It’s Wednesday, March 28th, 2012….and before we begin, more on what the professional Race Hustlers continue to classify as the “Crime of the Century” from a variety of sources:
New claims cast Trayvon Martin as the aggressor
“Because Martin was black and Zimmerman has a white father and Hispanic mother, the case has become a racial flashpoint that has civil rights leaders and others leading a series of protests in Sanford and around the country. Zimmerman said he shot Martin in self-defense and has not been arrested.“
Media Matters writer ‘sorry’ after blasting Drudge for Martin photo
Elderly Couple In Fear Over Spike Lee Tweet
Star erroneously linked Floridians to man who killed Trayvon Martin
Oops….did I do that? My bad.
Meanwhile, every Progressive politician beholden to the Race Industry, from The Obamao on down is literally tripping over themselves to running to grab a microphone:
“WWB in a GC“: Wow….that’s strong. Hank Johnson’s knowledge of the U.S. legal system is on equaled by his command of geology:
No one, and we repeat, NO ONE outside the Sanford Police Department and those investigating Martin’s shooting have knowledge of all the facts concerning this case; the that INCLUDES the POTUS, Hank Johnson, the Reverends and Spike Lee. What IS known is the loudest expressions of ignorance continue to sound from the lips of those whose personal political power is dependent upon stoking the fires of racial hatred and divisiveness. It’s also known the New Black Panthers have offered a reward for the apprehension of George Zimmerman (some reports say dead or alive, but we’ve yet to find a video clip to provide confirmation.), which as we understand is illegal….yet no one at the Department of Injustice has taken action against them.
What is also common knowledge, but not a subject of discussion, is not one of these race-mongering hypocrites, and yes, they ARE race-mongering hypocrites, lifted a finger or uttered a single word of righteous indignation when after a 13-year-old WHITE boy was doused with gasoline and set on fire by two BLACK teens yelling, “You get what you deserve, white boy!”, Kansas City authorities refused to term it a hate crime.
Nothing, we repeat, NOTHING about this case thus far indicates the actions of either Zimmerman or the Sanford police were motivated or influenced by race, let alone racism.
Anything to the contrary is just self-serving noise; and neither in the interest of justice nor the country.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
Leading off the mid-week edition, some thoughts on Day 2 of ObamaScare’s day in court, courtesy of Speed Mach (FYI, the Communist News Network’s take of Day 2 is the subject of today’s Tales From the Darkside video clip [3] on our home page www.thedailygouge.com). First up, Jonah Goldberg, writing at NRO‘s The Corner:
Constitutionality By Blindspot
Veronique links to Dahlia Lithwick’s boffo argument that Obamacare’s constitutionality is “best illustrated” — not merely illustrated but best illustrated — by the fact that “until recently” noted legal scholar Nancy Pelosi and the living constitution cultists at the White House didn’t consider the possibility it was unconstitutional. Ed Whelan makes more thorough mincemeat of all that here. Ed writes, in part, “Pardon my traditional linear thinking, but I would have thought that the best illustration of a legal proposition would be some sort of legal argument, not some inference somehow extrapolated from the supposed ‘energy’ a party devotes to defending a position.”
Ed’s of course right. But I kind of like thinking about a world where Lithwick’s argument hold some weight. For instance, George Soros has spent zero energy defending the view that all of his money actually belongs to me.Therefore it’s mine. Please make the check out to cash, George. Also, to date, Lithwick has exerted zero energy rebutting my contention that she infers her legal positions from goat entrails and the divine images she finds in seemingly random pancake shapes. I must be right!
More seriously, what’s remarkable about Lithwick, Greenhouse, and others who make this argument is how beholden they are to Groupthink and how little it occurs to them that they might be writing for audiences that don’t share their assumptions. It’s entirely possible that the court will uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare and the mandate. But when you listen to some liberals defend the constitutionality of it, the argument boils down to “it has to be constitutional because it has to be” or “of course it’s constitutional, everyone I know thinks it’s constitutional.” Maybe because my upcoming book deals with many of these issues, I think this reveals a real dogmatism in contemporary liberalism. Elite liberals know many things, but they aren’t always clear on why they know them.
In a related item, the assessment of Mother Jones….and Mom AIN’T happy:
Obamacare’s Supreme Court Disaster
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. should be grateful to the Supreme Court for refusing to allow cameras in the courtroom, because his defense of Obamacare on Tuesday may go down as one of the most spectacular flameouts in the history of the court.
Stepping up to the podium, Verrilli stammered as he began his argument. He coughed, he cleared his throat, he took a drink of water. And that was before he even finished the first part of his argument. Sounding less like a world-class lawyer and more like a teenager giving an oral presentation for the first time, Verrilli delivered a rambling, apprehensive legal defense of liberalism’s biggest domestic accomplishment since the 1960s—and one that may well have doubled as its eulogy.
