The Lamestream Media Knowingly Misrepresented the President’s Comments regarding the Supreme Court’s Review of ObamaCare

03 April 2012

Introduction — there is more at stake here than ObamaCare

I wrote here about the constitutional issues surrounding ObamaCare.

My only oar in this boat is the hope that the Supreme Court continues to follow its own accepted principles of constitutional jurisprudence.

To that degree alone, I’m probably of a like mind with the President.

The following comment is, therefore, intended only to argue against the Lamestream Media’s perennially displayed provocative stupidity, when it covers anything arguably important.

Does working for the Lamestream require that one be stupid, inattentive, and/or knowingly dishonest?

A few days ago, I expressed irritation at how much of the media had very significantly distorted a confrontation between Republican presidential nominee candidate Rick Santorum and a New York Times reporter.

Today, much of the news media is (apparently also knowingly) distorting the context of President Obama’s comments about the U.S. Supreme Court and ObamaCare.

Here is what the President actually said — when he was introducing his comments about the Supreme Court’s review of ObamaCare

Transcribed (by me) from the Wall Street Journal’s video clip:

With respect to health care, I continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law.

And the reason is because, in accordance with precedent out there, it’s constitutional.

That’s not just my opinion, by the way, that’s the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum — including two very conservative appellate court justices that said this wasn’t even a close case.

When the President (who is an attorney) used the word, “precedent,” he meant the standards established by the Supreme Court’s own case law.

His subsequent comments about judicial activism should have been evaluated in that professional light.

But the media, for the most part, did not do the President the courtesy of conveying the overall tenor of what he had said. Apparently these folks have too much of an agenda of their own to stick to telling the truth.

Just as they did with candidate Santorum, news outlets chose to take the President’s subsequent comments out of context in order to make him look bad. They clearly wanted to create a sensationalized controversy, where should have been little to none (among reasonable people).

Not only does this kind of manipulative sensation-seeking harm democracy (because it lies about facts), it also gives the public the mistaken view that interpreting the Constitution is a purely political theater. It is not. There actually are agreed-upon rules that apply to constitutional jurisprudence.

The average American, and his or her yapping-hack pundits, are generally not qualified to render legally meaningful opinions regarding constitutional law.

What the President said after his comment about “precedent”

After referring to “precedent out there,” the President spoke briefly about the practical benefits of the health care law.

Then he said (in the same Wall Street Journal video clip):

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.

Well, this is a good example.

And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.

Analysis of the President’s combined comments

This is not difficult stuff, even though the media appears to be too dense to follow the legal argument’s comparative simplicity.

The President — speaking as a knowledgeable attorney and as the nation’s chief executive — said that the Supreme Court’s own precedents make ObamaCare constitutional.

Then, he (somewhat indirectly) said that, were the Court to ignore its precedents and overturn the law, it would be acting in the activist manner that conservatives decry.

What most everyone seems to have missed here is that it is the President’s duty to protect the prerogatives of (arguably) both the Executive and Legislative branches of government in instances like these. It is not the Supreme Court’s place to overturn legitimate acts of Congress.

Deference to Congress is the historically accepted legal standard. There are, indeed, Supreme Court precedents to this effect out the “wazoo.”

So how did the media twist the President’s easy to follow, relatively low key, comments?

Every one of the following sources neglected to draw fair-minded attention to the President’s attorney-like statement about legal precedents and ObamaCare.

The Lamestream also neglected to properly evaluate the Constitutionally strong, and paradoxically delicate, position the President is in.

He is abundantly within his prerogatives as the nation’s Chief Executive to paint a clarifying picture for the Court, and the nation, as to the Branch-equal boundary lines that he sees enveloping the current situation. There are certainly times, when the Chief Executive needs to remind all of us to do our jobs in a fair-minded way.

The President’s comments were reasonably low key and made in much the same tone that diplomatic positions between equal powers are frequently expressed. That they were political is beside the point. All things, including law, are political.

In this case, the President was probably legitimately concerned that the intense politics surrounding ObamaCare might come to bury the generally accepted principles of constitutional jurisprudence.

These legal tenets have (mostly) characterized the two centuries since the Supreme Court (arguably unconstitutionally) appropriated the function of making constitutional interpretations to itself via its decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

The Lamestream — instead of recognizing the balancing position the President and the divided nation are in today — sensationally and unhelpfully portrayed the President’s comments, as if they initiated a massive and purely political war with the conservative justices on the Supreme Court.

To wit:

(1) Was the President’s comment a warning, as the Wall Street Journal said it was?

