The title of the linked story is "OBAMA SUPREME COURT WARNING; 'CONSERVATIVE' JUDICIAL ACTIVISM IS 'WHAT YOU'RE NOW SEEING'
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama, preparing to make his second nominee to the Supreme Court, warned Wednesday of a "conservative" brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decision of lawmakers.
Obama made clear that his views on judicial restraint are not the only basis he will use in choosing his next nominee for the high court, a decision expected over the next few weeks.
But his comments underscore just how much he thinks courts are being vested with too much power and are overruling legislative will, a factor that will influence his nominee choice.
Obama already has openly criticized the Supreme Court for a January ruling – one led by the court's conservative members – that allowed corporations and unions to spend freely to influence elections. Obama has vowed to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens with a like-minded justice who will not let powerful interests crowd out voices of ordinary people.
On Wednesday, when asked about judicial activism as he spoke with reporters aboard Air Force One, Obama spoke of judges who ignore the will of Congress and the democratic process, imposing judicial solutions instead of letting the political process solve problems. (Z: did he REALLY SAY THIS? WHAT?)
"In the '60s and '70s, the feeling was, is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach," Obama said. "What you're now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error."
He said the notion of judicial restraint should apply to liberal and conservative jurists. Instead, the president said arguments over original intent and other legal theories end up giving judges a lot of power – sometimes more power than elected representatives have.
Obama said judges should presume that the laws produced by the House and Senate and state legislatures should get "some deference as long as core constitutional values are observed."
HAS HE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION? Is anybody LISTENING TO HIM and waking up to what he's saying? Judges are supposed to pay attention to the will of congress when deciding cases? WHAT???
As for my image of the gavel and flag...it might as well be Obama's shoe ON the flag...z
34 comments:
HAS HE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION?
Oh, he hasn't forgotten. He's willfully choosing to ignore it.
Quite frankly AOW nailed it. He specialized in Constitutional law in college so one has to assume he has read the document at one or another. He simply chooses to ignore it.
He doesn't understand b/c he has a Chavez-like mindset. He studied law but he doesn't comprehend the separation of powers well enough because of his dictatorial brain.
If the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, he would not be complaining. He is like a three year old child. Crying and stamping his feet when he didn't get his way.
My wish for Obama is that his bad karma comes back at him in the way that his "liberal" nominee turns out to be a closet conservative. HA!
Here's an interesting clip of George Bernard Shaw lamenting that America didn't heed his earlier advice to abolish the Constitution and his thoughts about the courts getting in the way of his "good advice". Since the clip was made in 1931 he likely found a President who listened to his advice in FDR. I wonder how he'd embrace a President like Obama?
I find it interesting that this poison has been pumped into the system for decades yet people are still amazed and react like it only occurred with the election of Obama as President — it's clearly an old problem that needs to be extracted at the roots.
And have you ever seen a more arrogant self-righteous and pompous twit than GBS here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R7jL0_JANY
Waylon
Oh, Obama hasn't forgotten we have a Constitution. He just hates it and is doing everything in his power to destroy it.
He's hoping WE'VE forgotten.
Someone who willfully chooses to ignore the law is usually called a criminal. I guess given a President's high position, it'd be called a high crime.
Pris
Opus #6 said...
If the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, he would not be complaining. He is like a three year old child. Crying and stamping his feet when he didn't get his way.
WELL SAID, Opus...SO SO SO TRUE. When he gets his way, he's ALL OVER whatever's happening, but let everyone not fawn over him, and do what whoever his superiors who are holding his puppet strings don't approve of, and he's scared and indignant.
But, everyone...I'm right, aren't I? YOu can't be nominating people for the SCOTUS and say they have to do the will of the congress or the people...what the heck are LAWS and PRECEDENCES FOR?
And, you're all right...he was TEACHING constitutional law! How many Americans has he soiled with his way of thinking? Oh, I forgot; he was a university professor....just another university indoctrinator....PLENTY have been soiled. He certainly couldn't have been teaching them to THINK like all profs USED to do...if you teach people to think, they might disagree with you!
