Here’s A Flashback For You

Remember back in 2008, when liberals would stare all starry-eyed into space with that look teenagers used to get when Leif Garrett or Nick Carter appeared in Tiger Beat: “Oooh, Barack Obama was a constitutional lawyer!  That’s an ideal background for a President!”

At best, it’s irrelevant; a President needs to know about as much about Constitutional Law as a good cop does.  He’s got people for the complicated stuff.

At worst?  It’s one of the worst possible backgrounds for a President; the last think you want to do is turn lawyers loose around the law with nearly unlimited power.

Thom Lambert – a lawyer and former law student of President Obama – knows better:

Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise. Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. You’d be a little embarrassed, right? You’d worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical, economic, or mathematical literacy.

(That’s one of the things I always wondered about people who went to law schools or “elite” universities; the idea that the institution one attends defines one’s personality, or indeed personhood.  To the extent it does, it’s in the sense of say “Hey, look at me, I went to Cornell, Go Tigers” – or, for that matter, “I’m qualified for a job because I went to an Ivy League school” – at in appropriate times).

(But I digress).

Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor had stated that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to “overturn[] a law [i.e., the Affordable Care Act] that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Putting aside the “strong majority” nonsense (the deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act got through the Senate with the minimum number of votes needed to survive a filibuster and passed 219-212 in the House), saying that it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that violates the Constitution is like saying that Kansas City is the capital of Kansas.

The Democrats, presiding as they have over four years of rot and decay, have switched to the “say what you’d like the truth to be and hope people buy it” school of public relations.  History shows it’s not a bad choice, albeit it’s still wrong…

Thus, a Wall Street Journal editorial queried this about the President who “famously taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago”: “[D]id he somehow not teach the historic case of Marbury v. Madison?”

I actually know the answer to that question. It’s no (well, technically yes…he didn’t). President Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago. Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers — the old “structural Constitution” stuff — is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student). Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment. (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.) Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks.

Read the whole thing.

And then get a friend to come out to the polls to vote The Light Worker out of office this fall.

4 thoughts on “Here’s A Flashback For You

  1. I would think that about anyone with a degree from Macalester, questioning what they really know, having gone to Moonbat U. But now that I think about it, I’ve never run into a Macalester graduate during my professional life. I suppose working for corporations, you tend not to have a lot of World Citizen majors as co-workers.

  2. If Obama hadn’t let his law license lapse, I think this statement of his would be a good occasion to disbar him. And I’ve got to think as well that Mr. Lambert ought to go after his alma mater for a refund for those classes. Obviously he did not have a competent professor.

  3. On the other hand, it’s good to see the President agrees with Thomas Jefferson about something. Of course, Jefferson was on the LOSING side in a case decided 200 years ago, but hey, maybe Marbury v. Madison WAS wrongly decided, maybe courts have NO power of judicial review, maybe Roe v. Wade is NOT the law of the land . . . .

    A guy can dream.

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