Obama should know better on Supreme Court's role

By Stephen B. Presser

Special to CNN

Stephen Presser says the president's remarks Monday on the Supreme Court's role were mistaken.

 

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• President said top court would break with precedent if it overturns the health care law
• Stephen Presser says Obama, who taught constitutional law, should know better
• He says the Supreme Court has long exercised power to overturn unconstitutional laws
• Presser: Judicial review doesn't usurp Congress' power; it maintains the rule of law

(CNN) -- In what must be the most extraordinary statement of his presidency, Barack Obama on Monday blasted the possibility that the United States Supreme Court might overturn the Affordable Care Act. Obama said the court would take an "unprecedented, extraordinary step" if it overturns the law, because it was passed by "a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."

Setting aside the point that the ACA did not pass with an overwhelming majority, but by a party-line vote in the Senate and seven votes in the House, and without the support of a single member of the Republican Party, the most astonishing thing about Obama's diatribe was the fundamental misunderstanding of our constitutional tradition it revealed.

Since 1788, in the famous defense of the Constitution set forth by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, it has been understood that it is the task of the Supreme Court to rein in majoritarian legislatures when they go beyond what the Constitution permits.

Stephen B. Presser

 

This is not, as Obama implies, judicial activism, or political activity on the part of the justices. This is simply, as Hamilton explained, fidelity to the Constitution itself, fidelity to the highest expression of "We the People of the United States," the body whose representatives ratified that Constitution.

That doctrine of judicial review was most famously expressed by the great Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803), but it had been noted not only by Hamilton, but by many other federal judges in the late 18th century. And over the years, in more than 50 instances, courts have struck down unconstitutional behavior by the federal and state legislatures.

Judicial review is not usurpation -- it is the manner in which the rule of law is preserved in this nation. It is certainly true that sometimes courts, and even the Supreme Court, have erred in their interpretation of the Constitution, and some legislative acts that clearly were permitted by the Constitution have been struck down. But if the ACA's individual mandate is rejected, this will be fully within the legitimate exercise of judicial powers.

Opinion: Supreme Court is playing with fire

This is because, as was made clear in the recent arguments in the court, that mandate, for the very first time in history, is an attempt to compel virtually every adult American to participate in commerce. It is not an attempt to regulate commerce -- which the Constitution permits -- but is, instead, an attempt to create and compel commerce, which the Constitution does not authorize.

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, a measure regarded as fundamental by those who argued for the passage of the Bill of Rights in 1791, provides that the powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states and the people thereof.

As the Supreme Court told us in the Lopez (1995) and Morrison (2000) cases, this means that there must be some limits on the powers of the federal government, and it also means that the basic law-making power, the police power, must reside in the governments closest to the people themselves, the state and local governments.

This is our tradition, and the ACA's individual mandate is a fundamental break with that tradition. If, as it should, the Supreme Court declares the individual mandate unconstitutional, it will be reaffirming our traditions, and not usurping them. The president, a former constitutional law teacher, should be ashamed of himself.

Op-ed:

The real reason Obama didn't want to build the pipeline

By: Diane Sori

There was a simple way to have created over 20,000+ jobs....the building of the TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL Pipeline Project that would have run from Canada to Texas.  This project would have created countless thousand of jobs for Americans, both directly and indirectly, would actually have benefited the environment and wildlife, and helped us cut our dependence on foreign oil.  But Obama refused to do this and I know why.  But first some facts.

Some say the oil harvested from this line is 'dirty oil,' well, hello.....ALL oil is dirty before it's refined.  The job creation just to build the line itself would have been mind boggling as would the support industries, like housing, restaurants, hotels etc. that would be needed for the workers and their families.  And it could have be insisted upon that the actual pipe used be made right here in the USA!  Talk about job creation!

As for the environment, this pipeline would have actually helped wildlife survive the harsh winters because the animals would have been able to congregate around the heat given off by the pipe.  The more that could survive the winter because of this, the more that would survive to be able to breed in the spring and thus increase the endangered populations.

