Author Topic: Obama Understands Judicial Review, But Counts on the Ignorance of His Audience  (Read 1114 times)

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Obama Understands Judicial Review,
But Counts on the Ignorance of His Audience

April 04, 2012


BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Barack Obama a couple of days ago gets a question at a joint preference with Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon about the Supreme Court decision coming up on Obamacare. And what he says makes it sound like he doesn't understand the concept of judicial review, which was established in a long ago Supreme Court case called Marbury v. Madison in which the Court appointed to itself the job, the right of determining what and what isn't constitutional in terms of what comes out of Congress. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. Obama implicitly -- he implied that he -- doesn't know that.



And there have been a number of commentators reacting to Obama as though they really think he doesn't know what judicial review is. I'm shocked that anybody thinks that Obama doesn't know what judicial review is. Yeah, he went Harvard. Yeah, he's been educated and ill-informed by a whole bunch of leftists, but he knows what judicial review is. He knows the Supreme Court determines what's constitutional and not. Yet commentator after commentator after commentator explores that possibility, when that's not at all what's going on here. Some of them are quite good, by the way. Here's one, Thom Lambert, who is a professor of law at the University of Missouri-Columbia, the main campus.

"Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read..." No, no. I'm gonna tell you what's going on here. I know exactly what Obama's doing. He is setting Republicans up for a giant kill, politically. When I finish explaining (this is not gonna take very long), you're gonna have a total comprehension of what's going on here. And you're all probably gonna end up concluding that there was a leak on that preliminary vote and that it did go against him. But we'll get there here in due course and in a semblance of order. Thom Lambert, University of Missouri-Columbia, is writing at a blog called "Truth on the Market -- Academic Commentary on Law, Business, Economics, and More."

"Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise. Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. You'd be a little embarrassed, right? You'd worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical, economic, or mathematical literacy. Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor..."

This guy was taught constitutional law by Obama.

"Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor had stated that it would be 'an unprecedented, extraordinary step' for the Supreme Court to 'overturn a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,'" and he goes on to express his incredulity over this. Now, Obama did teach constitutional law, but I've looked into this. I found out that what he taught basically was the 14th Amendment: Agitation, community organizer kind of stuff, social justice stuff, using the Constitution for that. He didn't get into the rest. One specific area, the 14th Amendment, is what he focused on as a law professor.



Okay, that's Thom Lambert. James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, Best of the Web today: "The Man Who Knew Too Little -- We were half-joking yesterday when we asked if Barack Obama slept through his Harvard Law class on Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 case in which the US Supreme Court first asserted its power to strike down unconstitutional laws. It turns out it's no joke: The president is stunningly ignorant about constitutional law. ... [T]he most interesting part of his answer was the beginning, in which he tried to walk back, or at least clarify, his statement from yesterday. He spoke slowly, with long pauses, giving the sense that he was speaking with great thought and precision:

"'Well, first of all, let me be very specific. Um [pause], we have not seen a court overturn [pause],'" and he goes on. Then Obama cited a case before the newspaper editors yesterday. He said, "A law like that has not been overturned [pause] at least since Lochner, right? So we're going back to the '30s, pre-New Deal," and everybody's supposed to fawn. "Oh, well, he knows cases? The president knows cases? Lochner? Wow! What a smart guy! Wow!" Well, as Mr. Taranto points out, Lochner was a case from 1905, 30 years before the New Deal. And the full name of the case is Lochner v. New York, meaning it wasn't a federal case.

Obama cited a state case, Lochner v. New York, in order to indicate that he knew what he was talking about when it comes to judicial review of Obamacare. "The full name of the case, Lochner v. New York, should be a sufficient tip-off. In Lochner the court invalidated a state labor regulation on the ground that it violated the 'liberty of contract,' which the court held was an aspect of liberty protected by the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause." That's why he cited it, because he teaches the 14th Amendment, which is basically Obama taught race and grievance; law, race, gender, grievance law. That's what he taught. That's why he remembers Lochner.

But Lochner is not a federal case! Lochner does not involve Obamacare and the commerce clause as he attempts to use it in Obamacare, because it hasn't happened before. "Well, see, Mr. Limbaugh, then maybe your argument is really wrong." This is Mr. New Castrati. "Maybe, Mr. Limbaugh, Obama really, uh, is trying as hard as he can but doesn't understand, uh, uh, uh, the whole concept of Marbury." No, no, no. No, no, no, no. You Obama people really want to try to tell the rest of us he's this stupid? Is that what you want us to believe?

We want to go from the smartest, most sophisticated, most erudite, messianic political figure in our history in 2008, to "He's stupid"? Is that really what you want us to believe? 'Cause I simply refuse to accept the notion that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about. I refuse to accept the notion that he doesn't understand judicial review, doesn't know what Marbury v. Madison is. I think he's doing something entirely different. He is appealing to the dumbest, the most uninformed, and what he's basically telling them is: "This court is going to take away your health care that I've given you." That's what he's telling them, and he's counting on the dumb and the stupid to believe that, to not read any of these law professors who are correct. He doesn't care.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, as to Obama judicial review, Marbury v. Madison, all of this.  Let's be perfectly clear.  He knows what he's doing.  He knows he was lying.  He knows about judicial review.  He knows that the Supreme Court has thrown out many laws. He knows all this.  People that have never gone to law school know this.  It's absurd, folks, to think that he doesn't know this.  His audience, for those comments that he's made the last two days on Obamacare and the Supreme Court, is the ignorant population of America who he wants to believe that the court is going to do something it's never done before.

