Carl is right that President Obama didn’t mean to come out against the power of the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed by Congress. Well, actually he did just that in this sentence where he said “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.” But as Carl said in the below post, Obama also said other things too (and he has been retreating furiously today), but why did he say that ?
I’m guessing that Obama was just doing his “I’m ever so reasonable and everybody who disagrees with me is such a demented moron” act. So how unreasonable are the conservative Supreme Court Justices being? President Obama is glad you asked. They are being so unreasonable that they are about to take the ”unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” He could have made the point that his views were reasonable in some milder and more defensible way (and he probably wishes he had), but he had to show how craaaazy those other guys were and he ended up making himself look like a bit foolish. He isn’t against judicial review. He just tripped and fell backwards into the BS he was shoveling. He could have just said he went a little too far. It is a measure of his ego that he can’t even admit that he misspoke. The problem is that everybody else mishears and misreads. This is Obama today on his comments yesterday:
And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress. And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.
Well of course he obviously said the opposite of what he actually said. He is a reasonble guy. The most reasonable guy ever. Also humble and honest.
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