Obama, Bachmann Differ on Whether He has Supreme Court Power ("...take off that robe")

Fox News ^ | 6/29/11 | Elena Isella

[Libloather]

Obama, Bachmann Differ on Whether He has Supreme Court Power
by Elena Isella | June 29, 2011

Is President Obama also a Supreme Court justice? Does he wear a black robe in the West Wing? Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., thinks so.

An unofficial dispute broke out Wednesday between President Obama and the GOP presidential candidate.

Stumping in Charleston, South Carolina, Bachmann passionately spoke of defending the constitution saying it's a ‘magnificent political document.' She then quickly pointed out that Obama would not uphold the law of the land as it pertains to the Defense of Marriage Act. The administration stopped defending court challenges to the law when Attorney General Eric Holder advised he believes it is unconstitutional.

"Well, Mr. President take off that Supreme Court robe," she told the crowd. "You are not the Supreme Court. You don't get to decide if a law is constitutional or not."

Later Wednesday at a presidential press conference in the East Room of the White House, the second question, asked by NBC's Chuck Todd, was a ‘hodge-podge question,' according to Obama, that sought answers on an array of legal issues.

"Do you believe the War Powers Act is constitutional? Do you believe that the debt limit is constitutional, the idea that Congress can do this? And do you believe that marriage is a civil right?," Todd asked.

That's when the former constitutional law professor distanced himself from his legal background in answering the question.

"I'm not a Supreme Court justice, so I'm not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on here," said President Obama in his initial response to the question.

Throughout Obama's nearly nine-minute response, he wore the hat of a politician instead of professor to avoid answering the question directly.

[Libloather]

"Well, Mr. President take off that Supreme Court robe," she told the crowd.

Didn't the little pervert Weiner get the boot for the very same thing?

[trumandogz]

“Stumping in Charleston, South Carolina, Bachmann passionately spoke of defending the constitution {sic}....”

The writer of the article should be fired.

[unseen1]

what the hell is she talking about. She made no sense.

[trumandogz]

Not only does it not make sense, it would earn a grade of F in an eight grade English Composition class.

[unseen1]

thx i thought i was just being dense from lack of sleep.

[nathanbedford]

This is a fundamental question in the American constitutional system. We have two very different reactions by our Presidents to Supreme Court directives.

The first, involved Andrew Jackson when he willfully violated a court order concerning the removal of the Cherokees along the Trail of tears. He anticipated Stalin's question about how many divisions the Pope has by saying that the Supreme Court can enforce its own order, knowing full well it had not the power to do so.

The second, occurred when Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and integrated the schools pursuant to the Supreme Court's directives in accordance with Brown vs. the Board of Education. In doing so Eisenhower affirmed the principle of Marbury vs. Madison that it is the Supreme Court that decides.

We have other examples such as when Bush signed the campaign finance law which he said he believed was unconstitutional but left it to the court to declare. The court did not so declare. We have what I believe to be a deplorable series of signing declarations by presidents which muddy the waters and serve as political documents to let the president have it both ways but which have the potential to cause constitutional mischief.

We have however, a series of arrogant usurpations by Obama in which he decides what laws he will obey or enforce and which he will ignore. Recently he has declared that enforcement of our immigration laws will be set at naught claiming prosecutorial discretion. He has declined to obey the war Powers act respecting his actions in Libya.

As conservatives we must guard against any tendency to take a position reflexively because it is contrary to Obama. Our objective must always be to align ourselves with the Constitution regardless of any accident of history which might unaccountably also put Obama on the right side of that document.

Since Marbury vs. Madison it has been generally assumed that it is the Supreme Court which is to act as arbiter of the Constitution. Dissatisfaction with this exclusive office in the courts has mooted, in both Northern and Southern states, the doctrine of nullification. We have ceded great powers to wartime presidents like Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt. We might think of the patriot act in this context.

Curiously, the power of the Congress to grant or withhold jurisdiction of the court has rarely been used against the court in an effort to favor a congressional view of the Constitution. However, president Roosevelt has threatened to pack the court and Pres. Jefferson did, with the cooperation of Congress, affect the jurisdiction of the federal courts and I think threaten the very existence of some courts.

So this is not an easy subject for us and does not lend itself to prescriptions which are reactive to the personality in the White House today or to the events of the day.

[toddausauras]

We'd better hope in late 2012 that

a) Obama chooses to debate his opponent at all.

Let be be specific: Obama will likely only debate once (the media will say it's just like Reagan/Carter only one, not three) or not at all. The media will likely find the latter possibility refreshing if it plays out that way.

b) Whoever our GOP candidate is takes him down to the floor in many verbal SMACKDOWNS. No wusses like Huntsman and McCain/Graham) or I'm gonna lose it.

