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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (650174)4/3/2012 2:22:34 PM
From: d[-_-]b2 Recommendations  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1576155
 
And why is it you want innocent people unarmed while the criminals ignore such laws?



To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (650174)4/3/2012 3:46:04 PM
From: longnshort2 Recommendations  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576155
 
Obama Puts Out Bounty on Supreme Court April 03, 2012

All Audio & Video »


BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama and his attack on the Supreme Court yesterday. It happened toward the end of the program in the last half hour and it was happening on the fly. I didn't really have enough time to listen in detail to what Obama said, and thus I didn't have a chance to, in detail, reply. I've now listened to what Obama said. I've got three sound bites here.

When I got home yesterday at about six o'clock last night I got a flash encrypted message from a friend who says, "You know, somebody in the court leaked to Obama. That's why he went out there and did this today. Somebody called him. He lost the vote, the preliminary vote on Friday. He lost it, and somebody leaked it." And that became an active theory that began to be bandied about amongst a lot of people that I know. Because people were saying,
"Why go out," as Obama did yesterday...? It was in the form of a question. We must remember that he was asked a question about this. He didn't launch into this on his own, but once he got the question, it was, "Katie, bar the door," and he was off to the races.

And the question everybody was asking is: "Why do this? Why attack the court? Why intimidate them, why threaten them if they had voted to uphold the mandate?" And I have an answer for that. See, I know these people. I know liberals. I don't want that statement to sound bombastic. You people here -- new listeners to the program -- that's not a braggadocios statement. It's not bombastic. It's not outrage or any attempt to shock. I just know them, and so when somebody asks me, "Why would Obama say that if he didn't have to? If he had been told that the preliminary vote on Friday was in his favor, why take the attitude that he took?" There is an answer to that. I don't know if it's right, but there is an answer.

He's a thug.

And again, I'm not trying to be provocative when I say this. I'm just quoting Bill Clinton, folks. Bill Clinton referred to Barack Obama as a Chicago thug during the 2008 presidential campaign. This after Clinton some years earlier had told Juanita Broaddrick, "Put some ice on that lip" after she said he raped her. (I mentioned that for this "war on women" that supposedly the Republicans are waging.) But there's every possibility that Obama feeling his oats, being told that the vote went his way, would still go out and do this, 'cause he knows there are more votes to come. I'm not predicting it. I'm just saying I could understand it.

It's easier to understand that somebody leaked to him that the preliminary vote went against him and that the mandate fell by whatever the preliminary vote was and that explains his attitude yesterday. But I can see him saying what he said if the vote went in his favor as well, as a means of further intimidation, making sure they don't change their minds or whatever. You might say, "Well, how would that work? Wouldn't that just kind of make them be more resistant?" The reason this is all a crock in the first place is that (and we will go through this as we play the Obama sound bites) it is obvious that to the left this is an entirely political process.

There's nothing judicial going on here. There's nothing legal. This isn't even really about the Constitution. This is about politics, pure and simple, and Barack Obama's reelection. It's all it is. But he says things in these sound bites which you'll hear coming up and they're chilling to me. "The court has to understand..." "The court must understand," is one of his sound bites. No, the court must not -- does not have to -- listen to you. What is this, "The court must understand"? That is a threat! How many of you think it possible that Obama will make a trip to the Supreme Court before the vote, before the final vote? Can you see it happening? I can.

I'm not predicting it. (interruption) You're shaking your head. You don't think it would ever happen? Why would he be...? Why would Obama visiting the Supreme Court between now and June be any more unconscionable than what he did yesterday? (interruption) It's a visual? No! He's just going up to say hi to Kagan. He's going up to say hi to Kagan and Sotomayor, to see how they're doing. (interruption) He called 'em out of the State of the Union right to their face. Remember that with Justice Alito? Anyway, let me take a break. We'll come back and we will get into some of these sound bites and we'll tear this down as it happened sometimes line by line. Mike, be prepared when I say, "Stop." There might be some frequent stops and starts as we go through this.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Reuters was just as excited as they could be over what Obama did. "Obama Takes a Shot at the Supreme Court Over Health Care -- President Obama took an opening shot at conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday, warning that a rejection of his sweeping health care law would be an act of judicial activism that Republicans say they abhor." Warning? Warning? And Reuters is happy! (That's right! You take it to these conservatives!) Judicial activism? You know, the debate is constantly held: "Is he really this ignorant or naive, or is this just strategic?"

