VERRILLI NOT ADMINISTRATION'S WORST LAWYER, AFTER ALL
By Ann Coulter
AnnCoulter.com
The reason tea partiers carried signs saying
"Read the Constitution!" was that we were hoping
people would read the Constitution.
Alas, we still have Rick Santorum saying
Obamacare is the same as what he calls "Romneycare";
the otherwise brilliant Mickey Kaus sniffing
that if states can mandate insurance purchases,
then we're "not talking about some basic
individual liberty to not purchase stuff" (no,
just the nation's founding document, which
protects "basic individual liberties" by putting
constraints on Congress); and the former law
professor, Barack Obama, alleging that a "good
example" of judicial activism would be the
Supreme Court (in his words, "a group of
people") overturning "a duly constituted and
passed law."
I don't know how a court could overturn a law
that hasn't been "passed." Otherwise, it
wouldn't be a law, it would be a bill. If it
hasn't even been "constituted," it wouldn't be
anything at all.
Of course the courts can overturn laws --
constituted and passed alike! If anything, the
Supreme Court isn't striking down enough laws.
Suppose Congress passed a law (after
constituting it) prohibiting the publication of
books about Hillary Clinton. That would be a
violation of the First Amendment and the courts
should strike it down. Failing to strike down
such a law would be judicial activism.
That's the judiciary's job, which has been
pretty well established since the 1803 case,
Marbury v. Madison, heretofore the second most
sacred opinion in the liberal canon. (Roe v.
Wade is the first most sacred.)
Marbury captured the imagination of liberals
only relatively recently when they realized
that, simply as a procedural matter, the courts
have the last word.
The judicial branch isn't above the other two
branches -- much less the states or the people.
It is (one of my favorite words) "co-equal" to
the other branches. Indeed, the judiciary was
laughably described by Alexander Hamilton in The
Federalist Papers as the "least dangerous"
branch.
Anticipating nearly every form of government
corruption, our framers specifically designed
the Constitution to prevent tyranny. But they
never imagined the perfidy of 20th-century
liberals. (Probably because the framers didn't
have NBC.)
What liberals figured out -- and were mendacious
enough to exploit -- is that there is no obvious
recourse for the other branches if the Supreme
Court issues an insane ruling. So, beginning in
the 1960s, liberals on the court started issuing
insane rulings on a regular basis. Rather than
referring to the Constitution, some of their
opinions were apparently based on the dream
journal of Andrea Dworkin.
Soon every law student could recite in his sleep
Chief Justice John Marshall's line in Marbury:
"It is emphatically the province and duty of the
Judicial Department to say what the law is." So
shut up and go home.
To take one example of a ludicrous ruling, at
random, off the top of my head: In 1973, the
Supreme Court announced that the Constitution
mandates a right to abortion.
The Constitution says nothing about
reproduction, contraception, fetuses, pregnancy,
premenstrual syndrome, morning sickness -- much
less abortion. (As the tea partiers say: Read
the Constitution!)
It does, however, expressly grant to the states
those powers not reserved to the people (such as
the right to bear arms) or explicitly given to
Congress (such as the right to regulate commerce
with foreign nations, among the several states
and with the Indian tribes).
Obviously, therefore, the Constitution
implicitly entrusted abortion laws to the
states.
One hint that a "constitutional" right to
abortion is not based on anything in the
Constitution is that during oral argument, as
the lawyer arguing for this apocryphal right
ticked off the constitutional provisions
allegedly supporting it -- the Due Process
Clause, the Equal Protection Clause, the Ninth
Amendment, "and a variety of others" -- the
entire courtroom burst into laughter.
The ruling in Roe, incidentally, struck down the
duly constituted and passed laws of all 50
states. (But that is soooo 53 million abortions
ago ...)
When conservatives complain about "judicial
activism," this is what they're talking about:
Decisions not plausibly based on anything in the
Constitution.
Curiously, the only court opinions liberals
really get excited about are the ones having
nothing to do with the Constitution: abortion,
nude dancing, gay marriage, pornography,
coddling criminals, etc., etc.
Liberals try to hide their treachery by
pretending that what conservatives are really
upset about is the Supreme Court striking down
any law passed by any legislature. This is a
preposterous lie that could fool only the
irredeemably credulous.
Which brings us to the brilliant ex-law
professor, who manifestly doesn't have the
faintest understanding of the Constitution.
On Monday, President Obama shocked even his
fellow liberals when he claimed that it would be
"an unprecedented, extraordinary step" for the
Supreme Court to overturn "a law that was passed
by a strong majority of a democratically elected
Congress." (Which Obamacare wasn't.)
He added: "I'd just remind conservative
commentators that for years what we've heard is
the biggest problem on the bench was judicial
activism or a lack of judicial restraint."
I guess now we know why Obama won't release his
college and law school transcripts!
It was so embarrassing that Obama attempted a
clarification on Tuesday, but only made things
worse. He said: "We have not seen a court
overturn a law that was passed by Congress on an
economic issue, like health care," since the
'30s.
Except in 1995. And then again in 2000. (Do we
know for a fact that this guy went to Columbia
and Harvard Law?)
In the former case, U.S. v. Lopez, the Supreme
Court struck down the Gun-Free School Zone Act
-- which was, by the way, a "duly constituted
and passed law"! And then the court did it again
in U.S. v. Morrison, when it overturned another
"duly constituted and passed law," the Violence
Against Women Act.
Both laws were defended by the Clinton
administration as "economic" regulations, passed
by Congress pursuant to the Commerce Clause with
arguments as stretched as the ones used to
defend Obamacare. The Gun-Free School Zone Act,
for example, was said to address the economic
hardship, health care costs, insurance costs and
unwillingness to travel created by violent
crime.
Conservatives want the rule of law, not silence
from the judges. Not striking down an
unconstitutional law is judicial activism every
bit as much as invalidating a constitutional
one.
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