In Brief: Biden’s Pathetic Supreme Court Putsch
It’ll go nowhere, but it is nevertheless another stain on his thoroughly soiled career.
Joe Biden recently announced his dubious plan to “reform” the U.S. Supreme Court. The Washington Examiner digs into this last-ditch and ignoble effort at establishing a lasting legacy.
The substance of Biden’s proposals is just as bad as his rhetoric. He falsely claimed that a recent Supreme Court decision “means there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” Anyone who can read knows the court did no such thing. The majority decision backed Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, in which the Supreme Court blocked President Harry Truman’s seizure of the nation’s steel mills during the Korean War. That decision held that presidents may not act outside their legal authority and that they could be blocked by courts if they tried. That case is still good law, no matter what Biden says.
The Examiner observes that Biden’s plans would require a constitutional amendment, a factor he appears oblivious to.
As he noted in making the case for his Supreme Court makeover, before becoming vice president, he had been a senator for 36 years, including a stint as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Where was the urgency for remaking the Supreme Court then? There was none because in those days, the court made more ideologically activist decisions that Biden and his fellow left-wingers liked.
As much as Biden denies it, this move is all about politics.
The Democratic Party and wider Left are now attacking the Supreme Court only because they want to regain control of it. When it was inventing rights to abortion, for example, Democrats loved the Supreme Court’s unmoored ability and willingness to make new law. But now that conservatives are returning the court to its proper limits, Democrats want to weaken it and undermine the Constitution.
The Examiner concludes:
Biden is scratching around for relevance now that he is being pushed out in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. He has chosen to latch on to a completely partisan issue that has no hope of passing with just three months before Election Day. He could have chosen to leave office with dignity, but dignity is not something one has ever been able to expect from Joe Biden.