As a temporary visitor here in Honduras, I saw the same behavior from a President who wanted to replace the country's constitution because it limited his powers. The courts ruled against him. The congress voted against him. He continued to try to subvert the democratic government, trying to emulate his mentor in Venezuela. He was removed from office legally, and by a government from his own party. The people of Honduras did not shoot him, or jail him. They simply flew him out and exiled him from Honduras.
The US called it a coup. Many of us, Americans, Canadians and Europeans, were amazed at the antics of the US media. I'd hazard a guess that there are few supporters, not only here but in the world, of what is being done by the current administration.
Will
Everybody's remarks are spot on, although I take exception to this latter day drubbing of George Bernard Shaw.
Shaw was one of the great literary lights of all time. Nothing can change that.
I wouldn't care if he were proved to be a child rapist, a rabid anti-Semite, a Segregationist, a Trafficker in White Slavery, a Bolshevik or Cat Burglar. That takes NOTHING away from the quality of his WORK, which is in a class all by itself.
He was a FABIAN socialist. He possessed a tremendous intellect. In his heyday experimental thinking of many kinds was all the rage. He turned out to be wrong about many things -- as do we all sooner or later.
His odd ideas on politics and other subjects should not earn him our disrespect.
Back to Obooboo:
The Big O is practicing The Alcee Hastings Theory of Governance: "There aren't any rules anymore, we just make them up as we go along."
Zero justifies this by saying "We won."
He wants to believe that winning an election gives the victor DICTATORIAL powers that no one has a legitimate right to oppose.
BOOBAMA!
~ FreeThinke
God bless you, Will.
Hope to hear more from you.
The biggest Open Secret in the World is that the American Enemedia actively SUPPORTS Bolshevism, Communism, Socialism, Internationalism, Atheism, and DESPOTISM as long as it is accompanied by an anti-Capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-White, anti-Bourgeois, anti-Individualist agenda.
The ENEMEDIA is a hugely powerful arm of forces that seek to UNIFY the world so as to CONTROL and ultimately ENSLAVE all people in service to an Almighty and Ever-Living Nanny State.
Disbelieve this at your peril.
~ FreeThinke
Is this to cover for Elena Kagan's lack of judicial experience?
Barack Hood and his Merry Men in the Redwood view the CONSTITUTION as a CONSTIPATION to their determined efforts to to turn us into just another Turd World Nation.
They think of themselves as PROGRESSIVE.
~ FreeThinke
Free Thinker,GBS may have been a "great intellect", but how can you praise him so highly as a member of the human race? Remember he is on record offering high praise for the likes of Lenin, Hitler and Mussolini. As well, he longed for a "humane gas" to eliminate the undesirables in a society — those being the individuals who would be called before a tribunal to show their value. Any human intellect considered to be of such high rank could NEVER be mistaken in his outright embrace of the most brutal and hateful ideologies ever to stalk the planet — i.e. National Socialism and Bolshevik Socialism.
Are you saying you are OK with an education system that demands the study of his writings and at the same time ignoring tyrannical ideas in philosophy and politics?
Waylon
••• Are you saying you are OK with an education system that demands the study of his writings and at the same time ignoring tyrannical ideas in philosophy and politics? •••
YUP!
Besides, I don't believe that Shaw necessarily BELIEVED everything he said. His work belies nothing of this sort of thinking, and as I said, in the early-to-mid 1900's highly experimental thinking was not only encouraged among people of intellect and good breeding it was considered DE RIGEUR.
In attempting to ameliorate the abuses brought on by the Machine Age and to throw off the shackles of Victorian rigidity and hypocrisy our species went too far in opposite directions.
Surely you don't take Jonathan Swift literally or evaluate Wagner according to his vaunted ant-Semitism -- or Tchaikovsky by his homosexuality?
In the final analysis of each period in human history Art, Music, Architecture, Literature and advances in Science are the only things that matter. The rest is just vanity, petty gossip and self-righteous posturing and violence.
That's why I am called
~ FreeThinke
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
~ Einstein
Insight is the inspiration for all great accomplishment.
~ FreeThinke
"Liberty is more important than security."
~ Franklin
"There is nothing either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so."
~ Shakespeare
"Beauty is truth; truth beauty ..."
