Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Ya know, I always love it when one Harvard Law grad starts a pissing contest with another one.
Makes ‘em all look so darn good.
Just stand upwind.
Bet you a very good dinner that one of the sparring parties deserved to be at Harvard, having qualified the ‘old fashioned way’ (no, not the “old fashioned way” of being born a Kennedy) while the other got a lot of credit and support and pressure placed in the correct quarters for speaking well while being a very clean ***** guy with a killer smile. And one of them probably has given permission for access to his scholastic record. The other guy hasn’t and won’t. Your guess which one is which.
I say that anyone who believe ANYTHING will get accomplished by singling out someone you disagree with in a public forum like the SOTU Speech, you better not have any issue that they can return a salvo on….
POTUS is sitting in the middle of the free-fire zone and he is calling too much attention to himself (as he is a creture of the media) – Rules of battle tell you not to make yourself noticeable in a battle zone as it tends to piss off your team mates
Too bad he doesn’t understand ANYTHING about the rules of battle, Esprit de Corps, fellowship with your battle buddies OR LEADERSHIP – all foreign concepts to the empty suit that sits in the White House (and his lame brain collection of idiots in his administration)
Kinda’ proves whats really great about Harvard, doesn’t it?!
We still waiting to see TheWunWhoWon’s Harvard transcripts?
Just asking… ;^)
Hmmmmm…
Reading teh Puffington Host’s replies, one might get the impression that Mr. President scored better at Hahvahd than Mr. Chief Justice. And that *only* Big Corporation has unlimited, infinite power to buy the elections. Of course, *unions* are not free to do the same thing, so it would appear from the replies.
Fortunately Gibbs will educate the pen and ink people on constitutional law, decorum, and the real purpose of the SOTU address, since he must shirley (I know, don’t call you shirley) be smarter than the Chief Justice.
Chief Justice Roberts was the most prominent Supreme Court advocate of his generation of lawyers–and widely recognized as such with a record of both brilliant and solid legal accomplishments.
Bob Gibbs was a graduate–well maybe just a matriculate–of Auburn University. I don’t mean to denigrate Auburn–they turn out fine engineers and ag students, but I don’t know if they even have a law school–and if so Gibbsie didn’t attend it.
Jan Crawford, a legal columnist for CBS News has an excellent column out today suggesting that the White House looked bad at the SOTU, and now they’re doubling down with this piece of buffoonery from Gibbs.
The spin meisters for the Democrats were pointing out that Obama was, after all, a professor of constitutional law. And as a Professor of frickin’ Constitutional Law!!!!!, he certainly had the right to criticize a Supreme Court decision.
Well there are serious questions about just how much constitutional law Obama actually knows or in fact taught.
He was an adjunct lecturer–teaching one class. That’s about like a graduate student teaching a seminar. Heck I taught commercial transactions to my fellow third year law students (it was an unusual situation and they wuz robbed!) while I was a third year law student. That’s not optimum, but I was much a professor of the law of Commercial Transactions as Obama was a professor.
But let’s spot Obama the idea that he’s a “teacher of constitutional law”. Well, when you compare him to John Roberts, there was never a truer case of the aphorism “Those who can, Do. Those who can’t, Teach.”
And as a Professor of frickin’ Constitutional Law!!!!!, he certainly had the right to criticize a Supreme Court decision.
Yes, as a professor he has every right to criticize whomever he chooses.
He’s not a professor (unfortunately for this country) and so – should just shut his yap and stop trying to hit pitches in the dirt. It cheapens his office. Though perhaps that would indicate he actually cares about the office he holds.
Which is a whole nuther subject.
Mike – it occurs to me that my comment above may be taken as a statement against yours. It isn’t…sorry if it comes off that way.
You are right: Obama was an invited “lecturer” on Constitutional Law at University of Chicago Law School. Not a professor. This information comes from an interview with John Lott, Jr., who wrote the book on the topic “more guns, less crime” on the Mark Levin radio program earlier this week or late last week. Moreover, Lott said that it was common knowledge that Obama was on his way to politics and was not seriously considered for any spot at Univ. of Chicago.
The spin meisters for the Democrats were pointing out that Obama was, after all, a professor of constitutional law.
They’re descendants of the dolts who declared that Jimmeh Cottuh was a nuclear physicist. His official bio touts that he did “graduate work in nuclear physics at Union College”…
http://www.ibiblio.org/lia/president/CarterLibrary/GeneralMaterials/Biographies/JimmyCarter-bio.html
…while the reality is that he took *one* not-for-credit, single-semester “Introduction to Nuclear Reactors” class. Reading Disney’s “Our Friend, the Atom” will provide you the same level of knowledge…
Funny that you don’t hear the left complaining about Big Corporate Media, under McCain/Feingold, being the ONLY ones who could criticize an incumbent just before an election. Wonder why that type of corporation was exempt? Especially when some of the talking heads admitted they were working to make one candidate look good and the other look bad. Isn’t that free advertizing?
