The Foundation

“The truth is, that, even with the most secure tenure of office, during good behavior, the danger is not, that the judges will be too firm in resisting public opinion, and in defence of private rights or public liberties; but, that they will be ready to yield themselves to the passions, and politics, and prejudices of the day.” –Joseph Story

Editorial Exegesis

“Someone will have to remind President Obama the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, part of a system of checks and balances designed to rein in precisely the kind of runaway government exhibited by his administration. Our community-organizer-in-chief has a different opinion. ‘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. … This is precisely what the Supreme Court is designed to do – determine the constitutionality of laws passed by democratically elected legislatures and Congress. Surely the constitutional law professor has heard of Marbury v. Madison, the 1802 case that formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. It was also the first time in Western history a court invalidated a law by declaring it ‘unconstitutional.’ Such an action is not unprecedented. … By one estimate, the Supreme Court has struck down 53 laws between 1981 and 2005 alone. The president speaks of a law passed by a ‘democratically elected Congress’ yet it was a bill no one had read and which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass to find out what was in it. The fact is, most of the rules and regulations are written by unelected bureaucrats authorized by a bill that refers not to ‘we the people’ but to ‘the secretary shall determine.’ … To say the bill passed ‘a strong majority’ of a democratically elected Congress is an overstatement. The bill passed the House with a vote of 219-212, a majority of seven, with 34 Democrats defecting. … This isn’t the first time President Obama has lectured the Supreme Court. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, he shamefully scolded the justices on national television for ‘having reversed a century of law’ in a ruling in which the court was protecting the freedom of political speech enshrined more than two centuries ago in the First Amendment. It will be poetic justice if in answering the administration’s assertions on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, the court will echo Justice Samuel Alito’s reply that night: ‘Not true.’” –Investor’s Business Daily

Do you have any words of wisdom for Mr. Obama?

Upright

“Can I tell you what I’m a tiny bit sick of hearing? Maybe you are too. Some version of this: ‘Conservatives are hypocritical to root for the Supreme Court to overturn the health-care law. For years, conservatives have griped about interference by the courts. And now they’re hoping that a handful of unelected, black-robed individuals will do their work for them?’ Oh, come on: What we’ve objected to, all these years, is judicial activism – judge-made law. The usurpation of the legislative role by judges. We have not, to my knowledge, objected to the striking down of unconstitutional laws. We are not hostile to a separation of powers.” –columnist Jay Nordlinger

“The margin of passage has never been a factor in the Supreme Court’s review of any law. That’s simply not a part of American jurisprudence. In fact, if Mr. Obama believes what he says, he ought to be very satisfied with the validity of the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed in 1996 by a whopping 275 margin in the House and by 71 votes in the Senate.” –The Washington Times

“One of the greatest sins of Obamacare is actually that the president decided to pursue legislation that would fundamentally change the country even though he didn’t have a strong majority for it in Congress. And ‘judicial activism’ generally refers to rulings based on emotion and political views instead of the Constitution and precedent. The judges’ questions about the health care law went right to whether it violated the Constitution. There was no ‘activism’ on the order of, say, finding previously undiscovered meanings in the Constitution to justify a decision. To say that ruling against an unpopular law barely passed by Congress violates ‘judicial restraint’ would seem a strange new interpretation of the term.” –columnist Keith Koffler

“[T]he U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that between the years 2001 and 2005, nine-out-of-ten black murder victims were killed by other blacks. … The DOJ also determined that homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 15 and 34. … In 2005 alone 8000 black Americans were homicide victims. If one assumes that measurement has remained relatively constant on an annual basis, it means that 56,000 blacks have been killed over the last seven years. For perspective’s sake, 5,000 American troops were killed during combat in Iraq over the same period of time. … [T]he media and racial demagogues are ably convincing black Americans to believe that their real problem is racist America; that the white-controlled ‘System’ is what really threatens their lives, when this is the furthest thing from the truth. This is the lesson from the Trayvon Martin tragedy.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“[T]he violence and mayhem that disproportionately afflicts the African-American community is part of a society-wide disorder. … That disorder is family breakdown, and no discussion of violence or murder or victimization is informed without reference to that overwhelming fact. Why do African-Americans, with 12.6 percent of the nation’s population, account for 50 percent of the murder victims? Because fatherlessness is most pervasive among blacks. … In 2012, we reached a grim milestone: The majority of births to women under the age of 30 are now outside of marriage. Among blacks, 72 percent of births are to unmarried women. … The result of this adult folly is chaos, misery and often violent death for kids.” –columnist Mona Charen

Insight

“The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” –American writer H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.” –American author Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

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The Demo-gogues

Shut up, he explained: “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. I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we have heard 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. Well, this is a good example and I am pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step. … As I said, we are confident that this will be over – that this will be upheld. I am confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld. And again, that’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of a whole lot of constitutional law professors and academics and judges and lawyers who have examined this law, even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.” –Barack Obama

Are you serious? “I think that it is the crown jewel. It is the greatest achievement.” –Nancy Pelosi on ObamaCare