By the way, I'm not trying to be insulting.  I'm actually trying to be as descriptive as I can.  I could say the MTV generation.  I could say the people that watch E, Entertainment Tonight all day and want to be on it.  But really, you know the status of our education in this country.  You know how ill-educated, maleducated people are and have been for decades because of the public school system.  It's sad that he and the Democrat Party think that a presidency can be won appealing to this group, but that's what he's doing.  The ignorant population of America who he wants to believe that the court is gonna do something it's never done before, and that's take away their health insurance that he gave them.  That's all he wants.

He doesn't care what the law professors at the University of Missouri write.  He didn't care what James Taranto writes. He doesn't care, 'cause he knows his audience isn't gonna see what they write.  His audience is never gonna hear one disagreement with what Obama has said.  His audience will listen to him because the media will see to it that he is what they watch.  This court's gonna do something they've never done before.  The court is gonna take away their health care that he gave them.  The court is going to take away their insurance and take away their treatment, the court is.  That's all this is.  A brazen pander to the stupid, the uninformed.  And he's counting on the stupid to never come in contact with shows like this or columns by James Taranto or blogs written by professors at the University of Missouri law school.



He's counting on them running into things like this. Maureen Dowd has a column in the New York Times called Men in Black.  I think she owes a royalty to Mark Levin.  He has a book by that title long before Maureen Dowd wrote her piece.  But that's another subject.  Maureen Dowd, in the New York Times, actually wonders, in her column, why Obama should have to respect the court.  That's her point.  Why does he even have to listen to 'em?  And I'll give you a little hint.  He won't, folks.  If there is a decision he doesn't like, he'll just not accept it.  Mark my words.  Maureen Dowd apparently doesn't know that the court is a coequal branch of government.  She goes on to rant this.

"This court, cosseted behind white marble pillars, out of reach of TV, accountable to no one once they give the last word, is well on its way to becoming one of the most divisive in modern American history.  It has squandered even the semi-illusion that it is the unbiased, honest guardian of the Constitution."  Well, that's exactly what Obama wanted.  That's what he wants.  That's the kind of response he wants from his two days of remarks on the court.  Now, keep in mind, folks, the court hasn't even reached a decision yet.  We don't know what it is.  And yet Obama's trashing it, and now Maureen comes along and trashes it.  And it's all aimed at the stupid.

Now, you might be saying, "Well, Rush, the stupid aren't gonna read the New York Times, either."  No.  But the New York Times is the Bible for all the other news media.  This will dribble down to an Associated Press story in the Oshkosh Gazette.  No offense, Oshkosh.  The Entertainment Tonight shows might even decide to do a feature on this.  You never know.  Health care, Supreme Court, what would you do if they take away your health care?  That's all it would take.  And that's what Obama wants.  Maureen Dowd's not alone, though.  There is another article which spells out exactly the response Obama was hoping for at Tina Brown's juggernaut website, The Daily Beast, and the headline at The Daily Beast reads:  "Impeach the Supreme Court Justices If They Overturn Health Care Law."

The author is somebody named David Dow, and he has determined that Obamacare's clearly constitutional.  And naturally, being a Democrat in good standing, he has decided that if any of the justices disagreed with him, they are not only mistaken, but they're guilty of an impeachable offense.  So off with their robes.  We don't know what Mr. Dow's legal background is. He doesn't give it.  But it sounds like he must have gone to Harvard Law School to me.  Now, you and I, we sit here and laugh, but this is exactly what Obama wants the dumb segment of our population to think about the Supreme Court.  This is what he was aiming for.  He doesn't care that James Taranto thinks he doesn't know the Constitution. He doesn't care that a law professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia doesn't think he knows Marbury v. Madison.

What he wants out there is that the Supreme Court is going to take away people's health care, that they face financial ruin as a result, and this court needs to be impeached. And we have, therefore, a boiling pot of division -- once again the heat turned on and turned up by our own president, who we were told was going to unite everybody. We were going to have a post-racial country, a post-partisan country. We were going to have love and respect. We were gonna have a utopia. Everybody was gonna love each other, and everybody was going to love us.

And we are as divided a country as we've ever been, and the author of the division is the president himself. He's counting on most people being too uneducated to realize that everything he said in his press conference about the court's a flat-out lie. He knows it's a lie, and he knows he's lying. And he knows he can get away with it because there's not one reporter in the audience at the news editors luncheon that is going to challenge him on what he said. They're going to amplify it. They're the echo chamber. They're gonna make sure his words get out there exactly as he spoke them.

He knows that he can count on the Maureen Dowds of the world at the New York Times and The Daily Beast and the rest of our one-party media to beat this drum. So that even if the Supreme Court does the right thing and strikes down Obamacare, he will be able to claim it was only because they're a bunch of partisan hacks. They are tools of the Republicans. "It's just like Bush v. Gore, and it's just like Citizens United," and the dumb and stupid don't know what those are either except that they represent a Republican court. That's all. And, as such: "This court is nothing but a bunch of partisan hacks who do not like our brave, young president and are out to sabotage his presidency." That will be what he wants. That's the objective.

END TRANSCRIPT
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