It makes a lot of sense to me! The Supreme Court decision virtually wipes out many decades of good legal precedents. Many say it is the worst decision since Dread Scott, and it may very well be.
President Obama is no longer a “half-term junior senator” or anything else. He is the duly elected and democratically, by popular vote, the President of the United States, the most powerful country in the world. He is now no less. Chief Justices are not. (Fortunately, the challenged Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination, or she would have far exceeded her Peter Principle… as would the journalist and 5 different colleges Palin, as VP. )
This fight is not against the Chief Justice, although it seems to have become personal since the SOTU address. In a time when money (lobbyists) buy legislators and even write legislation for their corporate clients rather than Congressmen, and when campaign financing is in the stratosphere, limiting or completely blocking good but under-funded people from representing their constituents, the Supreme Court decision has now opened the doors for large corporations with massive funds to buy “their favorite” representative into office… and to do their – the corporation, rather than the voter’s bidding.
Imagine a foreign Asian corporation can now pump unlimited funds into a candidate’s campaign, who then may (would) be beholden to them, before their own electorate.
This decision corrupts the democratic process, and leads to corporations, rather than we the people determining who will write our laws. It can lead to Corporatocracy!
Do you really want foreign corporations buying our representatives, as the Supreme Court decision allows? Our president does not. And I applaud him for speaking out against a very bad and unprecedented decision in favor of we, the people above the “we, the corporations”.
More from the paranoid left, unrooted in reality and strong on confirmation bias.
First, the ruling changed NOTHING regarding foreign corporations. Even the NYT agrees that the majority ruling changed nothing when it came to foreign contributions of any type. But when one needs to construct a boogieman, the facts don’t matter, do they? Even the Pulitzer Prize winning PolitiFact.com said, “… we find Obama’s claim to be Barely True.”
Second, the “many good decades” is yet another canard — unless “two” equals “many”. As the NYT said:
Grape, or orange, Flit?
XACTLY, Scott, right on. Ya got to it before I could.
Rumor has it Clinton, Gore and Soros found a way around that…long ago. I guess it’s only bad if a democrat isn’t getting the huge piles of cash from the to promote their progressive agendas.
“Rumor?”
Thanks Flit,
I thought you’d be the best exemplar of the nanny state. You failed to surprise me.
Late night spelling on top of nonsense about letting foreign scum buy our Congresscritters. Seriously, they’re all bought and paid for so who cares really about who holds the paper on them?
Let’s see, the Citizns United ruling means that it would now be legal for the Mom & Pop Pop Shoppe, Inc. to “pour money” into a campaign against an incumbent. It means that it will be legal for M&PPS, Inc. to donate counter space, and pay for, fliers that say Babs “I’m too important to be called Ma’am” Boxer is a smug, elitist twit. Yeah, we need to silence all but Big Corporate Media.
Fliterman voices a concern, the Supreme Court decision has now opened the doors for large corporations with massive funds to buy “their favorite” representative into office, that does concern me as well, hypothetically speaking.
The problem is, that whenever I have seen donation amounts listed, it always seems that the amounts they give to both parties are roughly in parity. What’s up with that? I imagine their strategy is not to elect any particular candidate so much as to make whomever is elected feel “bought” whichever way the election goes. But if I were a politician and I knew the ACME corp kicked in almost as much money for the other guy, I might acknowledge their contribution when with ACME, but wouldn’t feel the “love” so much when it came to voting on a bill, particularly when there are so many other contributors. So again, does the real pattern of corporate contributions argue for or against Fliterman’s conjecture?
filterman,
A fine opinion if somewhat speculative. Sadly, for you and Obama, in this case the opinions of the nine members of the SCOTUS are all that matter. I did notice that while your opinion was rife with passion, you did not appeal to any constitutional provisions that would demonstrate the SCOTUS erred. Given that to honor their duty the Justices can only base their decisions on the Constitution and subordinate laws, I do not see how the Justices could have been persuaded by your plea.
You are wrong, though, in applauding President Obama in opposing the opinion. Firstly, it is futile and secondly unseemly. What he could have and had he been a better Constitutional professor, would have known to was call upon the Legislative branch to enact legislation to accomplish the desired restrictions within the bounds of the now better understood interpretation of the Constitution. The Legislative enacts, the Executive administers, and the Judicial makes sure they don’t just pull stuff out of their…, I mean, interprets the laws.
