Posted on 04/04/2012 2:30:56 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Carney: Obama remark about Supreme Court was misunderstood By Jonathan Easley - 04/04/12 04:25 PM ET
In an occasionally testy exchange with reporters, White House press secretary Jay Carney defended President Obamas remark that it would be unprecedented for the Supreme Court to overturn the administrations healthcare law, saying the comment had been misunderstood.
Speaking at a Rose Garden news conference on Monday, Obama weighed in on the matter for the first time since last weeks high court hearings that left many Democrats fearful that the five conservative judges would band together to strike down his signature domestic achievement.
Ultimately, Im 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, the president said.
Republicans pounced on the remarks, citing more than 150 cases in which the Supreme Court had overturned an act of Congress.
On Tuesday, Obama said he meant the Supreme Court hadnt overturned a law that involved the Commerce Clause, as the healthcare law does, in the last 80 years since the New Deal.
Carney defended that take at a White House press briefing on Wednesday, when asked if the president regretted his initial remarks.
Not at all, Carney said. As Ive said a number of times now, the president was making the unremarkable observation about 80 years of Supreme Court history.
When asked if that meant the president was now clarifying his remarks, Carney shot back, Only because a handful of people didnt understand what he was referring to.
The fact that it would be unprecedented in the modern era of the Supreme Court, since the New Deal era, for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation passed by Congress, designed to deal with a matter of economic importance like our healthcare system, Carney continued.
Thats what would be unprecedented about it. He did not suggest, did not mean and did not suggest that it would be unprecedented for the court to rule that a law was unconstitutional. Thats what the Supreme Court is there to do. But it has under the Commerce Clause deferred to Congresss authority on matters of national economic importance.
Critics blasted the president for his comments, saying his remarks were an attempt to influence the outcome of the courts ruling and claiming that the president attempted to diminish the justices by referring to them as unelected.
Carney said that was not meant as a swipe against the Supreme Court, and that the president respects the power of the judicial branch.
Nobody would ever contend in his office, and he certainly is not contending, that the Supreme Court doesnt have as its right and responsibility the ability to overturn laws passed by Congress as unconstitutional, Carney said. He was referring to 85 years of Supreme Court precedent with matters like the one under consideration, and its maybe fun to pretend otherwise, but everyone here knows what he meant.
[The president] was a law professor, Carney added. He understands constitutional law and constitutional precedent and the role of the Supreme Court.
"..here fido clean up over here...fido come here clean here....fido fido, come quickly,clean here....fido fidoooo...this guys leaves more piles of s*** wherever he goes"
Hey Carney, it that the fastest you can spin? Ain’t gettin’ it!
PATENT BULLSHIT!! Comrade "O's" little sock puppet has a nose at least a foot long...maybe longer. WADDAPUTZ!!
What BS!
No Jay...The President simply lied.....repeatedly!
Again!
/sarc
Yeah right Carney. Explain it to the Judge.
He was being petty and petulant - much like a whining child screaming, "I want my MayPo ..."
Yep, a regular old blowout! /s
It's amazing that these slimes can look at themselves in the mirror and live with themselves without total self disregard via shame.
It was totally understood. That is why Obama and Carney are backpedaling as fast as they can.
Sure, if you ignore United States v. Morrison and United States v. Lopez.
Obummer is always misunderstood because English is his second language.
Swahili is his native tongue.
Obama is nothing but a ghetto organizing Flim-Flam Man. Obama would make a great Carnival shill.
This pathological liar should have already been impeached.... and he should be doing prison time, NOT charting the course of 300 million lives.
There is nothing honorable within him or about him.
How can the Great Orator and Eloquent Communicator possibly be misunderstood?
Go ahead. Say it, Carney. You’ve proven today that you’re a fully-qualified propagandist. Now you can say it in public instead of doing it in front of your bathroom mirror: “Heil Obama!”
It was not ‘misunderstood’ or Carney wouldn’t be out doing damage control.
So what he really meant was ‘not recently precedented’.
Yeah, because we’re all too stupid to understand the brilliant mind that is the kenyan.
Yeah, a handful of several hundred million people, including at least one federal judge.
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