“Should the Supreme Court overturn this law, it would be so far out of the mainstream that the court would be the most activist in a century. If they were to throw out the health care law, things like Medicare, Social Security, food safety laws could be in jeopardy on the very same grounds. It would be a dramatic, 180 degree turn of the tradition of the Commerce Clause.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Cheerleading ObamaCare from the bench: “Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion? In other words, the federal government is here saying, we are giving you a boatload of money. There are no, there’s no matching funds requirement, there are no extraneous conditions attached to it, it’s just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s health care. It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.” –Justice Elena Kagan, who should have recused herself after serving as Obama’s solicitor general while ObamaCare was being crafted

Left-theology: “I hear politicians talking about values in an election year. I hear a lot about that. Let me tell you about values. Hard work, personal responsibility – those are values. But looking out for one another. That’s a value. The idea that we’re all in this together. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper. That’s a value. … [W]e wouldn’t win the race for new jobs and businesses and middle-class security if we were just applying some you’re-on-your-own economics.” –Barack Obama

Unprecedented ignorance: “No president, and I would argue in the 20th century and including now the 21st century, has had as many serious problems which are cases of first-instance laid on his table. Franklin Roosevelt faced more dire consequences, but in a bizarre way it was more straightforward. … I’ve watched him make decisions that would make another man or woman’s hair curl.” –Joe Biden

Boasting: “It’s worth noting that I first arrived on the national stage with a speech at the Democratic Convention that was entirely about American exceptionalism, and that my entire career has been a testimony to American exceptionalism. But I will cut [Republicans] some slack for now because they’re still trying to get their nomination.” –Barack Obama

Dezinformatsia

Challenged: “Behind the challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being heard at the Supreme Court [last] week is the idea that Barack Obama wants to take away your freedoms…. I defy anyone to name for me a specific and precise freedom that Obama has taken away from the American people. You can’t. When they’re not just invented out of whole cloth by multi-millionaire propagandists, all such laments are based on ignorance about what freedom actually means and an equal ignorance about how our system of government works.” –The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky

Preemptive strike: “If the conservatives decide that they can sidestep the Constitution to negate Congress’s choices on crucial national policies, the court’s legitimacy – and the millions of Americans who don’t have insurance – will pay a very heavy price. Chief Justice Roberts has the opportunity to avoid this disastrous outcome by forging even a narrow ruling to uphold the mandate and the rest of the law. A split court striking down the act will be declaring itself virtually unfettered by the law. And if that happens along party lines, with five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.” –New York Times editorial

Race bait editing: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black.” –NBC’s edited version of the Zimmerman/Martin 911 call (The actual transcript – Zimmerman: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.” 911: “OK, and this guy – is he black, white or Hispanic?” Zimmerman: “He looks black.”) NBC later admitted an “error.”

Give us a break: “A report in the conservative Daily Caller said the White House only jumped into the [Trayvon Martin] fight, quote, ‘following demands by the New Black Panthers and others on the scene.’ But the impression I got was that the president was extremely reluctant to discuss this matter. And if you look at the president’s tenure as president, he has very rarely entered into matters where race has been an issue.” –MSNBC’s Martin Bashir

Newspulper Headlines:

It’s Always in the Last Place You Look: “Another $17 Trillion Surprise Found in Obamacare” –DailyCaller.com

Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking: “How to Ask a Question” –Chronicle of Higher Education website

We Blame George W. Bush: “California Woman Blames McDonald’s for Forcing Her Into Prostitution” –FoxNews.com

They’ll Be Clearer When You Sober Up: “Public Intoxication Laws Too Fuzzy, Critics Say” –Austin American-Statesman

News You Can Use: “Keep Your Eyes Open for Idiot Drivers” –Free Lance-Star website (Fredericksburg, VA)

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

Goals: “I get up every morning thinking, today I’m gonna make a difference. Today I’m gonna end capitalism. Today I’m gonna make a revolution. I go to bed every night disappointed, but I’m back again tomorrow. That’s the only way you can do it.” –Obama’s political mentor and Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers to Occupy Wall Street confab

Saviors: “[The] Occupy movement pretty much saved the entire country from destruction. … Occupy Wall Street really kind of, like, helped us to hit a reset in the country.” –former Obama czar Van Jones

Warmist threat: “Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected. People are individually and collectively habituated to the ways we act and think. This habituation must be recognized and simultaneously addressed at the individual, cultural and societal level – how we think the world works and how we think it should work.” –University of Oregon professor Kari Marie Norgaard

Prognostications: “Keep in mind the 2010 electorate is not the 2012 electorate. More people will vote and a more diverse America will show up and people had two years of the Tea Party Congress and the polls show they didn’t like it very much.” –Bill Clinton

Short Cuts

“Some people honored Earth hour last Saturday by turning off their lights for an hour to help the environment. Except for the green companies supported by the Obama Administration – their lights were turned off permanently.” –NewsBusted’s Jodi Miller

“President Obama traveled to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea where he peered through binoculars. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing in North Korea. Here was a country where the rich paid their fair share and it was in ruins.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“There were three winning lotto tickets. I guess we’re not sure who the three winners are yet. But when they do come forward, two things happen immediately. You get a call from the IRS asking for half. Then you get a call from your friends and relatives asking for the other half.” –comedian Jay Leno

“A new study shows that sitting down too much can kill you. That’s really bad news considering how much Obama is doing that we won’t stand for.” –Fred Thompson

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team