Why the Supreme Court may invalidate Obama's amnesty

Mickey Kaus makes an interesting argument that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the Supreme Court may act on the lawsuit John Boehner is planning to file, and reverse President Obama’s planned executive action on amnesty:

With Obama’s executive amnesty imminent, anonymous White House aides are cockily dismissing John Boehner’s threatened lawsuit against it as a stunt. Even among opponents of executive amnesty — and I’m with them — there’s a tendency to pooh pooh the suit. It’s a loser, it will take forever to decide, it’s an attempt to ‘redirect Republican rage’ away from budgetary remedies like denying funding, etc.

Not so fast. I’m all for giving defunding a try — also holding up appointments — but don’t sell the lawsuit short. I’ll even go so far as to lay down an Yglesias style marker: If Obama’s executive action is as broad as described, the Supreme Court will strike it down.

Kaus readily admits that he hasn’t researched the legal technicalities. He dismisses these as useful for writing an opinion, but not necessarily the real reason behind many important Supreme Court decisions.

As state court judge Richard Neely argued in his revealing book, How Courts Govern America, there’s often a show rationale for a decision (embodied in the court’s opinion) and the real rationale. The real rationale isn’t necessarily bogus or partisan or otherwise “result oriented.” It’s just unstated. (snip) The U.S. Supreme Court, in particular, is likely to feel a duty to intervene to preserve balance in the Constitutional system. And when conscientious judges see a need to intervene for some such intuitive, system-preserving reason, it seems like they’find a way to do it, even if it requires bending the technicalities and the show rationale to accomplish that purpose.

Congress must defund the actions required by the EO. One thing would be to block funds to issue the green cards and anything else related to the mechanics of implementing the EO. They should do the same thing for Obamacare but the Supreme Court will gut that law at some point soon.

It seems that this is not a waste of Boehner’s time: if the Supreme Court ever had any purpose at all, judging a President’s blatant tyranny and treason ought to be at the top of their list.

Problem is, of course, that - like Congress - the Supremes have no guns. Obama has all the guns under the control of his branch of the government. All except the ones the citizens have . . . . are we considered a “branch” of our government? Why, I believe so.

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