It’s interesting that President Obama is making the claim that corporations will now start buying up elections is very interesting. More, in fact, than you suspect. You see, the law on corporate political contributions has been as stated by the Supreme Court for quite some time in the State of … Illinois! His own home state! Which, as a lawyer who has run for and won political office in Illinois 4 times you might think he’d know. And has there been any flood of corporate money buying up elections in Illinois? No. Why? One can only speculate – I’m thinking most likely that they don’t really see an upside in angering 1/2 of their potential customer base no matter which side they contribute to.
Which is what really kills me with this. The President of the United States criticizes the Supreme Court for taking an action in accordance with it’s interpretation of the Constitution. But in doing so, a man often touted by his supporters as an expert in Constitutional law offers his criticism not on the basis of how he thinks the Constitution works but just on the basis of what he speculates will happen.
Apparently his understanding of how the Supreme Court should do it’s job is to determine what the desired outcome should be and then engineer it’s rulings accordingly, as opposed to determining how the question is answered according to the Constitution. At no point in his argument did the President say “I believe that the Supremes read the Constitution wrong.” Apparently he doesn’t care what the Constitution says, which is pretty frightening given the oath he gave when he took office.
The other thing that disturbs me is that he offers his speculation as fact, while ignoring the actual facts as established in the long-standing law and practices in his own State with which he should be particularly familiar. Now, when I’m sitting around the campfire or in my favorite recreational establishment I have long held the maxim of “never let the facts interfere with a good story”, but that’s no way to run a country.
Filterman, Perhaps before wasting our time here you should actually read and understand the topic (in this case a USSC decision) before you rant. Just maybe?
Hey, Flit is the loyal opposition, the defender of the left, protector of the anti-Bushhitler!!! Someone has to do the job
Fliterman is a good guy. It took a 2×4 to the head but yeah, he’s one of the keepers.
Obama is still an a$$, even if elected to office based on inadequate and inaccurate propaganda from the sycophant press. He legal credentials are meager, beyond being attorney for some ACORN case and part time lecturer. He is a clean, articulate community organizer, with a messianic narcissist streak, and he is either woefully wrong in many of his grand pronouncements or a very calculating and deliberate liar.
His attack on the SCOTUS and their well reasoned decision was despicable and he deserves all the criticism it may splash back on to him. That crap may work in the community organizing worked of Chicago, but not on the national stage with informed players.
He is still our President, confirming the stupidity of American voters, or the corruption of ACORN.
It’s not that hard to figure out.
Roberts interprets and lays down the law of the land.
Obama THINKS he’s the law of the land.
One position is legitimately earned and one isn’t.
I thought what Lex was referring to here was the wisdom of getting into a pi$$ing contest with a Supreme Court justice. If you refer back to Lex’s blog entry “Bad Call,” it didn’t seem like he necessarily thought the Supreme Court ruling in question was such a good idea, either.
Put aside partisanship and what you have is a constitutional question. I have a real problem even with the precedent that a corporation should be considered a person.
But putting that aside, it worries me even more that as a “person” a corporation can shout down the roof, but my voice as an individual citizen is at best a whisper. Multinational corporations have multinational influences and multinational goals. I don’t think you can argue that effectively that corporations don’t influence politics much these days. I don’t believe the interests of corporations necessarily match up with the interests of normal, everyday schmoes.
Anger the Supreme Court? No problem, they’re gentlemen and ladies and above that.
Hope for Obama’s sake those illegal, pseudo-cabinet level Czar positions he’s appointed without Congressional oversight never come before the SCUS. Just sayin’.
why all the fuss, flit? “President Obama is no longer a “half-term junior senator” … the most powerful country in the world.”
If he is all you say he is, his well-oiled grass roots ACORN led coalition will easily best any corporate giving, so why worry? And on the basis of a Obama’s 1.6 trillion deficit – that if you use GAAP is actually closer to 3.5 trillion deficit for 2010 – I think the Chinese are the most powerful country in the world. Power rests with those that can wisely USE it to accomplish their intent- we won’t use nukes, we won’t invade Venezuela, we won’t dominate the skies with F-35s. The Chinese WILL stop buying debt, they WILL unload 900 billion of T-bills, they will refuse to float the yuan.
Old southern saying “be careful who you pick a bar fight with, he may be an un-met relative of yor’n.”
Fliterman, there was an interesting “factoid” in today’s Los Angeles Times (of all places). Unions gave half a billion dollars to political candidates in the 2008 political campaigns. Half a bleeding billion dollars! Do you suppose there’s a reason why Andy Stern is on the top of the “most frequent guest” list at the White House? He spent the money, he’s got the entree. Actually Andy admits that he maxed out the SEIU’s credit card and borrowed a bunch of money to makek those political contributions. He’s now paying the loans back–with union dues.
