The Urban Grind

Once again, Obama has taken a swipe at the Supreme Court. The first time was back in his State of the Union Speech of 2010 when he openly scolded the Justices regarding the Citizens United ruling, while they were in front row seats.

This time, Obama threatened them over Obamacare.

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama took an opening shot at conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday, warning that a rejection of his sweeping healthcare law would be an act of “judicial activism” that Republicans say they abhor.

{snip}

“Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will 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,” Obama said at a news conference with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

{snip}

“And I’d just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said. First off, this law was not duly constituted and passed. It was shoved down everyone’s throats, and politicians were bribed to vote yes.

“Well, this is a good example, and I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step,” he said.

Liberals love to gush about how smart Obama is, and how he was a law professor.

Baloney!

Our POTUS is conveniently ignoring the fact that we have the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, for the purpose of balancing each other out, so that one branch doesn’t get too much power. Let him check Articles I, II and III of the constitution.

Also, why isn’t it judicial activism when liberal judges routinely strike down democratically passed laws states pass against illegal immigration or gay marriage?

Anyway, in response to Mr. Obama’s threat, a federal appeals court called his bluff. Now Obama’s press secretary has kind of backed down.

First we have Obama telling the fawning Matt Lauer of the Today show the following:

Our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.”

Here’s the video of it:

I guess his spiel about President Bush leaving him a big mess was getting rather old so now he has to resort to blaming the Founding Fathers. Anyway, moving along…

Next we have the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg being interviewed by an Egyptian television station. Aside from congratulating Egypt on overthrowing their “dictator” Hosni Mubarak, she advised her interviewer against copying the American constitution going forward. No, she recommended they model their new constitution on that of South Africa!!! If South Africa is such a great place, why is that its most educated and skilled people are emigrating? Why doesn’t Justice Ginsburg just pack up her bags and move there if their constitution is so wonderful?

Finally we have the Obama worshipping New York Times getting in on the act, as they report that fewer countries are basing their constitutions on ours. Here’s what writer Adam Liptak has to say about the U.S. constitution:

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years. By odd coincidence, Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.” These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.

Zelda adds: We’re NOT other nations. Nor do we see Americans emigrating on masse to these “other nations?” No! The people from these “other nations” are the ones that routinely come here, either legally or illegally. I should also add that Mr. Liptak’s grandparents most likely fled Czarist Russia or Eastern Europe so they could live in America where their rights would be guaranteed by the constitution. How’s that for gratitude?

Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

Zelda adds: What part of “innocent until proven guilty” and “beyond the reasonable shadow of a doubt” did Mr. Liptak miss? And a right to travel? Who says you can’t just go online and purchase a ticket to where you want to go? But I see the crux of the matter is this “right” to food and healthcare.” In other words, America is no good unless it’s a socialist welfare state, where the government guarantees equality of outcomes between different groups.

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)

In other words, the rights of Americans to protect themselves against and their loved ones from a possible dictatorship, never mind domestic criminals is merely an unusual feature.

I was looking up something I head on the radio yesterday about an identity theft ring in St. Louis when I came across this article.
Court rules for illegal immigrant in identity theft case

WASHINGTON – A unanimous Supreme Court said Monday that undocumented workers who use phony IDs can’t be considered identity thieves without proof they knew they were stealing real people’s Social Security and other numbers.

The court’s decision limits federal authorities’ use of a 2004 law, intended to get tough on identity thieves, against immigrants who are picked up in workplace raids and found to be using false Social Security and alien registration numbers.

They have to provide proof they were stealing real peoples Social Security Numbers?  Let’s see?   They, the illegals, knew the numbers weren’t theirs, they knew the numbers belonged to somebody, and they knew they obtained the numbers illegally.    So, can somebody explain the reasoning of the nine lawyers in black robes who sit on the Supreme Court?

Advocates for immigrants had complained that federal authorities used the threat of prosecution on the identity theft charge, which carries a two-year mandatory prison term, to win guilty pleas on lesser charges and acceptance of prompt deportation.

“These prosecutions have been taken off the table,” said Nina Perales, southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The court, in an opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government’s argument that prosecutors need only show that the identification numbers belong to someone else, regardless of whether the defendant knew it.

I’m sick of hearing people who come to this country illegally called immigrants.   To call them immigrants is a slap in the face to the millions who came here legally, according to the laws of this nation.
Doesn’t Justice Breyer admit that it doesn’t matter if the defendant (illegal) knew if the number belonged to someone else?

Oh, about the illegals coming here to do the jobs Americans won’t do.   The above case was spurned by this.    I can’t think of any America Citizen  looking for work who would turn down the chance to work in a steel plant.

Such was the case with the undocumented worker on the winning side Monday. Ignacio Carlos Flores-Figueroa, a Mexican immigrant employed at a steel plant in East Moline, Ill., traveled to Chicago and bought numbers from someone who trades in counterfeit IDs.

NOTE:   This story is almost two years old but this is the first I heard of the SCOTUS ruling that using another person’s SSN isn’t identity theft.

Thanks to the mealy mouthed, spineless “conservatives,” who insisted till they were blue in the face that there was no difference between McCain and the black supremacist, America hating, marxist Muslim now occupying the White House, we now have a leftist, military hating, shariah promoting woman as our newest Supreme Court Justice.

WASHINGTON – The Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan as the 112th justice and fourth woman to serve on the Supreme Court. The vote was 63-37 for President Barack Obama’s nominee to succeed retired Justice John Paul Stevens. Five Republicans joined all but one Democrat and the Senate’s two independents to support Kagan. In a rarely practiced ritual reserved for the most historic votes, senators sat at their desks and stood to cast their votes with “ayes” and “nays.” Kagan isn’t expected to alter the ideological balance of the court, where Stevens was considered a leader of the liberals. But the two parties clashed over her nomination. Republicans argued that Kagan was a political liberal who would be unable to be impartial. Democrats defended her as a highly qualified legal scholar.”>Supreme Court Justice!