This pipeline would also have helped bring down the price of gasoline because we would have been able to refine that oil right here in the US into the gas we need, thus automatically lowering the price per gallon.  The price could actually have fallen to just one dollar per gallon because the price of a barrel of oil would have dropped to less than $40 per barrel simply because there would have been more of a supply available.  Therefore, OPEC would not have been able to keep jacking up the price as they currently continue to do.

There also would have been NO need to fear massive leaks because the pipeline would have been built in sections, and if something happened to a specific section, that section would then be shut down, thus having minimal affect on the environment.

But wait......if the pipeline was built and Americans were put back to work, they would then come off Obama's handouts and welfare rolls causing him to loose their votes.  This was the real reason why Obama did NOT want this pipeline built,.....it was all about votes and getting him re-elected.

But now he sees that he needs the this very pipeline he was so opposed to to be built, even if it's just a section or two.  And why...because Obama did NOT foresee the tremendous rise in the price of gas. Americans are hurting at the pump and he intends to use that hurt for his own political gain even if it means building something he does NOT want built.  He'll throw us a bone or two, the price of gas might drop a bit, and he'll claim it was because of his willingness to build the pipeline.

But he will NOT fool us...we know his whys and his wherefores...and we will NOT fall for his devious ploy.  Yes, Americans are hurting, Americans need relief at the pump, Americans need jobs, Americans need a future free of this man, and hopefully come November we will get just that, and then we can begin to recover.

Op-ed:

Could this be why Hillary keeps silent on the birth certficate 

by: Diane Sori

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Everyone keeps wondering why Hillary didn’t get the nomination in 2008.  Before I give you my reasoning why, we first need to remember that Obama was Bill and Hillary’s creation.  He was a NOBODY before they had him as a leading keynote speaker at Clinton’s second nomination convention.  They gave him his 15 minutes of fame and he ran with it, much to their chagrin.

Fast forward to today with people still wondering why in 2008, Hillary didn’t just expose the phony birth certificate we all suspect she knew about, thereby assuring herself the nomination .  Well personally, I think it goes beyond the birth certificate issue, way, way beyond it, leading all the way back to the Clinton administration and it’s mishandling of the worldwide terrorists attacks that led up to 9/11. There were too many reasons why 9/11 should NOT have happened yet it did. Do I believe we, or President Bush, had anything to do with it......NO I DO NOT.....but maybe previous warnings were ignored (or carelessly overlooked) by Clinton, warnings that should have sent up a red flag that something was going to happen and happen soon.  And isn't it odd that the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history happened so soon into a new presidency, when that new president was still learning the ropes, sort of like the Iran hostage situation being resolved immediately AFTER Reagan took office.  President Bush was a hero of 9/11 yet the left tries constantly to paint him as knowing and not stopping it.......why, because they knew Bush didn't know and they needed to shift the blame off the people that possibly did.

Now for the lead-up history, in February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World Trade Center with a truck bomb.  Six Americans were killed and a thousand were wounded.  Plans by Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and famous New York City landmarks, thankfully never happened because the police were tipped off and the plotters were arrested. In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down several U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and wounding 73 in an incident that came to be called ‘Black Hawk Down.’ Years later it was learned that funding for that operation came from al Qaeda.  All this was on Bill Clinton’s watch and he did NOT retaliate with brute force as he should have.

In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot, again by Ramzi Yousef, to blow up a dozen U.S. airplanes while they were in flight over the Pacific.  In November 1995, a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two civilians. In June 1996, a truck bomb destroyed the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. This attack was carried out by the Saudi Hezbollah, a group receiving help from Iran.  Again, all on Clinton’s watch, and all against targets where they knew Americans would be killed.

In August 1998, Bin Ladin's al Qaeda group carried out near-simultaneous truck bombings on U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands more.  In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other sites frequented by American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed Ressam at the U.S. Canadian border as he was trying to smuggle in explosives intended for an attack on the Los Angeles International Airport.

