So Much for the Facts

In "Obama Says Economy Will 'Come Back Stronger,'" ...

Makes me think of Obama as Vader, with Guinness' immortal line, "if you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."

...the Associated Press reports that our President remains optimistic despite today's "unexpected" bad news:

President Barack Obama says the May jobs report shows that the economy is not creating jobs "as fast as we want" but vows that the economy will improve.

Firing up the printing presses an creating more dollars doesn't create growth, it stifles it. More so, it devalues the currency further, while inflation is running at about 4% annually. 

Obama says, "we will come back stronger. We do have better days ahead."

Not sure what he's basing that on, since the people who probably know best -- those who operate on the economy's front lines -- are not seeing any evidence of it, as Reuters reports in "Economic worry tightens U.S. CEOs' grip on spending":

CEOs will hold their wallets a little bit tighter heading into the summer after the long-awaited recovery in U.S. employment stumbled in May.

Anyone putting in purchase requests or submitting expense reports is quite aware of the new reality of business spending. 

The United States had been a relative bright spot this year in a troubled world economy coping with Europe's debt crisis and a cooling Chinese economy. But a weaker-than-expected May jobs report on Friday gave corporate America fresh worries.

AT&T Inc was one company that was not surprised by the disappointing jobs numbers as it has seen a lack of hiring at both big and small corporate clients. Fewer employees at these companies means fewer phone lines, which hurts AT&T's growth prospects.

"We are not seeing any hiring in the upper end of business in the U.S.," said Randall Stephenson, chief executive of the biggest U.S. phone company by revenue, told an investor conference in New York on Friday. "People aren't hiring a lot in the U.S," he said.

At smaller companies, Stephenson said, the situation was worse. "As you go down-market, it's getting tighter and tighter, and you're seeing the wallet for investment being less open."

Then again, facts don't really matter when you're running for office, right?

Neither Obama nor Romney can take credit for economic growth, but it seems anything politician do these days sure has visible negative results. What more motivation do we have for a true free market system than the failed attempts by the state to control capitalism?

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/financialarmageddon/~3/6XWS82PtKos/so-much-for-the-facts.html

Threats, deals got drug companies on board with Obama

Top administration officials cut backroom deals with the nation's top drug companies to win support for President Obama's health care overhaul, threatening them with steeper taxes if they resisted and promising a better financial deal for the industry if they acquiesced, according to internal documents released Thursday by House Republicans.

Imagine that...

In some of the key deals, Mr. Obama agreed to drop his long-standing support for letting Americans buy cheaper foreign prescription drugs — something the pharmaceutical industry vehemently opposed — and the drugmakers promised to mount a public campaign to sell the public on the health care legislation.

Time to get off the drugs, America. 

The drug industry financed the famous "Harry and Louise" commercials in the early 1990s that many credit with helping to turn public opinion against President Clinton's massive health care bill. In 2009, the industry revived the fictional married couple — this time with words of praise for Mr. Obama's bill.

The material released by House GOP members provides a rare insider look at the wheeling and dealing on Capitol Hill as Mr. Obama tried to shepherd his bill through Congress, in the face of near-unanimous GOP opposition.

[...]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/31/threats-deals-got-drug-companies-on-board-with-oba/

Warren: The legend of Fauxcahontas' little big lie

It started when Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was said to have used tenuous claims of Native American heritage to further her career. The defense for listing herself as a minority in a directory of law professors for almost a decade rested on the roots of Warren's great-great-great-grandmother. If true, that would make Warren 1/32 Cherokee. It was not. Now, Warren relies on tales of "high cheekbones" and media outlets like the Boston Globe, which buried the news that she was 0.00 percent Cherokee. It's hard to see how Harvard's first blond-haired, blue-eyed "woman of color" will get her campaign back on track.

What, just this one insignificant lie from Warren that we are taking issue with? I think that we can refer to a wealth of malignant in her voting record for better reasons to end her political career.

Warren: The legend of Fauxcahontas' little big lie | Times 247

Obama awards Medal of Freedom to avowed socialist

President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to Dolores Huerta, an 82-year-old labor activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers union.

Huerta is also an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA describes itself as “the largest socialist organization in the United States, and the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International.”