~ Keats
~ FreeThinke
Well thanks for clearing THAT up, Free Thinker. Are you going to now identify yourself as a rabid fanatic supporting the leadership of President Obama, who I'm sure, GBS would surely embrace as well.
The point of the issue with the likes of Shaw is that people have swallowed the poison pill concocted by the likes of the Fabian Socialists — I thought you's have recognized it was swallowing a mouthful of crap not praising the likes of GBS.
Gawd, he even admits calling for the abolishing of the American Constitution and the Supreme Court and your OK with THAT?
Waylon
Waylon, you're not saying that we ought not learn about GBS the writer and read his works, correct? Just that the other side of him ought to be taught as well?
Z, I'd never suggest NOT reading the writings of Shaw. I'm saying read what he says and recognize it for what it is — propaganda for socialism and tyrannical rule of an all powerful state to control all aspects of life right down to the last breath the ruling clique will allow you to draw when t it is considered you have out lived your usefulness to that "society".
There's even a pretty and quaint little town next door to Niagara Falls which celebrates with a Shaw Festival every year. I wonder what the thinking behind that idea was, if any ...
Waylon
This gives new meaning to the "con" he taught in con law.
I wish somebody would comment specifically on Obama's amazing comments about how the SCOTUS ought to be following the public and congress......what do you think about that, folks?
Will..thanks for commenting...I think our media's SO in cohoots with the Obama thugs that we really can't tell how many people are turning away from his agenda...I wish we could.
Maybe, in November, at the election...? But, I shudder for how the media will be in full gear beforehand.
Here's what I said about Obama and his attitude,Z. It probably got buried in all the Shaw talk:
The Big O is practicing The Alcee Hastings Theory of Governance: "There aren't any rules anymore, we just make them up as we go along."
Zero justifies this by saying "We won."
He wants to believe that winning an election gives the victor DICTATORIAL powers that no one has a legitimate right to oppose.
BOOBAMA!
~ FT
Here's what I said about Obama and his "attitude," Z:
The Big O is practicing The Alcee Hastings Theory of Governance: "There aren't any rules anymore, we just make them up as we go along."
Zero justifies this by saying "We won."
He wants to believe that winning an election gives the victor DICTATORIAL powers that no one has a legitimate right to oppose.
BOOBAMA!
~ FT
I suspect no one is truly surprised by Mr Obama's attitude. I think you hint at a deeper danger, though.
People have two options for government: Rule of law, or rule by a person or class. Under rule of law, there is a chance for justice. Under rule by a person or class, justice is entirely disregarded.
Mr Obama clearly favors rule by an oligarchic class. Its sad that about 1/3 of the American people think this is a Good Thing.
When Alito or Roberts was nominated to the SCOTUS, Chuck Schumer was running his mouth at a press conference saying how important it was to scrutinize the pick because the SCOTUS's job of "making law" was so important. I kid you not.
So, it's not a big surprise that our leaders have no functional understanding of government. When we have idiots like this leading us, it's no wonder we have so many idiot followers.
One of my favorite quotes from GBS:
"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you're thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy."
~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
That sounds like a conservative/libertarian sentiment to me.
When was the last time you saw Pygmalion, Major Barbara, or Heartbreak House, Waylon? Shaw was a genius, and like most such he was also a great eccentric. There was far more danger in Marx, Engels, Gramsci, The Frankfurt School and The New School for Social Research than there was in Shaw. You may have been listening to too much Glenn Beck. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
~ FT
"HAS HE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THAT WE HAVE A CONSTITUTION?"
The "Law" Professor...the "Constitutional" expert? The editor of the Law Review...yea...the one written by Rev. Wright and Al Sharpton.
Speaking of that...who here...who anywhere has ever seen or read one...ONE...paper by this rainman fraud...or ever talked to one of his classmates..yet?
This man...this quadroon...hiding behind his "black" mask...is one more example of the failed affirmative action stupidity suckers post 1965. So much hope...so little progress.
He's definitely as slick as Denzel Washington on Malcolm X..ya think? But like Denzel...an actor.
