Responses To President Obama's "Attempt To Intimidate The Supreme Court"

Toon by A.F. "Tony Branco

by Sam Adams MMIV: President Obama continues to take criticism for his preemptive attack on the Supreme Court on Monday, when he claimed that if the justices found his health care law to be unconstitutional it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

AFP writes today, “Barack Obama's health care blast at the Supreme Court is provoking an inquisition into whether a law professor turned president unwisely trashed political and constitutional convention. Few court watchers can recall a recent precedent for Obama's public warning Monday to the nine top justices in America that his legacy-boosting health reform legislation should stand. Presidents generally avoid comment on cases before the court, to avoid prejudicing proceedings and infecting the respected body with the polarized political stew swamping the rest of Washington.”

Investor Business Daily noted, "Someone will have to remind President Obama the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, part of a system of checks and balances designed to rein in precisely the kind of runaway government exhibited by his administration.

". . . the Supreme Court is designed to . . . determine the constitutionality of laws passed by democratically elected legislatures and Congress. Surely the constitutional law professor has heard of Marbury v. Madison, the 1802 case that formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. It was also the first time in Western history a court invalidated a law by declaring it 'unconstitutional.' Such an action is not unprecedented. ... By one estimate, the Supreme Court has struck down 53 laws between 1981 and 2005 alone.

"The president speaks of a law passed by a 'democratically elected Congress' yet it was a bill no one had read and which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass to find out what was in it. The fact is, most of the rules and regulations are written by unelected bureaucrats authorized by a bill that refers not to 'we the people' but to 'the secretary shall determine.' ... To say the bill passed 'a strong majority' of a democratically elected Congress is an overstatement. The bill passed the House with a vote of 219-212, a majority of seven, with 34 Democrats defecting. ...

"This isn't the first time President Obama has lectured the Supreme Court. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, he shamefully scolded the justices on national television for 'having reversed a century of law' in a ruling in which the court was protecting the freedom of political speech enshrined more than two centuries ago in the First Amendment."

CBS News adds, “President Barack Obama has been running against Congress for a while, but as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of his health care overhaul, recent comments appear to have put him at odds with the courts as well. . . . [Tuesday] was the second straight day the president gave his take on what the high court should do. On Monday, he seemed to suggest the court didn't even have the power to strike down the law.”

American's For Limited Government noted, "Obama is attempting to intimidate the Court by delegitimizing it. That is what is truly behind this intimidation. Which is what you’d expect from a thug dictator like Hugo Chavez or Robert Mugabe, not from the President of the United States. Overtly attacking the Court in such a shameless way is beneath the dignity of his high office. It may be nothing new, but that does not make Obama’s attack on the Court any less contemptible either. One hopes that even if he does not embrace the likely ruling against Obamacare’s constitutionality, he at least complies with it. If not, we may well have an extraordinary constitutional crisis on our hands just months before the election."

Even the Washington Post editors were taken aback by Obama’s initial comments, writing, “President Obama’s comments Monday about the Supreme Court were jarring. If the court were to strike down the health-care law, Mr. Obama said, it would be a blatant example of judicial activism. That ‘an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,’ the president said, would be ‘an unprecedented, extraordinary step.’ Well, not exactly, and the comments strayed perilously close to a preemptive strike on the court’s legitimacy if it were to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.”

The Wall Street Journal put it more bluntly in an editorial yesterday: “Mr. Obama's remarks suggest he is joining others on the left in warning the Justices that they will pay a political price if they dare to overturn even part of the law.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took a dim view of President’ Obama’s warnings to the Court, saying yesterday, “Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare’s unprecedented mandate on the American people, elected leaders have an obligation to protect our system of checks and balances. The President, more than anyone else, has an obligation to uphold the legitimacy of our judicial system. But his remarks on the Court reflect not only an attempt to influence the outcome, but a preview of Democrat attacks to come if they don’t get their way. Only someone who would browbeat the Court during the State of the Union, and whose administration stifled speech during the health care debate, would try to intimidate the Court while it's deliberating one of the most consequential cases of our time. This president's attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court falls well beyond distasteful politics; it demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for our system of checks and balances.”
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Sam Adams MMIV is the pen name for un-named beltway sources. While receiving information from many sources, a composition of sources sometimes needs to be generally credited. Thanks to all the Adams patriots who speak up for America.

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