Everybody knows that judicial activism is not what Obama is explaining it to be. Judicial activism is the court MAKING law. Judicial activism is the court WRITING law. What Obama is trying to say here is that the court will be engaging in judicial activism if it judges the law according to the Constitution. That's not what judicial activism is. I know exactly what they're doing. They're trying to take this term, and they're trying to redefine it publicly to fit their needs and redefine the language (as they constantly are). But, folks, I'm gonna tell you something. It is preposterous, and it's even a little scary to hear such abject ignorance from a supposed constitutional scholar.

This is a man, Barack Obama, who was once paid to teach law, constitutional law, and he doesn't even know the meaning of the term "judicial activism." No one ever accuses any judges of judicial activism for following the Constitution! Judges are accused of judicial activism for not following the Constitution, for legislating from the bench, for writing their own law. This is basic knowledge. Now, maybe this is why we've never seen Obama's grade transcripts, if he really doesn't know the difference. But I suspect that he does know the difference, and I suspect that he's trying to redefine terms here to fit. Because this has become a template argument for the left.

You remember Jeffrey Toobin? You talk about a guy who's done a 180 here, turned on a dime. During the week of oral arguments, Jeff Toobin, CNN legal analyst, was in an abject panic. These people on the left... And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is the solid truth. They do not expose themselves to any ideological thinking other than their own. They have assumed that conservatism is racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, all of these cliches they attach to it. And they're not interested in talking to anybody that they think is a conservative. They really are not familiar with other ideas. They don't speak the language. We, of course, can speak liberalism as well as they do. We understand it.

How can we not? We're exposed to it from the time we're born. They shield themselves, their families, their friends from conservatism as much as possible. Liberalism is a gated community. Not only is liberalism a gated community, there's a moat before you get to the gate. They simply don't understand it. And so Jeff Toobin literally was having a cow when he heard the justices on the court question the government lawyer from a conservative constitutional point of view, and he was shocked. He was unfamiliar with it. Now, you may find it hard to believe. "Rush, these guys are in the news media and they talk about conservatives all day long."

They really are strangers to our core beliefs, folks. So after the shock of being exposed to it wore off, then Toobin and the rest of 'em (including Obama) had to come up with a way to feel right about everything again. They had to come up with a pacifier. And so what they have done is construct this notion of judicial activism to throw it right back in our faces. And now their definition of judicial activism would be the court throwing out something that the United States Congress did. Because, as far as they're concerned, if the Congress did it, and the Congress was Democrats, it's constitutional. No questions asked. No argument possible. That's it. If the court throws that out, that's judicial activism. Judicial activism cannot possibly exist if the court is following the Constitution. This is really a teachable moment here.



To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (650174)4/3/2012 3:52:51 PM
From: longnshort  Respond to of 1576155
 
Our President Shows Off His Scholarity with Much Unintentional Hilarity
Jimmie | April 3, 2012 | Comments (2)
Has anyone mentioned lately that our President, Barack Obama, is a constitutional scholar? I ask because he didn’t seem to have a very good grip on matters Constitutional yesterday when asked about the possibility that the Supreme Court might overturn his signature piece of legislation.

I want to give you his full answer as recorded by Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times. It’s long, so I’ll jump in once in a while with a little commentary of my own just to break the seemingly endless stream of Constitutional scholarity.

“I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, it’s constitutional.

“That’s not just my opinion by the way. That’s the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum, including two very conservative appellate court justices that said this wasn’t even a close case.”

Oh, so if some legal experts agree with you, and a couple of them happen to be members of a party not your own (even if one of them voted for you and you named the other one Ambassador to Malta), your law is constitutional? We don’t need to consult the actual Constitution or anything else written on the subject by the guys who wrote the Constitution? Well, that does make things handy. The converse, of course, would mean that if we conservatives could find a couple left-wing legal experts who believed Roe v. Wade was wrongly-decided, then we could get it overturned. Do you think the President really wants that to be the standard?

No. Neither do I.

The bigger problem with his opinion is that he’s not really offering a learned legal opinion as befits a former Harvard Law Review President and constitutional scholar. His answer, basically, boils down to “It’s constitutional, because shut up, that’s why”. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that ipse dixit would get you laughed out of every courtroom on the planet.