Abdul
FT, I guess what one sees is truly subjective in terms of evaluating the ideas of a writer. But somehow I think that subjective evaluation has to be tied to reality — hos those ideas relate to the real world. Shaw in his own words and by his own actions advocated for powerful expanded government interference into the life of the individual.
The quotation over which you wax rhapsodic about to me reveals exactly what I perceive in the larger picture of the ideas of Shaw. I definitely don't see anything libertarian in it and I doubt Shaw would advocate anything pro liberty for the individual and would demand the surrender of the responsibility of the individual for the right to choose anything — period.
In the link above he asserts that the correct he perceived in America back in the '20's and '30's that the Constitution be repealed and courts abolished. That sounds more like Marx (or Lenin rather than Karl's more avuncular) brother Groucho.
Waylon
Well, not to be TOO shallow, Waylon, but I do enjoy PYGMALION! :-)
Abdul (could you PLEASE use another screen name?)...you're so right...imagine if ANY Conservative president hid as much as Obama has for YEARS?!! WHO PAID FOR HARVARD?
LASUNSETT..you heard Schumer say THAT? WHAT??? And the media says ZILCH?
HOLY COW
Just about the time I think I'm coming out of SHOCK, Obozo turns another corner and boldly exposes more of his ignorance of this country and the job he holds!!!
And Chucky Schemer actually said that??? Here I slept through Senior government class, and I know "Which branch makes law, and which branch must stick to interpretation"!!! What an idiot!
I'm going to go take my meds now before I have a stroke!
Waylon,
We will have to agree to disagree on the relative merits of Shaw, and what is and is not important to learn about men of genius.
The Fabians had no connections to the Bolsheviks. However, they did form the basis of what became today's Labour Party in Britain.
I imagine most of the early Fabian Socialists would be appalled at the fruits of their labors, if they were alive to observe them today. Not so the hate-based Bolsheviks whose intent was always to destroy.
Most of us forget -- or never knew -- there was much about 19th and early 20th century society that warranted reform.
Focus your resentment on Lincoln, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Gramsci, The Frankfurt School, the New York Intellectuals and Alinsky and of course Woodrow Wilson and both the Roosevelts.
There are hundreds more of these termites who've munched away at the foundations of Western Civilization. Shaw, whatever his eccentricities, was definitely not one of them. Instead he was one of the greatest CONTRIBUTORS to Western culture,
Big Subject! This was supposed to be about Obama's attitude toward the court. But of course, were it not for the machinations of those foul influences I listed above -- and others too numerous to know -- a character like Boobooma would not be in a position to determine the fate of this once-great nation.
We've been in steep decline since long before most of us were born, but it AIN'T because of George Bernard Shaw.
~ FreeThinke
FT, I'd be more willing to cut President Obama some slack since he is a product of his "education" or indoctrination as the case may be — depending on your perspective (subjective, of course). I think the link I posted above with Shaw, in his own words, calling for the abandonment of the Constitution and the courts, is directly relevant to Z's post about Obama since it's not a new idea but is something the termites undermining Western Civilization recognize as a necessity for the accomplishment of their objectives.
I don't dispute most of your list of villains in the history of the 20 Century advance of statism. Of. course, I'd replace Lincoln with George Bernard Shaw as a major contributor to our current malaise.
I have to say that I have difficulty understanding over-the-top admiration for GBS for his "genius" in play writing while ignoring the simple fact that he, himself, considered those play only a means to his ultimate philosophical and political ends — and that was his statism as his outright admiration for the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. I doubt he had a high regard for those who praised his work since he thought he was "only telling the truth" while most people thought he was witty and humorous.
His plays were part of the school curriculum when I went to school and so was "Brave New World" written by Shaw's fellow Fabian Socialist, Aldous Huxley. I think the premise of Huxley's envisioned future has stuck with me for many years and it's one that I could not embrace or submit to.
Waylon
Z,
Obama is of the constitution as a "living document" school. He advocates that the constitution is outdated and needs to be brought into the 21st century. Of course, rulings he disagrees with are wrong and shouldn't be allowed to stand. He's typical of those are smarter than the rest of us and need to educate us in the error of our ways.
Wouldn't it be nice if he WERE kidding?
Sorry. Not a chance.
He's the real deal -- your worst nightmare incarnate.
~ FT
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