Quite frankly, it’s a little too narrow for my liking. But it’s still good news.

The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that the Second Amendment provides all Americans a fundamental right to bear arms, a long-sought victory for gun rights advocates who have chafed at federal, state and local efforts to restrict gun ownership.

The court was considering a restrictive handgun law in Chicago and one of its suburbs that was similar to the District law that it ruled against in 2008. The 5 to 4 decision does not strike any other gun control measures currently in place, but it provides a legal basis for challenges across the country where gun owners think that government has been too restrictive.

“It is clear that the Framers . . . counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the conservatives on the court.

The Sunlight Foundation has released 2,799 emails sent by Supreme Court Justice nominee Elana Kagan from 1995 to 1999. Click here to see them all. This information was sent to me by blogger Michael Avitabile, who blogs at Jumping In Pools. I went through a few of them. But Michael, who has read more of them than I have, has discovered that Ms. Kagan had quite the potty mouth, and that she was also a fan of Jewish jokes.

An acquaintance of mine went undercover by posing as raving liberal and recorded what Obama had to say to his most fanatical supporters.

Round two started when Chief Justice John Roberts called Obama’s singling out of the Supreme Court during his State of the Union speech “troubling.”

TUSCALOOSA, ALA. — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Tuesday that the scene at President Obama’s State of the Union address was “very troubling” and that the annual speech has “degenerated to a political pep rally.”

{snip}

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering,” Roberts told University of Alabama law students, “while the court — according to the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling.”

Just to refresh your memory, Obama got into a major snit when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of corporations and unions being freely allowed to contribute to political campaigns.

Anyway, Obama is continuing with his Idi Amin routine.

When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told law students in Alabama on Tuesday that the timing of Obama’s criticism of the court during the State of the Union address was “very troubling,” the White House pounced. It shot back with a new denouncement of the court’s ruling that allowed a more active campaign role for corporations and unions.

On Wednesday, Senate Democrats followed up with pointed criticism of Roberts, and at a hearing on the decision, a leading Democrat said the American public had “rightfully recoiled” from the ruling.

{snip}

A Democratic strategist who works with the White House said the fight is a good one for Obama, helping lay the groundwork for the next Supreme Court opening. “Most Americans have no idea what the Supreme Court does or how it impacts their lives,” the strategist said. “This decision makes it crystal clear.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) opened the hearing on the ruling Wednesday by declaring that “the Citizens United decision turns the idea of government of, by and for the people on its head.” The committee’s ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions (Ala.), countered that Obama and Democrats are mischaracterizing the ruling for political gain.

{snip}

The White House struck back quickly — not at Roberts’s point, but at the decision. “What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement. “The president has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision.”

The Supreme Court has recently given conservatives a nice victory by striking down the worst censorship provision of McCain Feingold.

On January 21, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. FEC. At issue was a key part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), better known as McCain-Feingold, that made it a federal felony—punishable by five years in prison—for a corporation to use any of its funds to criticize a candidate for federal office within thirty days of a primary election or sixty days of a November general election.

The group Citizens United made a documentary about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The Federal Election Commission did not allow it to be distributed, and David Bossie, president of Citizens United, decided to fight back.

The case went to the Supreme Court, where former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson—a living legend among Supreme Court lawyers—fought it out against Barack Obama’s Justice Department. During argument, the Obama administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, made extravagant claims about the extent to which government can censor its critics, outlawing books, movies, and other methods of informing the public. Olson pushed back hard, pointing to the terrible power that this part of BCRA gives the government against private citizens banding together to speak out during election season.

The Supreme Court agreed that such power is frightening. In an opinion written by moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy, he noted that the Court upheld regulations decades ago on corporate speech, on the theory that corporations could amass vast sums of money to drown out ordinary citizens, distorting public debate.

On Thursday, the Court overruled that earlier case and also part of a 2003 case involving BCRA, finding the earlier anti-distortion rationale to be “unconvincing and insufficient” to justify government censorship of political speech. Instead, the Court noted that ordinary people often need to pool their money into an organization they support, to use those pooled funds to get their message out about the issues they care about when elections are approaching. Rather than drown out the little guy, this option allows groups, be they Citizens United, the National Rifle Association, or the Family Research Council, to be a megaphone for the little guy, informing the voters of what’s at stake.

The Court’s opinion went on to note that the government’s theory of being able to censor organizations that speak to the public simply because that organization is a corporation with the ability to accumulate money would enable the government to go after the media. Every major press outlet is a corporation, and all have vast sums of money. The government’s argument could be used to justify censorship of the press. When that happened, the First Amendment dies.
The far left has already taken up the cry that this decision somehow undermines democracy, with Senator Chuck Schumer calling it “un-American.”

Of course our Muslim Communist President is in a snit:

The White House itself is engaging in an unseemly Chicken Little routine, with President Obama himself crying that the Court, “has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It’s a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies,” etc.

{snip}

Obama then ends with a warning, saying that he will go to Congress to craft a “forceful response to this decision.”

Here’s more on how Justice Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, being a key to this win for conservatives.

For all you “conservatives” who kept insisting that there was NO difference between John McCain and Barack Hussein Obama, this is all your fault!

You have no one but yourselves to blame when this Wise Latina (in other words, Aztlanist shill) legislates from the bench.

To his credit, John McCain at least opposed Sotomayor’s nomination.