Laura Meckler and Carol E. Lee, Obama Warns Supreme Court, Wall Street Journal (03 April 2012)

More accurately, it was a heads-up.

It is difficult to warn a co-equal branch of government, when you have nothing to fight it with.

What weapon(s) would the President be going to war with?

We’ve been through this before with President Franklin Roosevelt’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court.

I suspect that President Obama’s words yesterday were intended to reduce, not accentuate, the possibility that two Branches of Government are going to have to duke it out.

(2) Did the President launch a rocket at the Supreme Court, as ABC’s Diane Sawyer said he did?

Did the President overtly say that the Justices would be overstepping their roles?

It’s not every day that the President of the United States launches a rocket at the Supreme Court, but it happened today . . . .

Obama Warns Supreme Court on Health Care Ruling: President says justices would be overstepping their roles by overturning law, ABC News (02 April 2012) (video)

“Rocket” seems extreme, even for creative journalism.

And the President said nothing about overstepping roles. The President’s words did not have the confrontational tone that ABC News wanted to give them.

(3) Did the President use his strongest language to caution the Court, as Fox News says he did?

President Obama, employing his strongest language to date on the Supreme Court review of the federal health care overhaul, cautioned the court Monday against overturning the law -- while repeatedly saying he's "confident" it will be upheld.

“Caution” implies the power to back it up. The President’s language was not so undiplomatic as to take the Court by the figurative scruff of its neck.

Fox is trying to turn this into something more than what it is.

(4) Did the President swipe at the Court?

For the powerful executive to menace the feeble judiciary has always been considered unseemly. Before a decision is reached and then after it is rendered, presidents usually defer their judgment and then vow to “respect the decision.”

I suspect that most Americans will be surprised to hear that the Supreme Court is feeble. Is that why we virtually come to blows, when trying to appoint justices to its bench?

And I have great difficulty seeing the President’s words as unseemly. Since when should a strong leader allow the Supreme Court to think that it can idly chop up what he considers to be his primary accomplishment? Mr. Stirewalt seems to misunderstand the Separation of (co-equal) Powers.

(5) Did the President take a shot at the Supreme Court as Reuters charged?

Jeff Mason, Obama takes a shot at Supreme Court over healthcare, Reuters (02 April 2012)

I didn’t hear the Commander-in-Chief fire any shots at the justices. There was nothing obviously disrespectful in his tone. At worst, he reminded us all that, given the decision’s eventual practical impact on the Executive and Congress, this is not a routine constitutional law case.

(6) Was he going after the Supreme Court as right wing Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin breathlessly claimed?

Obama’s propensity to misrepresent the facts would be shocking enough, but this feeble attempt to influence the court and threaten political backlash if he doesn’t like the result is contrary to his responsibilities as president and to his oath of office to uphold the Constitution (even the Commerce Clause).

Notice that Ms. Rubin gets the President’s constitutional responsibilities as the head of a separate and equal branch of government backwards.

The Founders expected the nation’s Commander-in-Chief to dish out political consequences for people (and Branches) who attempted to “screw” the nation’s future. That, after all, is why the Founders replaced the inept Articles of Confederation with the much more centralizing powers delineated in the Constitution.

(7) Should President Obama know better, as lawyer Stephen Presser attempted to argue at CNN?

Since 1788, in the famous defense of the Constitution set forth by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, it has been understood that it is the task of the Supreme Court to rein in majoritarian legislatures when they go beyond what the Constitution permits.

Like Ms. Rubin, law Professor Presser (apparently deliberately) misunderstands the Doctrine of Separation of Powers and, further, misrepresents the arguable applicability/inapplicability of both the Federalist Papers and the Supreme Court’s Marbury vs. Madison decision to the matter at hand.

It is ironic that someone who submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court opposing ObamaCare can be so blinded by passion that he actually thinks (or disingenuously denies) that the limits of Marbury v. Madison are not still controversial today, when it comes to properly interpreting the prerogatives of the three branches of government. As a general rule, an effective advocate needs to understand and respect the arguments of his adversaries.

Hamilton’s thinking about the Supreme Court was actually much the minority view at the time he wrote. That, in fact, is why Justice Marshall’s subsequent (arguably power-usurping) opinion in Marbury v. Madison was controversial then and, to some degree, still today.

The moral? — The Lamestream Media’s distortions worsen the passionate ignorance that chews the American Republic to pieces

Greed, self-seeking, and sheer dishonesty are doing us in. Including our supposedly esteemed professions.

PeteFree.com

The Lamestream Media Knowingly Misrepresented the President’s Comments regarding the Supreme Court’s Review of ObamaCare