Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

November 2024
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  

Archives

Q: When does “unprecedented” mean “many many many many many times — and in fact, that’s our job, Mr Constitutional lecturer!”

A: When it’s uttered by a man who hasn’t studied history, doesn’t understand the nature of man, eschews the foundational principles of the country he longs to “fundamentally tranform,” and who views the world as his to reconfigure until it at long last matches the one he envisions — a man who has been enabled in that narcissistic delusion his entire adult life by those who have groomed him and trained him like a performing seal, one that, because it receives the applause of Sea World tourists, believes itself to be in charge of the show.

Time for someone to point a mirror at this trained seal. Because who knows? Maybe if he catches a glimpse of himself begging for smelt in a pointy birthday cap and little seal tutu he’ll be less likely to take himself so damn seriously.

38 Replies to “Q: When does “unprecedented” mean “many many many many many times — and in fact, that’s our job, Mr Constitutional lecturer!””

  1. Blake says:

    I detect a faint bit of mockery in the Open Letter.

  2. DarthLevin says:

    “Mr. President? There’s a Señor Montoya on the phone for you, he said something about the meaning of ‘unprecedented’? Will you take the call?”

  3. Blake says:

    I’m beginning to believe the President goes for the big obvious lie, because a baldfaced whopper from the President tends to stun people into disbelief.

    Or, President Obama is stupid enough to believe that if he says it, it must be true.

    I admit, could go either way.

  4. sdferr says:

    Looks to me as though Barry has himself caught in a trap of his own making, much like the antisemite dweeb Marc Elliot L’Hommedieu. Backing and filling only serves to bury himself further under his stupidity and lies.

    “We have not seen the court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue like healthcare, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned … at least since the ’30s,” Obama said.

  5. Kira Argounova says:

    There goes O, blowing all the dog whistles to rally the rabids

  6. alppuccino says:

    “Trained seal”.

    Seal is black. He sang Kiss From a Rose.

    = Racist.

  7. JHoward says:

    “I don’t anticipate the court striking this down,” [Obama] said. “I think they take their responsibilities seriously.”

    Oooh. That wasn’t exactly smart, Mr. President.

  8. geoffb says:

    As with the University of Oregon below, for the progressive mind the future is fixed. The past must bend to adjust the present to be on course to that fixed point hanging out there in time.

  9. sdferr says:

    As far as the ACA goes, it might be argued a law like unto it has never been overturned by the Supreme Court insofar as a law like unto it has never been passed to begin with. Is there another more egregiously and willfully unconstitutional? It’s hard to come up with one.

  10. cranky-d says:

    “… At least since the 30’s.”

    You mean, back when FDR scared the Supreme Court into compliance with all his wishes and made himself the de-facto dictator of the US?

    Good times.

  11. dicentra says:

    When it’s uttered by a man who hasn’t studied history,

    Oh, he knows damn good and well what it means to compare a law against enumerated powers and decide whether the law passes muster, and he knows that SCOTUS strikes down laws all the time.

    He just finds it rhetorically inconvenient to demonstrate that knowledge, so he concocts a narrative better suited to his narcissistic desires, using language to say not what he believes to be true but what he believes to be useful.

    Just as Alinsky prescribed.

  12. cranky-d says:

    He has really exceeded my expectations. I mean, I knew he was a ideologue, but he has really doubled-down on the fascism.

    It’s breathtaking.

  13. newrouter says:

    Via Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, it can be argued that the president has already effectively subsumed the Senate. It does nothing without his say-so. Via his czar appointments, he has circumvented the Senate’s advise and consent role on a scale no previous president has done. By short-circuiting the federal budgeting process, he has taken away one of the prime powers invested in the US House. He has used the power of the federal bureaucracy to assert sweeping policy not passed or signed into law, powers that put the federal government more and more in control of the private sector. ObamaCare is a similar partisan assertion of raw power, and he seems to be daring the court to throw ObamaCare out. The president is leading the band that seeks to delegitimize the US Supreme Court. His is the behavior of a dictator on the march.

    link

  14. dicentra says:

    He has really exceeded my expectations.

    Not mine. I knew who and what he was from the off, and I knew he would push as hard and as far as he thought he could get away with.

  15. leigh says:

    Same here, di. Did the man not look deranged on the teevee this morning?

  16. Crawford says:

    You mean, back when FDR scared the Supreme Court into compliance with all his wishes and made himself the de-facto dictator of the US?

    And threw the Japanese into prison camps.

    I figure with the new-found danger posed by white-Hispanics, that’ll be floated for them any minute now.

  17. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Now, now Visigoths, no need for your toe-hair to curl. All he meant was that there’s no precedent for overturning one of the bills he’s signed into law, that’s all.

  18. Pablo says:

    The 5th Circuit is not amused:

    In the escalating battle between the administration and the judiciary, a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president’s bluff — ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.