Huerta has claimed, “Republicans hate Latinos,” and has spoken fondly of Hugo Chavez’s despotic regime in Venezuela.

Read more: http://times247.com/articles/obama-awards-medal-of-freedom-to-democratic-socialists-of-america-chair#ixzz1wSnZAK1s

Obama's big deficit lie

President Obama claims federal budget deficits have not soared out of control during his administration. He has officially jumped the shark.

Maybe that's not quite the best expression, as claims of budgetary stability are simply misinformation at best, most likely just state propaganda. 

On Wednesday at a Denver fundraiser, Mr. Obama said he was "running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible." He claimed that "after inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law" and that since he has been president, "federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that." It doesn't take much thought to see that this is the most absurd claim in political memory.

Mr. Obama is basing his boast on an already discredited study by journalist Rex Nutting that purported to show that "Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." Among other fatal problems with the study is that it omits all spending that took place during the first nine months of the Obama administration, which were the last nine months of fiscal 2009. Thus, all of the initial spending programs to which the White House points with pride - particularly the failed nearly trillion-dollar economic stimulus program - are George W. Bush's responsibility so far as Mr. Nutting is concerned.

The "savings" Mr. Obama signed into law were all based on rosy economic projections, none of which has come true. The fiscal 2010 budget, fancifully titled "A New Era of Responsibility," projected a $1.2 trillion cut in the deficit to $533 billion by 2013. The fiscal 2012 budget, which had no hopeful title, raised this number to $768 billion. Mr. Obama's September 2011 deficit-reduction proposal further raised the projected 2013 deficit to $912 billion. The fiscal 2010 budget also hopefully projected 6.26 percent economic growth for 2012 rather than the anemic 1 percent to 2 percent growth the country is suffering. Naturally, Mr. Obama would much rather make reference to the imagined future his economists projected than to the grim reality he actually created.

Other simple metrics show the disastrous impact of Mr. Obama on the deficit. The 2009 budget deficit was three times that of 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for all of 2007. In his first 986 days in office, up to Oct. 3, 2011, Mr. Obama oversaw a $4.2 trillion increase in the national debt, which was more than the debt accrued by all presidents from George Washington to George H.W. Bush combined.

It's no wonder why Mr. Obama wants to portray himself as a deficit hawk. The federal budget deficit is the second-most-important issue in the election after jobs, on which Mr. Obama's record is equally dismal. The White House has never submitted a proposal that has come close to balancing the federal budget, even with 10-year projections to work with. The flawed economic assumptions used to sell Mr. Obama's programs were a bait-and-switch that left America mired in unsustainable levels of debt. It's incredible that Mr. Obama believes he can get away with such a big lie. He seems simply to have lost his grip on reality.

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/24/obamas-big-deficit-lie/

LAMBRO: Bad news for Obama in the mountains - Washington Times

President Obama isn't doing so well in some of his party primaries where a surprisingly large number of Democrats are giving him the thumbs down.

Big surprise; even moderate liberals think Obama is extreme. Hello Mr. Obvious. 

The national news media are paying little attention to the Democrats' presidential primaries because Mr. Obama is assured of his nomination. But the large size of the anti-Obama vote - exposing deep unrest in his party's political base - has shaken his campaign's high command.

The latest explosions erupted Tuesday in the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries, which, of course, Mr. Obama won easily. But a stunning 42 percent of Kentucky Democrats voted for "uncommitted" on their ballots.

In yellow dog Democrat Arkansas, 42 percent voted for a little-known Tennessee lawyer, John Wolfe, over the president of the United States.

Two weeks ago in the West Virginia primary, Keith Judd, a convicted felon and now Texas prison inmate, got 41 percent of the vote.

Some smarty-pants political pundits who think they know everything say some of this is about race and that these states are firmly in the GOP column anyway.

"You will forgive me, I hope, a lack of excitement about the 'story' of the president's weakness in these two states [i.e. Arkansas and Kentucky] and in other border states with large fossil-fuel energy industries and relatively few African-Americans, since I've been reading about it since the 2008 primaries," Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore says in Wednesday's Washington Monthly Political Animal blog.