“I think it’s important — because I watched some of the commentary last week — to remind people that this is not an abstract argument. People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of healthcare, the inaffordability of healthcare, their inability to get healthcare because of preexisting conditions.

“The law that’s already in place has already given 2.5 million young people healthcare that wouldn’t otherwise have it. There are tens of thousands of adults with preexisting conditions who have healthcare right now because of this law. Parents don’t have to worry about their children not being able to get healthcare because they can’t be prevented from getting healthcare as a consequence of a preexisting condition. That is part of this law.

“Millions of seniors are paying less for prescription drugs because of this law. Americans all across the country have greater rights and protections with respect to the insurance companies, and are getting preventive care because of this law.

“So, that’s just the part that’s already been implemented. That doesn’t speak to the 30 million people who stand to gain coverage once it’s fully implemented in 2014.

Pardon my cruel conservative heart here, but so what? Not everything that is good is constitutional. I’m sure we’d all be better off if police could simply yank people off the street and search them for open warrants, drugs, or weapons. They can’t. You could make one whale of a case that America would be much improved if you outlawed pornography or Nicki Minaj albums. That’s a no-no, too.

See, here’s the thing about the Constitution that the President does not understand. Our Founders were far less concerned about forcing people into subjection to bring about some nebulous “greater good” than they were in making darned sure the government didn’t drag the rights of the individual into an alley and curb-stomp them to death.

The President’s litany of good things Obamacare had allegedly brought (and don’t for a second believe it didn’t bring a truck-load of bad things as well) doesn’t matter where the Constitution is concerned. When the First Amendment, for example, says “Congress shall make no law…”, there is no parenthetical exception that says “…unless it’s for a really good reason, in which case Congress can make any law it wants”.

“And I think it’s important, I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get healthcare.

“So there’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this but there’s a human element to this, and I hope that’s not forgotten in this political debate.

That thing he said about the mechanism? It’s a flat-out lie. There are several ways to get less expensive health care for that minuscule percentage of people that don’t involve our government dragooning the rest of us into a health insurance system we don’t want. As I wrote last week, the Democrats and Barack Obama did everything in their power to make sure we didn’t hear about those other ways. He’s doing the very same thing here. This is a version of his “some say [crazy impossible thing that no one could ever say] but I say [crazy left-wing twaddle that doesn't sound quite so crazy when compared to the previous crazy thing]” rhetorical device he’s used in approximately every single speech he’s given for the past three years. It was fallacious the first time he did it and it’s fallacious now.

“Ultimately 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.

Ooo! Okay, here’s a game I know how to play! Let’s see if I do as well as the President.

“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law in the case of Marbury v. Madison that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.”

Wait. Maybe I can do better than that.

“I actually continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. And the reason is, because in accordance with precedent out there, namely the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, it’s constitutional. “Ultimately, 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.”

How’d I do? Did I sound just like President Obama there?

Again, I’m no constitutional scholar, but I’m absolutely sure that it would be neither unprecedented nor extraordinary for the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare. In fact, from 1981 to 2005, the SCOTUS has overturned 53 Federal statutes. That’s an awful lot of overturning and I strongly suspect it shows that if the SCOTUS overturned Obamacare, it would be rather ordinary and precedented.

“And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint. That an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident this court will recognize that and not take that step.”

Isn’t it funny that the President decried “judicial activism” yesterday when just five years ago, he clamored for that very “activism” in the partial birth abortion case, Gonzales v. Carhart? I’ll note here that the law he wanted overturned back then passed both houses of Congress with 2/3 majorities, which I”m pretty sure qualifies it as “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress”. In fact, that law passed with far larger majorities than did Obamacare.

After this answer, the President took a follow-up question. What he said was basically a reprise of the very beginning of his original answer, but it’s more clear and, if the GOP has any sense at all, should be in a campaign commercial tomorrow.

“I’m confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld. And again, that’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who’ve examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.”

Behold, the mighty reasoning power of a constitutional scholar! The SCOTUS should uphold the law because it should uphold the law. How can you possibly argue with that? Well, you can’t, for the same reason you can’t argue with a child who believes that smearing poo on a wall is the height of artistic expression. There is no arguing with a mind slammed shut and bolted tight against reason.

You know, I’m actually glad I’m not a constitutional scholar. If Barack Obama is the gold standard for that profession, the standards can’t be all that hig