It’s Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012….but before we begin, The Dear Misleader wants you to know absent free birth control, realizing their dreams is beyond the reach of every woman in America:

The “War”on women: it’s a war, alright; but it’s not being waged by Republicans….and it has nothing to do with women.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, if when the going gets tough, the tough indeed get going, then as the WSJ details, Liberals either head for the hills or look to change the subject:

Targeting John Roberts

The left tries to intimidate the High Court on ObamaCare.

You can tell the Supreme Court is getting closer to its historic ObamaCare ruling because the left is making one last attempt to intimidate the Justices. The latest effort includes taunting Chief Justice John Roberts that if the Court overturns any of the law, he’ll forever be defined as a partisan “activist.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy recently took the extraordinary step of publicly lobbying the Chief Justice after oral argument but before its ruling. “I trust that he will be a Chief Justice for all of us and that he has a strong institutional sense of the proper role of the judicial branch,” the Democrat declared on the Senate floor. “The conservative activism of recent years has not been good for the Court.” He added that, “Given the ideological challenge to the Affordable Care Act and the extensive, supportive precedent, it would be extraordinary for the Supreme Court not to defer to Congress in this matter that so clearly affects interstate commerce.”

The elite liberal press has followed with pointed warnings that Mr. Roberts has a choice—either uphold ObamaCare, or be portrayed a radical who wants to repeal the New Deal and a century of precedent. This attack is itself clearly partisan, but it’s worth rehearsing the arguments to show how truly flawed they are.

The first fallacy is defining judicial activism as overturning a Congressional law. Since Marbury v. Madison established judicial review in 1803, the High Court has overturned hundreds of laws in part or whole. The real measure of activism is whether the Court’s reasoning is rooted in Constitutional principle. If it is, the Court is not activist but is adhering to the highest legal principles.

Regarding the Affordable Care Act, we’d argue that upholding the individual mandate to buy health insurance requires far more judicial activism. That’s because if the Court finds this federal mandate to be Constitutional, it will have no principle on which to limit future purchase mandates.

Once health insurance can be mandated, Congress will inevitably find that other products or services are equally essential to national well-being. Future Courts will either have to find all such purchase mandates to be legal, in which case there is no limiting principle, or they will have to pick and choose, which means an endless exercise in policy-making.

Far better for judicial modesty—and the reputation of the Court—to draw the line that the Commerce Clause forbids Congress from mandating that individuals engage in commerce because such police powers are reserved for the states. This is the truly restrained judicial position.

The most dishonest argument is the liberal media chant that overturning the law means overturning the New Deal era’s Commerce Clause precedents. This is propaganda. None of the plaintiffs advocated that any precedents be overturned, even though in our view some of those cases deserve to be overturned. Paul Clement and Michael Carvin, who argued for the plaintiffs before the Court, explicitly denied any such desire.

The left is playing up the libertarian legal views of academic Randy Barnett in particular, to suggest that he’s a pied piper for the conservative Justices. We often agree with Mr. Barnett, who has written for these pages, but on ObamaCare his influence has been overstated. Lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey were far more consequential in developing the legal and Constitutional case.

As recently as the gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago in 2010, a conservative majority ignored Mr. Barnett’s pleas to revive the long-dormant Privileges and Immunities Clause. Justice Antonin Scalia quipped during oral argument that this view was “the darling of the professoriate,” and libertarian legal activists denounced him for it. But in the Court’s 5-4 ruling, Justice Samuel Alito employed the conventional legal analysis known as substantive due process. So much for the primrose path to the 19th century.

The truth is that shouts of a “radical” Court are heard every time the Justices break with liberal orthodoxy, however modestly. The same journalists now warning about a radical states-rights agenda rang the same alarms in 1995 after the Rehnquist Court said Congress couldn’t use the Commerce Clause to regulate guns near schools in Lopez.

Far from beginning a radical march to the right, a 6-3 majority of the Court subsequently said Congress can regulate the growth of marijuana for personal use in Gonzales v. Raich in 2005. We disagreed with that ruling, but liberals ignore it because it doesn’t fit their current political narrative that Chief Justice Roberts is Roger Taney with a better haircut.

We doubt the High Court will be intimidated by any of this, and the truth is that no Justice would be worthy to sit on the Court if he is. As Chief Justice Roberts said at his confirmation hearing, a judge should be a neutral umpire who calls legal balls and strikes fairly as he sees them. The Court’s reputation will be tarnished if it bows to the political distemper of the moment, not if it follows the Constitution.

And since we’re on the subject of the federal judiciary, in today’s “Your Tax Dollars At Work” segment, courtesy of Jim Gleaves, FOX News reports that….

Judges’ plans for lavish $1 million Hawaii conference bring scrutiny

Hey….it’s not like THEY’RE paying for it!