But others think the Democrats' sizable anti-Obama vote in the party primaries has much deeper implications for the election.

Such strong antipathy toward Mr. Obama at this end point in his trouble-plagued presidency is "an indicator of not-insignificant pockets of unrest within his party," The Washington Post's campaign trackers Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write.

Racial factors "may be less of a problem for Obama than the broader cultural disconnect that many of these voters feel with the Democratic Party." They also quote Democrats who point to growing grievances that many in their party have over the political direction Mr. Obama is taking the country.

"The most significant factor is the perception/reality the Obama administration has leaned toward the ultra-left," says former Rep. Charles Stenholm, Texas Democrat.

That's certainly true in the coal-rich Appalachian states where Mr. Obama's zeal for eliminating coal as one of the fuels that run our country has triggered a political backlash against him and the Environmental Protection Agency, which is carrying out his anti-coal agenda.

These are states with large populations of low-income, blue-collar, "working class" Americans who have been hit hardest by Mr. Obama's economic policies, and they do not like the national Democratic Party's sharp lurch to the left on economic and cultural policies.

[...]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/24/bad-news-for-obama-in-the-mountains/

Obama's big deficit lie

President Obama claims federal budget deficits have not soared out of control during his administration. He has officially jumped the shark.

Deficit spending only works when economic growth is in high gear, and even then it only works temporarily. Paired with rampant 4% inflation every year, growth is guaranteed to stagnate and decline. You can't make wealth from debt. 

On Wednesday at a Denver fundraiser, Mr. Obama said he was "running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible." He claimed that "after inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law" and that since he has been president, "federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that." It doesn't take much thought to see that this is the most absurd claim in political memory.

Mr. Obama is basing his boast on an already discredited study by journalist Rex Nutting that purported to show that "Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." Among other fatal problems with the study is that it omits all spending that took place during the first nine months of the Obama administration, which were the last nine months of fiscal 2009. Thus, all of the initial spending programs to which the White House points with pride - particularly the failed nearly trillion-dollar economic stimulus program - are George W. Bush's responsibility so far as Mr. Nutting is concerned.

The "savings" Mr. Obama signed into law were all based on rosy economic projections, none of which has come true. The fiscal 2010 budget, fancifully titled "A New Era of Responsibility," projected a $1.2 trillion cut in the deficit to $533 billion by 2013. The fiscal 2012 budget, which had no hopeful title, raised this number to $768 billion. Mr. Obama's September 2011 deficit-reduction proposal further raised the projected 2013 deficit to $912 billion. The fiscal 2010 budget also hopefully projected 6.26 percent economic growth for 2012 rather than the anemic 1 percent to 2 percent growth the country is suffering. Naturally, Mr. Obama would much rather make reference to the imagined future his economists projected than to the grim reality he actually created.

Other simple metrics show the disastrous impact of Mr. Obama on the deficit. The 2009 budget deficit was three times that of 2008. The deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product went from 3.1 percent in 2008 to 9.9 percent in 2009. The deficit for the first month of fiscal 2010 was $176 billion, which was greater than the $161 billion deficit for all of 2007. In his first 986 days in office, up to Oct. 3, 2011, Mr. Obama oversaw a $4.2 trillion increase in the national debt, which was more than the debt accrued by all presidents from George Washington to George H.W. Bush combined.

[...]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/24/obamas-big-deficit-lie/

Bad news for Obama in the mountains

President Obama isn't doing so well in some of his party primaries where a surprisingly large number of Democrats are giving him the thumbs down.

The sad part about this is that when many find Obama dissatisfying, they actually look to his statist counterparts on the far opposite side instead of truly moderate and responsible candidates such as Ron Paul or Gary Johnson. Choosing between Obama and Romney is simply picking your flavor of statism. 

The national news media are paying little attention to the Democrats' presidential primaries because Mr. Obama is assured of his nomination. But the large size of the anti-Obama vote - exposing deep unrest in his party's political base - has shaken his campaign's high command.

The latest explosions erupted Tuesday in the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries, which, of course, Mr. Obama won easily. But a stunning 42 percent of Kentucky Democrats voted for "uncommitted" on their ballots.