“What is left?” Justice Antonin Scalia demanded of Verrilli, “if the government can do this, what can it not do?”(THAT, as Hamlet would say, is the question!) Verrilli’s response to this basic and most predictable of questions was to rattle off a few legal precedents.
Justice Samuel Alito asked the same question later. “Could you just—before you move on, could you express your limiting principle as succinctly as you possibly can?” Verrilli turned to precedent again. “It’s very much like Wickard in that respect, it’s very much like Raich in that respect,” Verrilli said, pointing to two previous Supreme Court opinions liberals have held up to defend the individual mandate. Where the lawyers challenging the mandate invoked the Federalist Papers and the framers of the Constitution, Verrilli offered jargon and political talking points. If the law is upheld, it will be in spite of Verrilli’s performance, not because of it.
The months leading up to the arguments made it clear that the government would face this obvious question. The law’s defenders knew that they had to find a simple way of answering it so that its argument didn’t leave the federal government with unlimited power.(Mother ignores the fact certain positions, particularly those founded on lies and misrepresentations, are “simply” indefensible.) That is, Obamacare defenders would have to explain to the justices why allowing the government to compel individuals to buy insurance did not mean that the government could make individuals buy anything—(say, broccoli or health club memberships, both of which Scalia mentioned). Verrilli was unable to do so concisely, leaving the Democratic appointees on the court to throw him life lines, all of which a flailing Verrilli failed to grasp.
“I thought what was unique about this is it’s not my choice whether I want to buy a product to keep me healthy, but the cost that I am forcing on other people if I don’t buy the product sooner rather than later,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Verrilli responded gratefully: “That is—and that is definitely a difference that distinguishes this market and justifies this as a regulation.”
Time and time again, conservative attorneys and judges fine-tuned their argument to fit existing legal precedent, arguing that the mandate was an unconstitutional use of Congress’ authority to regulate commerce because it forces individuals into the stream of commerce, rather than regulating economic behavior already underway. Former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who argued against the constitutionality of Obamacare, ably responded to questioning from the Democratic appointees on the court, all of whom offered more persuasive defenses of the mandate than the man who had come to the court to do so.
Most of the conservative appointees on the court appeared to sign on to the argument—advanced by Judge Henry Hudson in his decision striking down the mandate—that the view the individual mandate regulates economic “inactivity” rather than economic activity. That argument was designed by foes of the law to circumvent a previous opinion written by Scalia, where he wrote that “where Congress has the authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.” Scalia seemed to sign onto Hudson’s reasoning during oral arguments.
“Here you’re regulating someone who isn’t covered,” Scalia said. “You are saying that some people who aren’t in [the insurance market] must be in it and that’s different from regulating in any manner commerce that already exists out there.” Chief Justice Roberts, when asking questions of Verrilli, seemed to be speaking for himself. By contrast, when adressing the law’s opponents, he twice identified the government as the source of the counterargument. Even Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered to be a potential swing vote, seemed open to the inactivity/activity argument. “The reason this is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act,” Kennedy said.
Yet Kennedy appeared somewhat sympathetic to the government’s position that the health care market was unique, though he curtly observed that if upheld, he fully expected that the government would apply the mandate to other industries.
Verrilli was given five minutes for a final rebuttal and offered a stronger performance than he had in the previous hour he had been given. “Everyone subject to this regulation is or will be in the insurance market,” Verrilli said. Citing the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall, he concluded that “the provisions of the Constitution needed to be interpreted in a manner that would allow them to be effective in addressing the great crises of human affairs that the Framers could not even envision.”
It may not have been enough.
ObamaScare’s a cure in search of a disease, an answer to a question no one’s asking. As we mentioned yesterday, there’s ways to improve the greatest health care system in the world; unfortunately, only 1 out of ObamaScare’s 2,000+ addresses does so. The rest is truly an Obamanation of expanded government and bureaucratic control which can only lead to health care which costs far more and provides far less.
Since we’re on the subject of unmitigated disasters, in a follow-up to yesterday’s item regarding The Dear Misleader’s accidental on-mike comment to Medvedev, Heritage.org‘s Baker Spring suggests….
Obama’s Comments to Medvedev Reveal Missile Defense Policy
It is a fundamental trust the American people put in a President that he will do all within his power to defend them against foreign military threats. This trust is no less applicable to threats posed by ballistic missiles. President Obama, however, apparently thinks very little of his responsibility to honor this trust.
