Posted on 03/29/2012 1:50:01 PM PDT by Sybeck1
A handful of Senate Democrats sought to assure doubtful liberals that the Supreme Court justices aren’t ready to strike down their crowning achievement, standing before cameras and mics Wednesday in front of the court. One warned that doing so would ruin the court’s credibility.
“This court would not only have to stretch, it would have to abandon and completely overrule a lot of modern precedent, which would do grave damage to this court, in its credibility and power,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D), a former attorney general of Connecticut. “The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility. The only reason people obey it is because it has that credibility. And the court risks grave damage if it strikes down a statute of this magnitude and importance, and stretches so dramatically and drastically to do it.”
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said the law has been thoroughly vetted.
“As a senior member of the Finance Committee,” he said, “I can tell you that we had one of the most rigorous and transparent legislative processes that I have witnessed in almost 3 decades here in the Congress. We worked with some of the brightest, most thoughtful and experienced constitutional lawyers in order to make sure that the law was constitutional.”
Kerry said the assumptions that tough questions from the justices will amount to striking down some or all of the Affordable Care Act are a fallacy — he predicted, as the final oral arguments were transpiring inside, that it would be upheld.
“Now I am glad — as I think any of us who’ve practiced law are — to see the intense questions from the justices. They’re engaged, and they are thoughtfully working through these issues,” Kerry said. “But questions are a legitimate way of probing the basis of their own thinking. They are not an indication of a judgment made, or a vote ready to be cast. They’re working through this process as they ought to, mindful of the fact that 30 courts below them have already made a judgment upholding it.”
Blumenthal and Kerry — who were joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — called the press conference one day after liberals and other court watchers expressed serious doubts that the justices would uphold the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to purchase insurance, a central pillar of the law. The firestorm was ignited by legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who called Tuesday’s arguments a “train wreck” for the White House and predicted that “Obamacare” would be struck down.
Pushing back, Blumenthal said that there’s a “heavy burden” on the challengers.
“Everybody learns in the first year of law school that the law that’s challenged is presumed to be constitutional,” Blumenthal said. “That is a heavy burden for anyone challenging the constitutionality of a law to overcome. When in doubt, uphold the law. There is a lot of room for doubt here, and there is a lot of clear precedent that requires this court to uphold this law.”
The Democrats’ level of confidence has diminished since the days when they dismissed a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act as frivolous. Indeed, the tough questioning from swing Justices John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy about the limits of federal power at least rattled liberals enough to require the nerve-soothing press conference. But Democrats are seeking to quell liberal fears that the game is already over.
Experts say it’s too difficult to predict how the court will rule.
Affordable Care Act, HCR/SCOTUS, Supreme Court
“The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility. The only reason people obey it is because it has that credibility. And the court risks grave damage if it strikes down a statute of this magnitude and importance, and stretches so dramatically and drastically to do it.”
Is this not an out and out threat?
What are the odds obama will go “Andrew Jackson” on the Court?
If he did, would MSM and both Houses Of Congress react at all?
I have wondered if that was a real possibility. Could Obama and the left force a Constitutional crisis as a way to sow more turmoil?
Bring it on.
Thanks Sybeck1.
Exactly. Now we can stop scratching our heads why the sever-ability clause was removed.
As in: "Nice little place ya' got here. It'd be a pity if somethin' bad happened to it, like a fire or....you know."
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/27/the-plot-to-get-rush/print
Excerpt:
• The Left’s Dependence on Fear and Intimidation: The left has centuries ago trademarked themselves as history’s thugs, the grim, intolerant people with the brass knuckles and more if you get out of line and dare to speak your mind.
From the guillotine of 1789 to the lists of enemies of the people in the 1920s to Chinese Roulette in the 1960s.
In America it has run the gamut from the lynching of blacks to union thuggery to intimidating sponsors of talk radio in the twittering 21st century. It’s all to the same purpose.
are they threatening the supreme court?!
For the first time I’ve really just considered that a civil war, or succession may actually be in the near future.
Grave damage? That is sick.
Really? The court may not command any armies, but armies are sworn to defend it. I seem to recall part of an oath I took upon entering the military...
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..."