In yellow dog Democrat Arkansas, 42 percent voted for a little-known Tennessee lawyer, John Wolfe, over the president of the United States.

Two weeks ago in the West Virginia primary, Keith Judd, a convicted felon and now Texas prison inmate, got 41 percent of the vote.

Some smarty-pants political pundits who think they know everything say some of this is about race and that these states are firmly in the GOP column anyway.

"You will forgive me, I hope, a lack of excitement about the 'story' of the president's weakness in these two states [i.e. Arkansas and Kentucky] and in other border states with large fossil-fuel energy industries and relatively few African-Americans, since I've been reading about it since the 2008 primaries," Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore says in Wednesday's Washington Monthly Political Animal blog.

But others think the Democrats' sizable anti-Obama vote in the party primaries has much deeper implications for the election.

Such strong antipathy toward Mr. Obama at this end point in his trouble-plagued presidency is "an indicator of not-insignificant pockets of unrest within his party," The Washington Post's campaign trackers Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake write.

[...]

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/24/bad-news-for-obama-in-the-mountains/

Julia...

http://media.patriotpost.us/humor/2012/05-22.html

Obama’s Allegiances

NATO to Plan More War in Chicago

This week's NATO summit meeting, in Chicago, "will be full of aggressive activities: plans for energy wars around the world, new decisions about how the U.S will maintain hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East and Afghanistan," said Chris Gavreau, spokesperson for UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition. Thousands of demonstrators are expected to converge on the city.

The Chicago school continues to remind us that the current regime is no better than its predecessors. 

Boycott the Two Major Parties

"We know him as a war president, we know him as an anti-civil liberties president, we know him as an austerity president – that's the record," said Dr. Tony Monteiro, professor of African American Studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia, speaking of Barack Obama. "The same goes for Mitt Romney." Progressives and the Black Left should "boycott the two major parties" this election cycle.

How about voting for an alternative to the status quo like Gary Johnson or Ron Paul. Left and right are both wrong. 

Obama the Militarist

The president proclaims his militarism "proudly, with repeated references to 'taking out' al Qaida operatives through the most illegal methods imaginable," said political analyst Paul Street, author of The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. Street noted that Obama called his own health care program "centrist," while admitting that it is modeled on a plan developed by the rightwing Heritage Foundation in the Nineties.

Derivatives Wreak Havoc at Banks

JP Morgan Chase, the nation's largest bank, gambled away billions because neither party made any real "effort to crack down on derivatives in general," said Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer. "It's remarkable how little has changed since the financial crisis" of 2008, said Henwood. "This is precisely the sort of thing that was supposed to be stopped."

Obama's Allegiances

President Obama's "policies are similar to the Bush administration but, in my opinion, are far worse, because he presented himself in 2008 as a change agent," said Abayomi Azikewe, editor of the Pan African Newswire. Today, people see Obama as he really is, "a representative of the banks, the transnational corporations and the Pentagon – pure and simple." Azikewe spoke with host Solomon Commissiong on Your World News, broadcast on WPWC Radio, in Washington, DC.

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/PRNfm/~3/By9MIBo_O9I/

George W. Bush requests the most taxpayer dollars of ex-presidents

Former President George W. Bush is budgeted to receive the most money from taxpayers of all the living ex-presidents.
Bush, the most recent former president, is requesting more than $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars for fiscal year 2013, according to a budget proposal document prepared by the General Services Administration.
Those funds go towards an office staff, travel and postage. The former presidents Act of 1958 guarantees taxpayer funding for ex-presidents.
Former President Bill Clinton is requesting more than $1 million. Former President George H.W. Bush is requesting $879,000 and former President Jimmy Carter is requesting $518,000.

Imagine that, Bush wants more than he deserves for what he did TO this nation. I can't wait to see what Obama embezzles from the taxpayers once he's out of office (hopefully it doesn't take two terms to learn our lesson this time). Is there no end to the fleecing of America?

George W. Bush requests the most taxpayer dollars of ex-presidents – Patriot Update

On the False Two-party System in America, and Obamney

Found it on Libertarian Reddit. 

We're finally breaking through on Reddit!

Thunderbird wants to auto-correct Obamney to Baloney. Actually, I think that may be correct.