All these attacks, happened on Bill Clinton’s watch, and led up to the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, where an al Qaeda team based in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled with explosives to blow a hole in the side of the destroyer, almost sinking it, and killing 17 American sailors.  And where was Bill Clinton’s forceful retaliatory attack on those who did this direct attack on US property and lives, it was minimal at best.

Now we reach the ever deepening downhill spiral that started on 9/11/01 when President Bush waited six months before taking revenge, and he took it out on the wrong country at first.....why?  Was it because wrong information was deliberately given to him right from the beginning? Was our government already infiltrated by islamists even before 9/11.....it's a possibility that Clinton either knowingly or unknowingly let them in by the simple act of NOT retaliating properly.  Remember, he did NOTHING of substance to retaliate for the Cole or the previous incidents.  And why was that.....was he paid off somehow NOT to seek revenge?  And did that payoff reach all the way until the 2008 election?

Now let’s say that someone like Soros, found out something to this affect about Clinton, and used this info to make sure Hillary was stopped dead in her presidential aspirations!  After all, Soros realized that if Clinton could pull something of this magnitude off, Hillary would be extremely hard to, if not outright impossible to control but Obama would gladly be a willing puppet because he craved power, statute, and money and Obama knew Soros was his ticket to all he wanted.  Remember, Soros has the money to buy anybody off he wants bought off, and he has the power, through said vast wealth, to get what he wants and to control who he wants.  It’s NOT Obama who bumped Hillary, it was Soros who did so!

Here is my hypothesis, and I could be one hundred percent wrong but I’ll let you, the reader, be the judge of that.  Soros has probably always known about the birth certificate, and the truth about Obama, but he had the money to try and hide said truth because he would gain unbridled power for himself by controlling the office of the presidency of the United States.  I believe that when Hillary stumbled upon the truth that she wanted to expose Obama and thus garner the nomination for herself.  But here is where the wrench gets thrown into her plans…..Soros found out what she was going to do and threatened to expose her husband’s mishandling of all the previous terrorist attacks thus casting doubt on how effective she would be as president.  Remember, he couldn’t out and out control her but he could knock her down a few pegs by simple blackmail, if you will.  So a deal of some sort was reached where she would bow out of the presidential race, or loose the nomination by a few votes, but would be guaranteed some sort of high ranking position to keep her quiet.  That’s could by why she seemed so ‘different’ in her conciliatory speech.

Do I have proof of any of this, NO I do NOT but I do present it as a possibility as to why Hillary so willingly surrendered defeat to Obama in 2008 and why she remains silent and cannot come forward today about his birth certificate.

A Nation Arms Itself -- For What? 

By: Patrick J. Buchanan

With the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch volunteer who was legally carrying a 9-millimeter handgun, the familiar wail has arisen from our cultural and media elite:

America has too many guns!

"Open carry" and "concealed carry" laws should be repealed.

Florida's "Stand-your-ground" law, replicated in two dozen states, threatens to turn America into the Tombstone of Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp. This is insane!

The United Nations agrees. This year, the world body takes up the global control of firearms, including small arms in the hands of citizens.

According to Sen. Rand Paul, the U.N. "Small Arms Treaty" will almost surely mandate tougher licensing requirements to own a gun, require the confiscation and destruction of unauthorized civilian firearms, call for a ban on the trade, sale and private ownership of semi-automatic weapons, and create an international gun registry.

No more Colt .45s in the top drawer or M-1 rifles in the closet.

Memo to the U.N.: Lots of luck.

Forty-five Republican and 12 Democratic senators have declared their opposition to any such U.N. treaty, which means it is dead in the water the moment it is launched from Turtle Bay.

For when it comes to Second Amendment rights, Middle America has spoken -- at the ballot box and the gun store. And Congress, most state legislatures and the federal courts have all come down on the side of the Silent Majority.

