Posted on 06/27/2012 8:46:39 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Just a little preemptive strike from the left on the eve of the big announcement. If the mandate goes, you’ll be slogging through concern-troll sewage like this for the next week. Might as well put your hip-waders on now.
This is the same guy, by the way, who once dismissed scientific polling as tantamount to “magic.”
For much of modern times, the court has been seen as being above politics. This was very important as a balance to its vast power. Even though justices were appointed by political presidents and approved by political senators, their own politics was to be suppressed.
We realized they were human beings with political opinions, but we expected them to put those opinions aside.
And then came 2000 and the court’s 5-4 decision that made George W. Bush the president of the United States…
The signature of the Roberts Court, Toobin wrote, has been its eagerness to overturn the work of legislatures. This is hardly conservative doctrine but today, politics trumps even ideology. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court “gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law” which amounted to “a boon for Republicans.”…
At this writing, I do not know how a majority of the justices will rule on Obama’s health care plan, which was passed into law by Congress. Two branches of government have spoken, but their speech is but a whisper compared with the shout of our high court.
The die was cast in 2000. And it would take the most dewy-eyed of optimists to expect the court’s decision to be anything other than political.
Er, no, it’s not the “signature” of the Roberts Court to overturn the work of legislatures, although you’ll hear that repeated ad nauseam in the din of whining if things don’t go the left’s way tomorrow. On the contrary, as of 2010, the Roberts Court was less likely to overturn statutes and precedents than any Court over the past 50 years. And as Jonathan Adler notes, in some high-profile cases where the Court has struck down laws recently, they’ve done so by siding with the left’s position. (Boumediene is the most obvious example.) The reason Simon’s under the impression that they’re cutting a swath through the U.S. Code is because the left has decided that the Citizens United ruling is the font of all political evil and because they’re now staring into the abyss of seeing their biggest progressive “achievement” in decades tossed thanks to the constitutional novelty that is the mandate. Come to think of it, the Court did engage in a bit of “activism” lately by tossing most of the new Arizona immigration law, and yet that’s not mentioned in Simon’s elegy for statutes cruelly and dishonorably culled by an overreaching Court. How come?
Also, is it true that “For much of modern times, the court has been seen as being above politics”? I recall plenty of pants-wetting about politicization in the mid- to late 90s when the Rehnquist Court made a brief feint towards limiting Congress’s Commerce power before seemingly forgetting all about it. And although it was before my time, I know that many conservatives thought the Warren Court was hewing to a political line in its decisions more often than not. My hunch is that the Court tends to be seen as “above politics” when it has a few heterodox members in the Kennedy mold who aren’t always predictable along ideological lines. You saw some of that with the Burger Court and the early Rehnquist Court as liberal dinosaurs like Brennan and Marshall clashed with conservatives like Rehnquist and Scalia while more centrist justices like Powell and Stewart broke the stalemate. When you’ve got a Court with a stable, fairly ideologically solid majority, you’re going to hear the “politicization” charge more often. When you don’t, you won’t. Which reminds me: When was the last time a Democratic appointee played the Kennedy swing-vote role on the Court by siding occasionally with conservatives? Run through the list of justices and you’ll find plenty of post-war examples of Republican appointees voting liberal — consistently so in the notorious cases of Brennan, Stevens, and Souter. Who’s the last Democratic justice who proved to be something more than an almost entirely predictable liberal-voting hack while on the Court? I think you have to go back to Byron White — a JFK appointee who landed on the Court 50 years ago. So much for “above politics.”
Speaking of predictable hacks, here’s Chris Matthews warming up his “is this a new Dred Scott?” routine for tomorrow, just in case. And Patches Kennedy is warning of some sort of tea-party apocalypse if the law is upheld, which is not untrue if you define “apocalypse” in terms of “massive voter turnout.” Exit quotation from Timothy Carney, weighing the consequences of left-wing epistemic closure: “The truth is we’ve entered an era where many liberal commentators are willing to dismiss any argument as illegitimate just because they don’t like it.” Click the image to watch.
Why anyone would pay attention to Pat Kennedy is beyond me. A mere drunk, so out of it he couldn’t keep a safe seat for life.
If the conservatives on this court have become an “activist” court, it’s justice and it’s payback for a few decades of activism by liberal justices.
Because it’s not a LIBTARD court.
Arizona and the recent eminent domain case makes you wonder if it really is, though.
The moron obviously thinks that only “Republican” justices are “political”. In other words, the moron believes that if the vote is 5 - 4, then only the “5” part of that ruling is “political”. The moron is simple minded and not worth five seconds of rebuttal. It’s a shame some people feel they must waste their time responding to simple minded morons.
Night!
They lost their honor way back at Roe v Wade. Until they fix that, they have no honor.
What scares me is the thought that some “conservatives” on this court have become an “activist” for the other side.
I guess we’ll find out in a few hours.
Why should they be any different than the rest of Barry's America? The whole damn country has lost its honor.
A few Decades? Try more than half a century! The very idea that you can maintain any form of republican law that places primacy of recent Federal court mistakes over the written text, historic practice, and original court findings is madness.
It is a recipe for a court with the power rewrite law to allow judges to set new precedence and ignoring past practice & written law.
Michael Medved (Moderate wimp) on CNBC’s “Kudlow” said Americans were tired of this fight;. want to move on.
naturally none of the above recognize conservative Americans as relevant.
What he is missing is that the COURT is not more political than it used to be. The problem is that we have a party who openly defies the Constitution. The point of the Supreme Court is, after all, to defend that document. Only a complete, biased fool would refuse to see that the Court has not been the problem, but they are the solution to a party run wild.
The turn came when FDR’s court got its hands on the Commerse Clause and discovered that the federal government was actually empowered to do whatever it damned well pleased.
Karma is a bitch
Behold the perversion of the libtard “mind”, where an “activist court” is now defined as one that upholds the Constitution. Up is down, black is white, and right is wrong... the vile POS need to be vanquished from the Earth, as their diseased minds only serve to diminish our happiness and freedom.
One only has to read” Brown I “to see that you are right. Warren’s opinion is almost embarrassing in its efforts to avoid the fact that the decision goes against all precedent. Ir dared not admit that decisions such ass “Plessy” had been wrongly decided, because the Court must seem infallible as well as impartial.
“...simple-minded morons...”
Nah. Scu&ags is more like it.
IMHO
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