You’ll remember that it was as a candidate for
president that Barry “Almighty” promised to restore balance to the
Constitution, after what many argued had been a period of executive overreach,
infringing on civil liberties and the balance of powers. When he launched his campaign, he even went
so far as to refer to his past career as a “civil rights lawyer,” and a
constitutional law teacher. But as we
know, his past career involved little more than being a community agitator and
a ‘senior lecturer.’
Once in office, however, Barry chose to embark upon
a somewhat different path. One that
would, instead, see him choosing to expand executive powers even further, and that
would lead to what has been a very aggressive 6-year assault on judicial
independence. The most recent example
was on Monday, when Barry discussed the upcoming Supreme Court ruling in King
v. Burwell, which challenges federal subsidies for Obamacare insurance policies
in states that have not set up their own exchanges.
The plaintiffs argue that the letter of the law bars
such subsidies. Barry, in claiming to be
citing “well-established statutory interpretation approaches,” said the case
should be “easy” to throw out, and the had the nerve to add, “Frankly, it
probably shouldn’t have been taken up.”
It was Charles Krauthammer who described it as being “indecent,” for
Barry to so blatantly attack the Supreme Court’s competence in advance of the
ruling. But this was not the first time
that Barry has done so.
It was in April 2012, after oral arguments in the
original Obamacare case (NFIB v. Sebelius) went badly for his side, that Barry
responded by challenging the power of judicial review itself, warning America
lest an “unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted
and passed law.” Now, in the first place,
for Barry to refer to Obamacare as being a “duly constituted and passed law” was
more than a stretch. What it is, is a
result of what was an act of pure political chicanery.
And sadly it would appear that it was Barry’s rather
thinly disguised warning that convinced Chief Justice John Roberts to
essentially throw the American people under the bus while at the same time choosing
to abandon his Constitutional responsibility by changing his vote in order to
preserve the popular image of the Court.
Roberts issued an opinion that effectively rewrote the Obamacare penalty
as a tax–a far more brazen form of judicial activism than anything Barry had
described.
Later, in his second inaugural address, Barry again
sought to direct the Court, this time on the gay marriage cases it was about to
hear, suggesting they had a civic duty to rule the way he wanted. Now at the risk of repeating myself, this is
not how one expects an American president to act. And for someone who claims to be a
“Constitutional scholar” he seems to be rather ignorant about how our
government works. Either that or he
simply sees himself as being far above all that constitutional nonsense.
Perhaps the worst incident was one that played out
on live television in front of the entire nation, during Barry’s 2010 State of the Union address, as six of the nine Justices sat quietly in the House
chamber. Barry rebuked the Court for its decision in the Citizens United case,
saying their decision would “open the floodgates for special
interests–including foreign corporations–to spend without limit in our
elections.” And we watched the Democrats
disgracefully, yet typically, leap to their feet in applause.
When courts have ruled against his administration,
Barry has tried to ignore or defy them. In
2011, a federal judge found the Obama administration in contempt of court for
banning offshore oil drilling in the wake of the BP/Deepwater Horizon disaster,
even after the policy had been struck down.
And it was more recently, that Barry tried to snooker the federal judge
in the lawsuit against his “executive amnesty” immigration policy, triggering
an angry rebuke from the court.
Even Barry’s judicial appointments have shown a
blatant disregard for the institution. He packed the D.C. Circuit, which had
been balanced between Republican and Democrat appointees, in the hope that a
heavy Democrat majority would shield his very ambitious executive agenda from
challenge. It’s sad that these ‘judges’
are so willing to put their leftist agenda over and above the Constitution. Democrats are simply not to be trusted, and
therefore should never be appointed to the bench.
Barry’s two Supreme Court appointees, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, two the least qualified individuals to ever sit on
the high court, were chosen not for their judicial experience (dubious in the
former, absent in the latter), but rather because of their race and
gender. This is not how a president of
the United States should treat the judiciary, or the Constitution. But then, Barry is far from being our typical
president, he sees himself more as some two-bit, tin-horn, dictator
wanna-be.
The last one to attempt anything similar to what
Barry is trying to pull here, was Democrat Party icon, Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
and even he ran up against the opposition of his own party, who were more
well-steeped in constitutional principle than any of today’s crop of leftist
Democrats. And for all of his
high-minded, professorial rhetoric on the campaign trail, Barry’s real attitude
towards the Constitution is that it is a means to an end–and the judiciary
better not get in his way.
Putting politics aside, is there anyone who can in
any way justify Barry’s antics. As I have
asked before, is this what we should expect from American president? Frankly I would think blacks would be so
pissed off because when Barry first came into office, as this nation’s first
black president, it would have been so easy for him to become so much more than
a rabid ideologue. Imagine if he had come
into office wanting to strengthen America instead of working to weaken it? What might he have become?
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