Several of our accusations against King George III dealt with the courts. Colonial, English judges protected the prerogatives of the sovereign, the KIng
To correct the problem, the Framers created a judiciary independent of the executive. Our judges also have a duty to protect the prerogatives of their sovereign, the lawgivers. That sovereign is us, the people, and not the government.
Unfortunately, we have gone full circle. Like the King's judges, Breyer, Soto, Kagan, Ginsberg work to protect and promote the imaginary prerogatives of the government, rather than the sovereign people.
If Scotus had continued to apply the Necessary and Proper criteria to laws as Madison and the Framing generation intended, we would not be standing as we are at the edge of the societal and financial abyss.
Another excerpt from same article...
The late Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises described the leftist method of operation as “fanatical and intolerant.” It works, he said, this way:
Socialism… works on the emotions…to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts.
Primitive instincts.
And that most primitive of human instincts? You got it.
Fear.
The skillful, clever use of fear (not to mention hate) is the defining trait of leftists throughout history. Fear is the primitive emotion the left feeds on like a junkie needs drugs. It is a trait repeatedly manifested in history by the use of intimidation or bully-boy tactics to assert raw power. It is the vividly identifiable scarlet thread of intolerance that has shown itself in one leftist movement after another on down through the centuries, regardless of nationality.
Leftist French Revolutionaries launched the “Reign of Terror,” dragging terrified opponents to the guillotine. The moment Lenin’s triumphant Communists overwhelmed Russia, notes The Black Book of Communism, the triumphant left “institutionalized the notion of ‘enemy of the people.’”
People so identified were to be “arrested immediately,” charged with “crimes” like “abuse of one’s position” — essentially the American left’s charge right now about Rush Limbaugh. In short order, millions of Soviet citizens in the new order were shot outright when not sent to the Gulag.
In the 1930s the newly powerful National Socialists of Germany — aka the Nazis — began sending storm troopers to terrify Jews by painting crude yellow signs reading “Not for Aryans” on the windows of Jewish shopkeepers. Eventually, Jews were forced to wear a yellow patch in the shape of the Star of David, bearing a single word Jude — Jew.
In Mao’s China, this leftist fanaticism appeared as the “Cultural Revolution,” which targeted all manner of dissenters with both psychological intimidation as well as physical violence. One of the favorite weapons of Mao’s Red Guards was “Chinese Roulette.”
The game?
A group of dissenters would be rounded up and delivered to a firing squad — but at the last minute only a random few would be pulled from the group and shot. The rest who had survived were said to have suffered something worse than death: a “bullet” of fear and repression inside the brain.
In America, the leftists beneath the hoods of the Ku Klux Klan lynched terrified blacks at night while running America’s Democratic Party by day. No less than future president Ronald Reagan was threatened with having acid tossed in his face if he didn’t cease fighting the infiltration of Communists in Hollywood.
Today SEIU thugs are captured on video beating up those who dissent on Obamacare, calling their victim the “n—word”.
Fear. Intimidation. Bullying. Racism. Hatred of the “other.”
Without these tactics, the left is naked in the war of ideas. By coincidence, R. Emmett Tyrrell, the founder and editor-in-chief of The American Spectator has a book coming out in May titled The Death of Liberalism.
Yep you know its going bad when they start coming out saying that this whole idea (obamacare) came from Republicans.
I'll answer your question with a question. Doesn't this worry anyone but me? I think they may be actually ready to dis the entire SCOTUS. And will any of our "Representatives" in Congress do anything to stop them?
“The court commands no armies, it has no money; it depends for its power on its credibility. The only reason people obey it is because it has that credibility. And the court risks grave damage if it strikes down a statute of this magnitude and importance, and stretches so dramatically and drastically to do it.”
Is this the Onion or Scott Ott?
"The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." - Ninth Ammendment, US Constitution
The idea that a right to privacy does not exist because it isn't mentioned in the Constitution is itself unconstitutional. It was the main reason there were opponents to having a Bill of Rights in the first place. People were afraid that by spelling out some rights it would be inferred that they were the only ones we had. And that's exactly what you are doing. But the Ninth Ammendment was added just to prevent people from doing that, and was essential to getting a Bill of Rights passed.
Kinda like “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”
Isn't this a veiled threat against the SCOTUS?
The Communists are winning.
“Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said the law has been thoroughly vetted. “
What!? How can it have been vetted when Pelosi admitted it had not even been read.
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