Who's Really Threatened Here? [View all]

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Last edited Fri Apr 6, 2012, 08:45 AM - Edit history (2)

THE Supreme Court can do great harm to the presidency. but the president can do very little of significance to affect the Court -- outside of nominating replacement justices. That's what makes all of the hyperventilated hissyfits from lawmakers and others about the President's use of the word 'unprecedented' such opportunistic nonsense.

Even if you just completely ignore the years and years where conservatives have railed against 'activist' judges and warned them against playing politics with their decisions, these republican critics of President Obama couldn't be more transparent in their political opportunism on this; or more inane.

This court challenge of the health law that lawmakers spent so much political capital to craft and enact is a dagger hanging directly above the heads of the American public; not just the President.

There's nothing that the White House and Congress can do about that except just wait, hope, and cajole from the outside. They can also start over and craft new laws, but that would be at the expense of millions of families, in this case, who are already invested and dependent on important and sustaining provisions in the new health law.

The President is correct in strongly defending the legislative process that the Court so callously and recklessly threatens to undo with an intellectual, imperious wave of their unelected hands. Overturning this health law might not actually be 'unprecedented' but it would be an unusual and earth-shattering rebuke to the authority and provenance of the other two branches of government.

That threat from the Court would seem to demand a more forceful response than a few choice words of warning from the Chief Executive. That's a challenge worth defeating in the only way available to the President and Congress; through their political activity and legislative impetus. If one discordant and confrontational word can cause so much angst among the Court's defenders, then that would appear to call for even more sharp reminders of the primacy of the efforts of our elected representatives.

Political activity is what the other branches of government are designed for. Not so with the Supreme Court. They are supposed to decide these cases dispassionately, without regard to the political din outside of the actual legislative process which produced the bill under judicial review. That's their lot. If they don't decide this case fairly -- even as the President reminds them of the boundaries of their roles in making that decision -- their independence doesn't really deserve defending.

Now, who's really threatened here?