President Obama was downright astonished, shocked as it were, that there was even the slightest possibility that the Supreme Court would take the “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a (pause here to ROFLAO) strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”.
(The “law” being the monstrosity known as “Obamacare”, 2700 pages of indecipherable verbiage which gives the federal government total control over 17% of the economy. )
Mr. Obama just could hardly believe such a thing could happen in a freedom-loving nation like the good old US of A. “Unelected judges”, Indeed!
But there is delicious irony in this week’s events:
While the President was regaling his fans at “Mary Junck’s Associated Press event” with his laments about the state of our courts, another federal law, passed incidentally by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress, went before an Appeals Court , setting the stage for a battle over its constitutionality.
This would be the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA). It is being challenged by legally married gay couples and the state of Massachusetts. They are claiming, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal, that the law violates the equal protection clause of the US Constitution and interferes with rights of states to make their own laws.
Now get this…the Obama administration has said it would not support the DOMA law, apparently having “decided” it is “unconstitutional”!
Now, I ain’t no “constitutional law perfessor from the Univ. of Chicago”, but it seems like I recall from my grade school civics lessons that it is the Judicial branch of our government which decides whether laws are constitutional and it is the Executive branch (the President and his administration) which is charged with the responsibility to support and defend laws passed by even weak majorities of the third, co-equal branch, a “democratically elected Congess” until such laws might be determined by the Courts to be “unconstitutional”.
Have I got that wrong, Barack, or have we become a “one branch government”? Is this just the latest effort to move the nation toward totalitarianism under your leadership?
DLH