Do you suppose there’s a reason why the State of California is nearly, if not already, bankrupt as a result of promising generous publlic employee pension benefits that we can no longer afford? Does it have some connection to the fact that public employee unions are the largest political contributors in Sacramento?
I mean give me a break.
As two supposedly apolitical bodies–one a co-equal branch of government–I’ve long thought it bad form protocol-wise, and in terms of the visual PR aspects for both the SCOTUS and the JCS to be seen sitting supinely below any President in what is, quite frankly, nothing but political theater. While defenders of the practice cite “respect for the office” as the reason for the two bodies’ presence, I demur. Rather, I feel the visuals bespeak of abject subservience and total agreement/approval with the political/policy agenda of the POTUS. And while members of Congress are seated below the President also, it is THEIR chamber, after all, and the President does, in fact, ask permission to enter in order to fulfill of the requirement/demands of his constitutional duties to report to congress as outlined in the Constitution. Congress, it should be noted, has the power/right under the Constitution to refuse his presence and force him to submit by written report. (OTOH, Congress cannot demand POTUS appear, either. Several Presidents, some for reasons of appearing subservient to Congress, have chosen to submit a written State of the Union report instead)
In fact, at the Republic’s beginning All “SOTU”s were submitted solely in written fashion. The thinking was that giving it as a speech was too monarchical, as if the President was a King lecturing his Parliament or his subjects.
EXACTLY, RonF. And the JCS also–sitting down there at the POTUS’s feet looking nothing so much as Hitler’s Generals, having just sworn a blood oath of allegiance to him personally–especially when the camera shows them applauding along with the rest of the politicians.
Here’s how I look at the ruling – again, based on what the First Amendment says, my experiences here in Illinois and the actual circumstances of the case brought before the Supremes by Citizens United.
I wish to peaceably petition my government about my grievances. I can write a letter (send a fax/e-mail, make a phone call, etc.). But that has limited impact. It would be far preferable to publicize my position much more widely, both to make my voice better heard and to gather supporters to join me. In this day and age one of the best ways to do that is to go on TV.
Well. TV time is expensive, and I’m not rich. So what do I do? Why, I get a whole bunch of people together to join with me to do so. But how? Do I have a whole bunch of people send me checks, deposit them in my account and then write one to Channel 5? How do I account for the money? How do I keep it from being treated as personal income by the IRS? Simple. I form a corporation. Now I have a legal entity whose actions are constrained by law and by whatever bylaws I put together to make sure the money goes towards the object it was donated for. A legal entity that keeps that money accounted for, for both the public and the IRS. A corporation that can sign contracts without making me personally liable for the costs and consequences of problems. A corporation like Citizens United.
We already have corporations that are for-profit and put a great deal of effort towards influencing elections through publishing commentary and opinion on TV, radio and newspapers. They are called TV and radio stations and newspapers. We have corporations that contribute to candidates directly already. They are called unions. Why should only they get to play this game? Why should I be shut out? Why are my 1st Amendment rights not equal to theirs?
With you all the way, here RonF. I once had a lobbyist for the insurance and pension industry in the days when I did financial planning exclusively for the medical/dental profession tell me that the question he always got from Congressional staffers when he was lobbying up on the hill was: “We always see YOU up here, how come we never hear from any of your clients directly if they feel so strongly about these pension & tax matters?” Well, “Duh” my guy said he would reply: “Have you ever followed a neurosurgeon around for 24 hrs? Those guys don’t even have time to keep up with their own professional literature–let alone read–let alone analyze–500 pages of fine print’s worth of proposed tax changes in the Federal Register.”
So, yes, we need corporations to lobby and speak for us about all sorts of matters–both as advocates in the public square of ideas and as bargaining agents (lobbyists) to exercise our constitutional rights to petition Congress for redress (lobbying) on Capital Hill.
And finally; picking fights with the Supremes is a pretty intersting tactic for a guy who is likely going to be facing some pretty serious lawsuits over the Constitutionality of major factors of legislation that he’s staking his Presidency on. For example; never before has a Federal law attempted to force people to buy a service (medical insurance) that they do not want. That is a rock-solid bet to end up being argued before the Supreme Court. Having the Court’s members ticked off at you for condemning them to their faces on national TV should help him there, eh?
You don’t EVEN understand, my fellow Prairie Stater. He can’t help himself. Both by dint of egotistical personality and experience in thuggish Chicago politics, along with his ingrained ideologically-driven persona; he can no more restrain himself when challenged and/or perceives himself to be thwarted than an unsocialized infant in pre-K day school. An egotistical narcissist like Obama does not play well with others–especially when he perceives it to be his game and his ball.