When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's original progressive New Deal found itself being struck down as against the Constitution, he reacted in an unprecedented manner, attacking the Supreme Court and threatening to pack the Court with additinonal members in a scandal that still rings through history (assuming they still teach it in history classes). Suddenly, the Supreme Court started finding FDR's programs to be Constitutional after all.
I can only wonder if his protoge might have learned the lesson well. During the State of the Union speech, President Obama took the unprecedented step of criticizing the Court, which by rules of decorum is required to sit quietly and without reaction, while the gallery of Democrats surrounding them stood and cheered. Effectively, you had two branches of government (one party mind you) berating the Court in public. Recently, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed his concern about such an outburst. But it leads you to wonder if President Obama did this knowing there would be challenges to the health care bill, making a preemptive critical strike to place pressure on the Court to uphold his monstrous health care bill and its unprecedent mandate on all individuals to purchase insurance.
I'm feeeling pretty bipolar these days about our chances here.
No comments:
Post a Comment