    The order, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, appears to be in direct response to the president’s comments yesterday about the Supreme Court’s review of the health care law. Mr. Obama all but threw down the gauntlet with the justices, saying he was “confident” the Court would 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.”

  19. sdferr says:

    Wow. Never heard of such a thing Pablo, you?

  20. leigh says:

    Let the games begin! This walk-back ought to be epic.

  21. DarthLevin says:

    I think the next “Miss Me Yet?” billboard could feature Jimmy Carter.

  22. Pablo says:

    Nope, new to me, sdferr. They’re not amused, but I sure am.

  23. sdferr says:

    Steven Hayward, Could the Supreme Court Take a Mulligan?:

    Alarmed, the Court ordered the case reargued, specifically expanding its scope to ask whether certain previous cases that provided the basis for Stewart’s answer had been erroneously decided and should be overruled. During the second oral argument, a new solicitor general—Elena Kagan—was asked the same killer question, and answered: “No [we can’t regulate books]; the government’s position has changed.”

    Stop and dwell on that one phrase for a moment: “The government’s position has changed.” That says about all you need to know about the rule of law in the liberal wonderland of today’s administrative state.
    […]

    I think the chances for re-arguing Obamacare in the same way are practically nil. […] But stranger things have happened. It is generally forgotten today that Brown v. Board of Education was reargued too.

  24. Blake says:

    Pablo, that is a jaw dropping link.

    Finally, a branch of the government is throwing down the gauntlet. Not only that, CBS is actually reporting on the news.

  25. JD says:

    Pablo and sdferr – Fucking remarkable, no?

  26. sdferr says:

    It’s astounding and practically inevitable all at the same time JD. I fear what else may appear to be inevitable.

  27. palaeomerus says:

    Dang! I wonder if this could be a campaign issue? And I wonder if Newt will jump in on this since he was at one point talking about Congress whipping bad judges. Obama needs to go sink back into the muck of the Chicago political mire.

  28. twolaneflash says:

    OUCH! That’s going to leave a mark, I hope. Time for a musical rendition of “Here’s To You, Mr. Constitutional Law Lecturer!”. Who’s got the karaoke mic?

    http://budlight.whipnet.com/

  29. motionview says:

    I was just popping in to drop Pablo’s link. The reporter neglected to mention the judge finished with and get your shine box.

  30. newrouter says:

    levin opens his show with the 5th circuit

  31. sdferr says:

    Let’s hope for the peace of the nation another Dr. Carl Weiss doesn’t become such an inevitability.

  32. newrouter says:

    thanks for the history lesson – Dr. Carl Weiss

  33. sdferr says:

    Obama cites Lochner, would do better to keep his ignorant yap shut.

  34. Swen says:

    Oooh. That wasn’t exactly smart, Mr. President.

    JHoward hits the real crux of the issue. If you want the Supremes to rule your way what can you possibly gain by antagonizing them? That’s either astonishingly stupid or too clever by half.

    I suppose you could come up with several scenarios where double-dog-daring the Supremes to overthrow his signature legislation might make sense. He wants to run against a do-nothing Congress and an activist court. He knows that ObamaCare is an albatross around his neck and wants it cut loose now so he doesn’t have to defend it through to the election. Etc., etc.

    But do you really think Obama is that clever? Remember, he was antagonizing the Supremes right out of the chute, calling them out in his 2010 SOTU address. I’ll argue that this isn’t brilliant statecraft, it’s blind arrogance.

    I’m hoping the Supremes stick it right up his kazoo and rule to overturn only the mandate, leaving the rest to stand as a rickety unsalvageable mess, not just an albatross, but a rotting bird hung around his neck like a chicken-killing dog.

  35. […] Goldstein complements and enhances Mr. Walsh’s remarks in his dead-on-balls-accurate description of Caesar: …a man who […]

  36. palaeomerus says:

    Swen, the problem is that one of the supremes is a radical leftist weirdo who wants to use other countries’ constitutions, and any cool sounding manifestos she might see mentioned in a Mother Jones article, to rule US laws unconstitutional and then rewrite them from the bench. Three more are left-machine loyalist hacks with their rubber stamps ready to go. The tie breaker (Kennedy) is a “creative type” who wants to be liked and to make a difference for the children much as Sandra Day O’Conner did.

    So we might STILL be boned on Obama care.

    At one point the court (similarly balanced) ruled McCain/Feingold fair merely because Bush signed it while assuming that the Supremes would knock it down.

    They ruled that a city, state. county, or town can grab your property through use of immanent domain law for “the use of the public good” and then sell it to another richer private citizen or corporation for their use simply because they will be paying more property taxes than you. They did this because of a precedent set by a prior case. The judge who broke the tie (in a panel) in the case that set the precedent later said to the plaintiff that if he had had all the facts at the time, he would not have ruled as he did.

    The SC have screwed us before and they’ll screw us again whenever they feel like it.

Comments are closed.