In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court struck down one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, assuring district citizens of their right to keep a gun in the home.

U.S. Judge Benson E. Legg just struck down the section of Maryland's gun law that left it to local authorities to decide if a citizen could carry a gun outside his house.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, mentioned as a running mate for Mitt Romney, just signed a law striking down a 20-year ban that kept residents from buying more than one pistol per month. In Virginia's legislature in 1993, McDonnell had voted in favor of the one-gun-per-month rule.

The new law ignited New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who calls Virginia "the No. 1 out-of-state source of crime guns in New York and one of the top suppliers of crime guns nationally."

Two New York cops have been shot this year, one fatally, with guns from Virginia.

But there is another side to the gun story, and University of Houston Professor Larry Bell relates it:

"Law-abiding citizens in America used guns in self-defense 2.5 million times in 1993 (about 6,825 times per day), and actually shot and killed two and a half times as many criminals as police did (1,527 to 606). These self-defense shootings resulted in less than one-fifth as many incidents as police where an innocent person was mistakenly identified as a criminal (2 percent versus 11 percent)."

The figures tell the story. Along with rising incarceration rates, the proliferation of guns in the hands of the law-abiding has been a factor in the nation's falling crime rate.

And that proliferation has accelerated under President Obama.

According to ammo.net, tax revenues from the sale of firearms and ammunition have gone up 48 percent since 2008, with Iowa, North Carolina and Utah registering revenue gains of over 100 percent.

On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, there were 129,666 background checks of individuals seeking to buy a gun, the highest one-day search in history This exceeded by 32,000 the number of background checks by gun dealers on Black Friday 2010.

Background searches in December broke the all-time monthly record set in November, as 1,534,414 inquiries were made to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System about prospective gun-buyers.

Half a million inquiries came in the six days before Christmas.

Why are Americans arming themselves?

More and more citizens, says the National Rifle Association, fear that if or when they confront a threat to their family, lives or property, the police will not be there.

Reports of home invasions and flash mobs have firmed up the market for firearms. After the 1992 Los Angeles riot, when Californians found themselves defenseless in homes and shops, gun sales soared.

Others argue that a fear of new laws in an Obama second term, or even the possible confiscation of handguns, is driving sales.

Gun-control organizations claim that gun ownership is actually declining, that fewer and fewer people are buying more and more of these guns.

But the numbers seem to contradict the gun-controllers.

A 2005 Gallup survey found that three in 10 Americans own a gun, that 40 percent had a gun in the house, that nearly half of all men own a gun, as do one in seven women. Two-thirds of all gun-owners gave as a reason they own a gun: protection against crime.

America is an armed camp, with the South and Midwest the most heavily armed. Yet, still, Americans buy guns in the millions every year.

Why? Whatever the answer, it is our business, not the U.N.'s.

Op-ed:
A blogger is born
By: Diane Sori

Well here I am guys, fully up and running and operational.  Links to videos are all working, links to background sources are all working, EVERYTHING is working!

What a long haul this has been.  First getting banned from Facebook twice in January, then again just recently for 15 days, and then within an hour the banning was raised to 60 days and all for NO reason whatsoever...oh wait, there is a reason...I'm anti-Obama and anti-islam.  How silly of me to forget that.

Facebook and its people in charge, as we all know, are part of the far left liberal agenda, and that agenda means silencing and shutting down any and all opposition to Obama and his basically communist agenda.  Conservative groups all over Facebook are systematically being shut down and only because they are against him.  Conservative posters and commentators are getting blocked and banned by the scores, and again just for being against Obama.

