Judging Alito – Obama’s Ultimate Arrogance

by Thomas Del Beccaro

President Obama’s State of the Union obviously was a first in more than one way.  Obama point blank, called out (to use the modern vernacular) our Supreme Court Justices on national TV.  He did so because he politically disagreed with their legal decision.  In doing so, Obama demonstrated his supreme arrogance – and let America know just how far he is willing to go to get his way.

samuel-alito-01

As we know, our Federal Judicial system is one of three separate but equal branches.  Historically, the judiciary has been the least political of the three branches.  That status reaches well beyond our own system.  Prior to judges and courts, civilizations tended to rely on counsels of elders to pass judgment on the actions of their village or tribe.  Those elders held a special place, as dispensers of wisdom, in their societies.

The roles of judges today evolved from those wise elders.  Importantly, our system and theirs was based on the notion that the decisions made were made dispassionately and not subject to mob rule or pressure.  By publicly ridiculing the Supreme Court, and subjecting them to a standing ovation from the complicit Democrats that surrounded them, Obama demonstrated to everyone how little regard he has for our system.  That disregard is in keeping with his Saul Alinsky radicalism and the methods he employed.

Obama, to be sure, is not the first President with a constitutional changing agenda to take on the Supreme Court – nor the most crass about it – at least so far.   That dishonor belongs to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It is not remembered often enough that FDR’s initial New Deal legislation, the National Industrial Recovery Act, not only did not produce economic recovery – government forays into economics rarely do – the Act was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court in 1935 as unconstitutional! In doing so, the Supreme Court stated that:

“We are told that the provision of the statute authorizing the adoption of codes must be viewed in the light of the grave national crisis with which Congress was confronted . . . Extraordinary conditions may call for extraordinary remedies.  But the argument necessarily stops short of an attempt to justify action which lies outside the sphere of constitutional authority.”

In other words, as a matter of Constitutional law, the Supreme Court of the early 1930’s, bolstered by their brethren that had gone before, believed that our Founders did not authorize a central planning government dictating economic policy.  To the contrary, they fought the Revolution to establish a decentralized, limited government that would leave economic development to the newly freed American citizen.

FDR, however, was not interested in such “legalisms.”  Incredibly, Roosevelt asserted that Americans “cannot seriously be alarmed when they cry ‘unconstitutional’ at every effort to better the condition of our people.”  To the contrary, he asserted that “We will no longer be permitted to sacrifice each generation in turn while the law catches up with life.”

To combat such tardiness, Roosevelt sought to “reorganize” the United States Court to remove the lone remaining obstacle to his empowerment of government.  “He proposed a statute that would give him the power to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice whenever any sitting member reached the age of 70.”  It was no less than a shot across the bow of the Supreme Court.  In time, FDR would accept revisions to his plan but his aim was clear, he wanted a younger less historically or constitutionally encumbered set of minds to approve his transformation of the American government.  According to Bruce Ackerman in his worthy book, We The People – Transformations, “The President’s Court proposal hit the country like a bombshell.”

Ackerman writes that the public debate that ensued “raged on . . . and culminated with addresses by the President . . . [one of which] asked how the Administration could fulfill its campaign commitments to farmers, workers and other groups given judicial resistance to “a progressive solution of our problems.”

It was a constitutional show down whose magnitude had not been seen since Marbury v. Madison. But rather than prolong what had become a crisis by all measures by defending our Liberty, two Supreme Court Justices simply and literally switched their vote under the mounting pressure of the times and in the looming shadow of 66 different proposals from politicians to end the impasse.  Thereafter, another Justice who had voted against FDR’s activist government plans retired and Roosevelt had the newly compliant Supreme Court he wanted and – literally – it suddenly deemed constitutional that which was clearly unconstitutional just a few years before.

American would never be the same – and today the New Deal programs threaten our solvency in addition to taking away our freedoms.

As you consider all of that, reconsider the rhetoric of this President.   Ask yourself if he is historically or constitutionally encumbered? Or whether he will use any means, including ridiculing the Supreme Court to get his way – so that American will never be the same.


Email this to a friend | Print | Share on Facebook | | Bookmark and Share

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted Jan 29th 2010 at 5:31 am in Culture, Featured Story, Justice/Legal, News, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized | 224 Comments