{"id":3454,"date":"2010-01-28T10:37:24","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T15:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3454"},"modified":"2010-01-28T10:43:59","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T15:43:59","slug":"president-smacks-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3454\/president-smacks-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"President Smacks the Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent weeks haven\u2019t been kind to President Obama. \u00a0 Support continues to drop for his health care bill<\/span><\/a>, his poll numbers<\/span><\/a> are falling and his filibuster-proof majority has been lost<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Well, last night, President Obama took out some of his frustration by criticizing the Supreme Court in front of a national audience.\u00a0 As the President, he has the power to trounce on judicial independence, but his display last night was historic.<\/p>\n

According to the Legal Times<\/em><\/span><\/a>, only once has a President publicly criticized the Supreme Court during a State of the Union address. \u00a0 Not surprisingly, it was President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937, and even FDR didn\u2019t call for Congress to overturn the Court (thought the justices would eventually start to capitulate<\/span><\/a> shortly after the address).<\/p>\n

Here is FDR\u2019s attempt at judicial intimidation:<\/p>\n

The Judicial branch also is asked by the people to do its part in making democracy successful. We do not ask the Courts to call non-existent powers into being, but we have a right to expect that conceded powers or those legitimately implied shall be made effective instruments for the common good. The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is President Obama\u2019s criticism:<\/p>\n

Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests \u2014 including foreign corporations \u2014 to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don\u2019t think American elections should be bankrolled by America\u2019s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that\u2019s why I\u2019m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Justice Alito gestured<\/span><\/a> during the remarks, the Court did not reverse \u201ca century of law\u201d in its Citizens United<\/em> decision.\u00a0 Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce<\/em><\/span><\/a> was decided in 1990, not 1910<\/strong>.\u00a0 Linda Greenhouse over at the New York Times<\/em><\/span><\/a> calls out the President on this as well.<\/p>\n

As a former constitutional law professor, President Obama should either fire his speechwriters or hit the books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recent weeks haven\u2019t been kind to President Obama. \u00a0 Support continues to drop for his health care bill, his poll numbers are falling and his filibuster-proof majority has been lost. Well, last night, President Obama took out some of his frustration by criticizing the Supreme Court in front of a national audience.\u00a0 As the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,12,251,14,784,92,284],"class_list":["post-3454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-citizens-united","tag-health-care","tag-new-york-times","tag-president-obama","tag-state-of-the-union","tag-supreme-court","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3456,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions\/3456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}