Oh what fun it is when you get banned or blocked, as there is NO way to reach a human at central command, as they wish it to be.  All appeals must be done by e-mail.  The human contact is deliberately missing for they do NOT want to hear appeals nor do they care if the person was wrongly banned or blocked, as was my case.  Our only recourse is to be at their mercy and wait for them to respond to our e-mails, which are supposed to be within 3 business days...mine didn't come through for six, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Well, at least I finally did get back on Facebook as my appeal was successful but I wonder how many others are not as lucky as I was.  So, while this was going on I decided to go the blog route as a adjunct to Facebook, because as a blogger on an independent site Facebook cannot touch me.  It turned out that my blog was a success, so I will keep it operational at the same time as I continue on Facebook.  After all, we can never have enough venues for our Conservative message and for getting the TRUTH out, because we all know Obama and the lame stream media will never tell us the truth.

Evolution Of An Obama Dictatorship: Nullifying Congress To Nullifying The Supreme Court

By: Kris Zane / The Western Center for Journalism

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A video summary of the Obama Administration’s recent unconstitutional acts, including Secretary of Defense Panetta telling Congress Obama did not need approval for going to war; Panetta disarming Marines in a war zone during a speech; Obama’s March 16, 2012 executive order calling for what is in effect the power to declare martial law during a ‘peacetime national emergency’; and finally Obama’s declaring the Supreme Court’s power to strike down a law as unconstitutional ‘unprecedented and extraordinary.’ The creator of the video calls for Barack Obama’s immediate impeachment.

See the video here:
http://www.westernjournalism.com/evolution-of-an-obama-dictatorship-nullifying-congress-to-nullifying-the-supreme-court/?utm_source=Western+Journalism&utm_campaign=2b8ea555c5-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email

Does Obama Already Know The Supreme Court’s Decision On ObamaCare?

By Doug Book / The Western Center for Journalism

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If the Supreme Court has followed long standing tradition, the preliminary decision as to the Constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate and perhaps the fate of the law itself was known to the Justices on Friday of last week.

After oral arguments, it is common practice for the Justices to meet Friday morning in a conference room where each Justice votes on the case, beginning with the Chief Justice and proceeding according to seniority. Shortly thereafter, Justices will be assigned the writing of majority and minority opinions and comment on various case issues. Decisions can change over the months until presentation of the final ruling, which in the case of ObamaCare will probably be sometime in late June.

Whatever happened Friday morning, it’s a safe bet that Barack Hussein Obama was the 10^th person to know, having undoubtedly received a call from Elena Kagan minutes after the meeting ended.What will be Obama’s “stagecraft” between now and the day the Court makes its decision known to the rest of us?

Many political pundits believe Obama’s chances for re-election will be seriously impaired if the Court should find his signature power grab unconstitutional. But don’t believe it.

As was made obvious by his cynical race-baiting in the Trayvon Martin affair, Obama is desperate to gin up the same level of excitement and interest among blacks that helped put him over the top in 2008. Simply celebrating a court victory will not get it done.

But if he is able to claim that 5 biased, Republican-appointed judges prevented black children receiving the same healthcare benefits enjoyed by most whites, the important campaign “race war” will be off and running.

In the meantime, it’s doubtful we will be able to divine the Court’s decision from Obama’s words or actions.

On Monday, he said overturning the law “would amount to an unprecedented, extraordinary step of judicial activism.” He made it clear that the unelected Justices have no business overturning the work done by the people’s elected representatives.

And in classic liberal form, he literally dared the Court to undo the benefits already provided to some 2.5 million children and previously uninsured.

But Obama is likely to engage in the same hyperbole regardless of the Court’s decision. If the Justices ruled against ObamaCare, he would be setting the stage for public outrage over denied healthcare coverage which is the people’s “right” and for which Democrats—the Party OF the people—worked so long and hard.

And if the Court found in favor of ObamaCare he will claim that it was his power and authority as guardian of the public good which ultimately convinced—perhaps even shamed– the Court into making the “correct” decision.The God-like power of The One!

While Obama engages in political theater until the final ruling is made, all the rest of us can do is pray that Justices Roberts and Kennedy will decide the Founders did NOT intend the America people be slaves to the federal government.  With our liberty at stake, it will be a nervous 3 months.