Stop fuc*ing playing nice with the guy who's sealing our doom for God's sake.

I would much rather see Palin be the nominee but I do trust that Bachmann won't shrink from attacking Obama. That's enough to win my vote. I want our nominee to attack him so hard that Obama doesn't even show up for the inauguration should he lose.

[toddausauras]

Sorry about the typos. I type poorly when angry.

[ExGeeEye]

Better than turning green and demolishing your haberdashery, I suppose.

[FlyingEagle]

The Liar in Chief is no Professor. Urban myth.

[Rapscallion]

Tyrants can decide if a law is constitutional or not.

[mikey_hates_everything]

“...so I’m not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on here...”

Then based on his Presidential actions, he can only be either a very bad constitutional law professor or a hypocrite and fraud.

[fluffdaddy]

Nice summary. The simplistic idea that only the Supreme Court gets to read the Constitution and determine what it means is popular with short-sighted conservatives and will be as long as the Court is more conservative than the President. Reverse that situation and suddenly the judiciary will be off on a leftist frolic and we will need the President to rein it in.

The executive power is vested in the President. Only the President can determine what he constitutionally can and cannot do. If he gets it wrong, Congress can impeach and remove him from office or the people can vote him out at the next election. The Supreme Court is a bit player in this drama.

Michelle Bachmann just said something indefensibly silly, again. She's supposed to be a lawyer and constitutionalism is one of her main themes. Even so, she doesn't understand the first thing about separation of powers or the proper limits on the judicial role. She just echoes the shallowest, most ignorant constitutional talking points from the right.

We really need to do better than this.

[Beckwith]

Again, Obama lies about being a “professor.”

He was never a “professor.” He was an “instructor.”

According to TheBlogProf blog, the University of Chicago Law School faculty hated Obama, “because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool.”

Is the Obama’s resume accurate when it comes to his career and qualifications? I can corroborate that Obama’s “teaching career” at Chicago was, to put it kindly, a sham.

I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back, and he did not have many nice things to say about “Barry.” Obama applied for a position as an adjunct and wasn’t even considered. A few weeks later the law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn’t have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.

According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).

Consider this: Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer.” He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he “fibbed” on his bar application.

A senior lecturer is one thing. A fully ranked law professor is another. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “Obama did NOT ‘hold the title’ of a University of Chicago law school professor.” Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “served as a professor” in the law school, but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school later confirmed.

“He did not hold the title of professor of law,” said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law.

The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the U.S. Constitution recently during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution.

By the way, the promises Obama mentions, are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech?

When you are a phony it’s hard to keep facts straight.

[nathanbedford]

I realize how tedious it is to endlessly repeat the maxim, all politics in America is not local but ultimately racial, but it bears saying now that much of the prestige of the United States Supreme Court comes from the civil rights struggle. In other words, because the nation during the course of the 20th century concluded that Jim Crow was insupportable, the Supreme Court gained much prestige and therefore much power and influence by dismantling segregation.

It is a result of the civil rights struggle in the court's participation in it that the Supreme Court is almost universally regarded as the arbiter of the Constitution. I have no doubt that history has yet a card to play in this game. Incidentally, much of the prestige, power and influence enjoyed by the establishment media came from its role in fighting segregation.

On the other hand, the 19th-century Dred Scott decision, also a matter of race affecting politics, played a role in precipitating the Civil War and caused the court to lose prestige and influence.

Race has also politicized the staffing of the court. We began with a Jewish seat with Louis Brandeis; we added a black seat with Thurgood Marshall; we added a woman's seat and a Hispanic seat. So race politics (and by that I mean identity politics) has profoundly radicalized the court.

It is a hell of a way to "expound" the Constitution.

[Rummyfan]

That's when the former constitutional law professor distanced himself from his legal background in answering the question.

Not to be pedantic, but he was a visiting lecturer, not a professor. Anyone who took 7th grade civics knows more about the Constitution than Obozo.

[The Sons of Liberty]

He was never a “professor.” He was an “instructor.”

Correct. I strongly suspect the only academic study of The Constitution and Constituional Law 0bama ever really did centered on how he could "get around" or circumvent it for his own purposes.

[gov_bean_ counter]

Mail

[kabumpo]

He was NOT the editor of the law review. He was the president of the law review.

[Beckwith]

Re: He was NOT the editor of the law review. He was the president of the law review.

I know that. He was an editor before being affirmatively actioned.

Please go educate the source of the article:

http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/03/chicago-law-school-faculty-hated-obama.html

And it’s impolite to yell.