Obama's Dishonest Propaganda

Obama said, “Ultimately, I’m 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…judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.”

It is not at all “unprecedented” that the Supreme Court has struck down Federal laws on the basis that they are unconstitutional.  It has happened over a hundred times.  Obama later said that he was only talking about overturning laws on the basis that the Commerce Clause does not grant Congress the authority to pass a certain law since Wickard v. Filburn.  Again, this is not unprecedented, nor should it be.  Obama is basically saying that 10^th Amendment should have no application whatsoever. 

He is not saying that other parts of the constitution can’t be used as basis for striking down laws, just the linchpin of the entire Constitution.  For example, he is perfectly fine with allowing the courts to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, as evidenced by his recent decision to order the DOJ to stop defending its constitutionality in court.

Whether or not judges should be allowed to “strike down” laws is another matter, but certainly judges should not take part in enforcing a blatantly unconstitutional law.

Notice Obama says that it is overturning a law passed by Congress which is so unprecedented.  This is despite that the 10^th Amendment which ensures that the majority of powers belong to the states and despite that it is usually when state or local laws are overturned that there is the most outcry from the religious right, and usually justifiably so.  The only problem with the religious right is that, not knowing the Constitution (or not caring about what it says) often unwittingly advocate unconstitutional centralization of power in Washington because of some position on a moral issue which they want to be enforced.  Furthermore the religious right is often very complacent about unconstitutional laws which were passed by the left a long time ago.  They either think that it is unreasonable that these should be overturned because they don’t think of them as being leftist policies or they themselves are really somewhat leftist.  For example, if it is unconstitutional for the federal government to force us to buy Obama-approved health insurance, how can it not also be unconstitutional for them to force us to pay into Medicare or Socialist Security?  People just don’t think critically and/or are ignorant of the Constitution.  But Obama clearly wants both the left and the right to remain ignorant of the Constitution and especially the 10^th Amendment.