted, he learned his lessons well. We cannot give this Erebusic evil another term. The question is, what do we replace him with? This is why the tea-party movement is so important -- we must vet candidates and replace the vapid and feckless in Congress with trusted patriots.
 
Obama has no respect for our institutions, the Constitution, or the people of this country. Every time he arrogantly tilts his head back with his nose in the air, he’s telling us he’s better than we are. He has alienated our allies, he detests Israel, and by all indications, he is selling her out on Iran. And when he was caught red-handed (pun intended), promising Russia our secrets when, not if, he is re-elected -- the following day he made light of it, wanting us to believe he was just joking about giving away our secrets.
 
Obama is a communist and we had better understand that because this Alinskyite is not just destroying our way of life, he is betraying us to our enemies.

tick tock.........tick tock..... I just sincerely hope that we are not all FOOLS looking toward the Supremes for a lawful repeal of the HealthCare Law.....

you know all the pundits on the tube this morning were saying that this was just about the ObamaCare Bill on the top, meaning that nothing in that Bill was going to hurt anyone except IF they rule that the Mandate is to be taken out, then all those under or right around the age of 26 were going to be pulled off of the parents insurance and that the people with pre-existing conditions were going to be extremely hurt, but what about the parts of the Bill that state the IRS has direct access to every persons bank account and that the people that are hired to be the death panels would be in control of all the lives of people over a certain age and deemed unimportant in the general scheme of things by the Administration....and the thousand other little things that are a part of that Bill that are UNCONSTITUTIONAL to the AVERAGE AMERICAN who is just trying to live a life the way God intended, THOSE ARE THE PARTS OF THE BILL THAT HAVE TO BE TAKEN OUT AND THROWN AWAY IMMEDIATELY, for they are the things that will hurt everyone, that the majority of people don't even know are in that Bill, unless they actually sat down and read every word of every page, for all those things are hidden in plain sight, right under the cover of good words printed on paper that is white, but very deeply BLACK UNDERNEATH.......