Too bad we can't undo more anything significant...

If you think there is no difference between Romney and Obama, then by all means let Obama pick your next three Supreme Court justices and dozens of federal judges.
See if that matters to the next quarter-century of your life.

The Supreme Court might be a little more relevant if these bankster-owned Republicrats weren't constantly violating the Constitution with impunity on a daily basis. The only law that is in force in America today is the law of the jungle. Operation Fast and Furious proves that.
Like Obama, Romney is a total neocon and all neocons are warmongers who want to use the US military to achieve the goals of the transnational criminals who have hijacked America.

A warmongering Demopublican president? How can it be that Obama is worse than W Bush? How can anyone still believe in the two-party system as a way to balance power in the government. They are like the hydra; two heads of the same monster.

Go to a list of supreme court judges for the last 50 or 60 years.
Try to guess the affiliation of who nominated whom.
You'll be horrified.
Then look at the recent ones that were nominated by a Demoblican President, but were blindly passed by a Republicrat Congress.
They really do play for the same team, sir.

http://thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com/2012/01/obamney-poster.html

The left-right paradigms is dead, but we won't stop poking it's corpse. We have a totalitarian regime which is trying to do everything to take away our NATURAL rights. The state exists only through people, it is intangible and mythical in all other regards, no more than a collection of words on paper.

Without which, people are simply enacting aggression against other people without provocation or justification. We need to maintain the principles of non-aggression and personal property on high to regain and maintain individual liberty over collective authority and minority will.

Left and Right are both wrong



And why vote for a lesser evil?

If we're going to eternity without the salvation part, let's go all out!

On Obama's Nobel Prize...

I'm still not sure what justified the prize in this case. It certainly is not on the grounds of peace.

Michele And Marcus Bachmann's 'Ex-Gay' Clinic's Practices Described By Undercover Lesbian Filmmaker

Although Marcus Bachmann has continually denied that his Christian counseling clinic practices so-called "pray away the gay" therapy, yet another prominent LGBT activist is testifying to the contrary.

Documentary filmmaker Kristina Lapinski, who is currently at work on "GAY U.S.A. the Movie," went undercover at Bachmann & Associates, the Minnesota-based Christian counseling clinic co-owned by Marcus and Michele Bachmann, and once again captured a staff member conducting what she described as "reparative" therapy.

Lapinski says she played the part of "a confused 24 year old lesbian who had just moved from California to Minnesota to marry her long time male friend, Jake, all to please her Christian parents" while making an appointment. After speaking to counselor Sheila J. Marker about her situation, Lapinski says Marker then pulled out a Bible, informing her that God intended only men and women to come together, and captured the experience on a hidden pen camera.

Read More...

Bachmann proves only that religion is a platform that fails to translate into politics easily. 

Santorum Drops Out

There is a pretty interesting discussion thread going over at the Mises Institute on the subject of Rick Santorum dropping out and what that means for the other candidates vying for the GOP nomination. There is more cognitive debate going on there than at any political debate I have watched in years.

http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/28793/464172.aspx#464172

CIA stealth drones made hundreds of passes over Iran

More than three years ago, the CIA dispatched a stealth surveillance drone into the skies over Iran. The bat-winged aircraft penetrated more than 600 miles inside the country, captured images of Iran's secret nuclear facility at Qom and then flew home. All the while, analysts at the CIA and other agencies watched carefully for any sign that the craft, dubbed the RQ-170 Sentinel, had been detected by Tehran's air defenses on its maiden voyage. "There was never even a ripple," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official involved in the previously undisclosed mission. CIA stealth drones scoured dozens of sites throughout Iran, making hundreds of passes over suspicious facilities, before a version of the RQ-170 crashed inside Iran's borders in December. The surveillance has been part of what current and former U.S. officials describe as an intelligence surge that is aimed at Iran's nuclear program and that has been gaining momentum since the final years of George W. Bush's administration.

I find irony in that an anti-war democrat can surpass Bush in regards to war efforts against States that pose no threat to our nation. Sad irony. 