Along with San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Phoenix and any of a dozen other more-than-adequate destinations significantly closer and one helluva lot less expensive.

Meanwhile, as this next item, courtesy of The Weekly Standard and Bill Meisen confirms, the Washington Post continues to conduct the ad hominem attacks it pioneered with the Mitt Romney bullying “story”:

WaPo Attacks Romney for ‘Mormon Militia’ Action 150 Years Ago

Reporting from Carrollton, Arkansas, the Washington Post finds some locals still upset with actions of a “Mormon militia” over 150 years ago. The Post reports:

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.”

Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.”

But the main concern of the paper is … will this hurt Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney? The article, headlined “Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith tangles with a quirk of Arkansas history,” attacks Romney for being a Mormon, because, according to the paper, his coreligionists and ancestors were responsible for “the first 9/11.”

There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.

And yet, there is scant evidence that Romney’s religion is making much difference in how voters here are thinking about the presidential election and whether they are willing to back the former Massachusetts governor. 

So tell us again why sitting in a pew for 20 years listening to THIS….

….is supposedly an issue not fit for discussion?!?

And while the truth may indeed set you free, as the mayor of Newark, NJ recently learned, the principle doesn’t apply to those to whom truth is a total stranger:

Cory Booker’s Apostasy

It’s now an offense against Obama to defend capitalism.

Cory Booker may want to hire a food taster. The Newark Mayor, a Democrat, dared to disagree on Sunday with the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital and the private-equity business, and the liberal orthodoxy machine has been busy delivering retribution.

Mr. Booker uttered his apostasy on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” calling out both Presidential campaigns for what he called a “nauseating” focus on side issues. He deplored attacks on President Obama for his long-ago association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, but he added that “I have to just say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. . . . Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses.”

Judging by the reaction, you’d think the 43-year-old Mayor had come out for lower tax rates or converted to Mormonism. The liberal media are pounding him, while David Axelrod, the chief strategist for the Obama campaign, went on the air to scold Mr. Booker as “just wrong” and that “there are specific instances here that speak to an economic theory that isn’t the right economic theory for the country.” Translation: If the campaign is going to successfully demonize Mitt Romney as a marauding capitalist, it can’t have fellow Democrats defending capitalism.

Mr. Booker attempted to clarify his remarks later on Sunday with a four-minute online video that repeated his criticism of divisive campaign tactics. The Obama team then sent out a highly selective clip of this video that erroneously makes it sound as if Mr. Booker supports its assault on private equity.

The Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain haven’t gone very well, in part because the claims are so transparently cynical. Everyone knows they’re cherry-picking facts, focusing on the rare Bain Capital failures while ignoring the successes—all in order to distract attention from the failed results of Mr. Obama’s economic policies. Presidents who have to take their own party allies to the woodshed for the offense of telling the truth don’t tend to win re-election.

Nor do Presidents utterly incapable of running on their own record.

On the Lighter Side….

Finally, we’ll call it a wrap with this Education Section, and this gem from the Molders of Young Minds, courtesy of The New Media Journal:

NC Teacher Captured on Video: Obama, Romney ‘Are Not Equals’

A North Carolina high school teacher was captured on video shouting at a student who questioned President Obama and suggesting he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president. (Displaying the same firm grasp of the law as her Dear Misleader.) The Salisbury Post, which first reported on the YouTube video, did not identify the teacher in question, who is reportedly on staff at North Rowan High School. The video does not show faces, but the heated argument in the classroom can clearly be heard.

“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?” the teacher said toward the end of the argument, telling the student, “you are not supposed to slander the president.” The student told the teacher that one can’t be arrested “unless you threaten the president.”

The argument started when the classroom began discussing news reports that Mitt Romney bullied a fellow student when he was in high school. At the time, The Washington Post had recently published a lengthy article alleging that Romney, as a teenager, had cut off another student’s hair. “Didn’t Obama bully somebody though?” a student in the North Carolina classroom asked when the report was brought up, referring to an incident Obama described in his memoir “Dreams From My Father.” In the book, Obama wrote that, as a child, he once pushed a female classmate after other students taunted them — the only two black students in their grade — and called Obama her boyfriend.

The teacher, in the video, said she didn’t know whether Obama bullied anyone — but the argument quickly escalated, as the teacher yelled at the student, telling him “there is no comparison.” “He’s running for president,” she said of Romney. “Obama is the president.”

The student argued that both candidates are “just men,” but the teacher took issue with the statement. “He’s just a man. Obama is no god,” the student said. The teacher responded: “Let me tell you something…you will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom.” The teacher went on to say the two candidates are “not equal.”

According to the Salisbury Post, the teacher is still employed and has not been suspended.

Think about it: the teacher is right; Romney may actually be qualified for the Oval Office.

Magoo