In an unguarded comment to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea, on March 26, President Obama made it clear that he will exhibit more “flexibility” in accommodating Russian objections to the U.S. expanding its missile defense capabilities after he is re-elected. What President Obama was hoping was that he could fool the American people into believing that he would do his utmost to defend them against ballistic missile attack between now and the election in November. What is now clear is that whatever commitments he makes to the American people regarding ballistic missile defense in the coming months will be jettisoned in favor of commitments to the Russian government to curtail U.S. and allied missile defense capabilities following the election.
Accordingly, it is entirely appropriate that Representative Michael Turner (R–OH), who is the chairman of the House Strategic Forces Subcommittee, demanded in a March 26 letter to the President that he provide an “urgent explanation of your comments to President Medvedev in Seoul this morning.” The level of cynicism and dishonesty demonstrated by the President in this comment is breathtaking.
Those already familiar with President Obama’s past interactions with the Russians on the subject of missile defense, however, may be angry and disappointed regarding his exchange—but they should not be surprised by its substance.
President Obama has been willing to subordinate the missile defense program to his policies for arms control and nuclear disarmament for a long time. One need go no further than to read a portion of the preamble to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which is the new strategic nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, on the subject of missile defense.It states that U.S. missile defense capabilities must come down as the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons come down under the treaty.
The Obama Administration spared no effort to defeat an amendment in Senate to strike this language in the New START preamble. The President’s comments in Seoul are completely in keeping with this past behavior. What is now evident is the scope of the manipulation he is pursuing to fool the American people about something essential to their security. It is now undeniable that President Obama is breaking the most basic trust the American people put in any President.
He’s for peace….
….at ANY price!
Next, an update from the WSJ on a story we featured some weeks back regarding the activities of the most corrupt and political Department of Justice America’s ever experienced:
Mr. Perez Works the Phones
A top Justice official interferes with a Supreme Court case.
Readers may recall that the City of St. Paul, Minnesota in February withdrew a case that the Supreme Court had already agreed to hear—and the city thought it would win—under pressure from the Department of Justice (“Squeezed in St. Paul,” Feb. 13).Our source at the time wouldn’t name names at Justice, but now Reuters reports that the man working the phones was none other than Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, the head of the Civil Rights Division. A Justice spokeswoman confirmed that Mr. Perez spoke to St. Paul and the plaintiff in the case.
This is news. Mr. Perez is Justice’s leading champion of “disparate impact” analysis, a statistical tool the agency uses to try to show that lenders are discriminating against minority borrowers. Under this standard, Justice doesn’t have to show intent to discriminate, nor examine individual lending decisions. Government lawyers can threaten to label a bank racist on the basis of a statistical analysis. CEOs do the math and figure it’s easier to cough up shareholder money to make the problem go away.
Mr. Perez told Congress earlier this month that his division filed “a record eight lending-related federal lawsuits” in 2011 and achieved an equal number of settlements, netting “more than $350 million in relief to the victims of illegal lending practices.” Many of these cases utilized disparate impact analysis under the Fair Housing Act and other statues.
Which is why Mr. Perez had a personal interest in stopping the Supreme Court from hearing Magner v. Gallagher, a fight between St. Paul and local slumlords who accused the city of racism for enforcing its housing code. The city was presenting the Court with a dispute about the legality of disparate impact analysis under the Fair Housing Act. The text of that law doesn’t explicitly allow for such analysis. The city figured it would win—and said so publicly.
If the Justices had found disparate impact illegal under the Fair Housing Act, one of the government’s biggest hammers against banks and others would disappear. So Mr. Perez decided to press the city to take the decision out of the hands of the nation’s highest Court so he could continue pursuing a policy that the Justices probably would have found illegal. Another triumph of politics over the law.
All in a day’s work for Team Tick-Tock!
On the Lighter Side….
Finally, in the Psychology Section, the New York Post‘s Michael Goodwin reports on rumors Hairplug Joe’s may be one can short of a six-pack:
Biden on the brain
Readers joined me in ridiculing Vice President Joe Biden’s outlandish claim that the raid on Osama bin Laden was the most “audacious” in 500 years. After I mentioned on WOR radio that Biden’s history of bizarre statements might mean he is seriously addled, Peter Welch, a doctor, produced this must-read e-mail.
“I am an internist by training,” Welch writes. “I believe that years ago Biden suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. His life was saved by modern medicine. When aneurysms rupture they frequently lead to brain damage. Biden’s behavior suggests to me that he may have suffered frontal-lobe damage.
“The frontal lobe is sort of our censor — it allows us to inhibit our impulses so that we do not immediately utter everything we think. Biden behaves as if his cannot successfully carry out this function. An MRI might very well show residual damage to his frontal lobe which might explain his inability to control his mouth.Alternatively, he may just be a typical liberal idiot.”
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