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Original Page: http://www.sott.net/articles/show/243866-CIA-stealth-drones-made-hundreds-of-passes-over-Iran

White House has diverted $500M to IRS to implement healthcare law

The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president's healthcare law. The money is only part of the IRS's total implementation spending, and it is being provided outside the normal appropriations process. The tax agency is responsible for several [...]

Legal or not, the Obama administration is only concerned with furthering it's political agenda, rather than debating the Constitutionality of that effort. You would think that a president with a Constitutional teaching position in his resume (okay, it was a short spell as a part time adjunct instructor) would have the sense to justify his efforts against the document our liberties are measured against. 

I'm darting to think that the fact that I have actually read the entire Constitution qualifies me as a Constitutional scholar, since Obama learned so little from it, if he read it and took away anything at all. Calling it a living document is justification to the statists to pervert its intent for their own benefit anyway. He's probably more interested in trying to get on the cover of GQ than law anymore...

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Original Page: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/prepperpodcast/flJA/~3/VjjipyJQP7Q/

Obamacare and DOMA

If Obama doesn't want the Supreme Court to overturn a "law passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," by which, strangely, he means ObamaCare, then what about the Defense of Marriage Act?

It's about political agenda at this point, just as with most politicians, rather than supporting the Constitution or the will of the People. This is the failure of the State to serve the populace through democracy, as only a minority of the population gets their position supported in the best of circumstances. 

Also the impact of political lies and government overreach, as well as another look at the Trayvon Martin case and readers' response to Mark Alexander's Essay.

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Original Page: http://patriotpost.us/edition/2012/04/09/brief/

Obama flunks constitutional law

President attacks Supreme Court in advance of Obamacare ruling

For someone who once taught classes at a law school, President Obama doesn't seem to know much about the powers of the Supreme Court.

At a press conference Monday, Mr. Obama said he did not think the high court would rule that forcing Americans to buy health insurance was unconstitutional. "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," he said.

I am not sure if it is more surprising that he thinks forcing citizens to engage in commerce is either moral or Constitutional, or that the Supreme Court is taking this long to determine just that. 

There's plenty of precedent for voiding a law like Obamacare. The top justices have invalidated more than 150 federal laws in part or in whole. Nor would there be anything extraordinary about such a step, as courts frequently make these types of rulings. In fact, it would be unprecedented and extraordinary for it to let stand the unconstitutional aspects of Obamacare.

There's also no truth to the suggestion that Obamacare passed by a "strong majority." The vote was 219 to 212, a razor-thin margin in which 34 members of the president's own party voted no.

That speaks volumes in itself...

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.

Mr. Obama even attempted to invoke conservative rhetoric to defend his greatest legislative accomplishment. "For years, what we've heard is 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 – and passed law." Here Mr. Obama confuses judicial activism with judicial review. A former law professor – or in his case, a former part-time adjunct instructor – really should know better.

Not much experience to fall back on I guess?

Judicial review is the long-standing right of the courts to assess the constitutionality of state and federal laws and executive actions. It is at the heart of the system of checks and balances. Judicial activism is the exploitation of the powers of the bench to rewrite laws and regulate the executive and legislative branches in ways that the framers of the Constitution never intended. It is the favored approach of liberal justices such as Mr. Obama's two unelected Supreme Court appointees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

If Mr. Obama thinks the Supreme Court is out of line overturning laws passed by large majorities, he should tell us whether he supports the court's decision in the 1954 case Bolling v. Sharpe, which overturned the act of June 22, 1874, that segregated District of Columbia schools. He should be actively campaigning to reverse the Supreme Court's 1990 ruling against the Flag Protection Act, which passed the House 380-38.

Mr. Obama proves that you don't have to be a constitutional scholar to be president. But it would help.

Published originally on The Washington Times, April 3, 2012.

“Vitriol” against Santorum to blame for expected D.C. loss

Spin.

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It's hard to pinpoint exactly when Rick Santorum suddenly ceased to be the viable challenger and began instead to be a candidate in denial. Wisconsin is, as Andrew Malcolm put it, Santorum's "next last chance" and it doesn't look good for the former Pennsylvania senator. Maryland and D.C., where Santorum didn't even make the ballot, [...]

Read this post »

I think that some people thought he was actually viable in the first place, so they are clinging tight to their lack or reality as he fades into the background.