Obama’s unprecedented definition of ‘unprecedented’
“I am confident 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.”
That was President Obama earlier today, talking about the legal challenge to Obamacare the court heard last week — and demonstrating once again he doesn’t have a very firm grasp on the meaning of “unprecedented.”
After all, the Supreme Court has been overturning laws — which necessarily have been passed by a majority of a democratically elected Congress — since 1803’s Marbury v. Madison decision. By this count citing the Government Printing Office, the court declared 158 acts of Congress unconstitutional between 1789 and 2002, which works out to one about every 16 months. Which strikes me as “precedented.”
Or perhaps the operative word in Obama’s was “strong,” and only laws passed by “weak” majorities are worthy of being overturned? I would not grant that the size of the congressional majority necessarily speaks to a law’s constitutionality. But even if that were so, Obamacare hardly passes “unprecedented” muster. It passed in the House by a vote of 219-212 — that’s 50.8 percent of votes cast in favor to 49.2 percent against — and in the Senate by a more comfortable 60-39 (although the votes on the controversial reconciliation bill that enabled the two chambers to come together on a common text passed only 220-211 and 56-43, respectively).
Now, let’s look at a relevant law the Supreme Court previously overturned — the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, voided in the United States v. Lopez decision in 1995 (which also concerned the Commerce Clause and which was cited by the plaintiffs in their challenge to Obamacare). That act was part of the broader Crime Control Act of 1990, which was so strongly supported that it passed the Senate by a voice vote and the House by a vote of 313-1.
Again, “precedented.” Let’s not even get into “extraordinary.”
In case you’ve forgotten: This man once taught constitutional law at an elite university. Yet, when it suits him better, he chooses to ignore some of the most basic elements of the three-branch system of government said Constitution established.
As for one of the other main elements of his statement today:
I just remind conservative commentators that for years we have heard 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.
I would respectfully submit that the president has either not heard or not understood the actual criticisms leveled by these “conservative commentators.” I wonder: Can our commenters, regardless of ideological leaning, do any better in identifying what “the biggest problem on the bench” was said to be?
– By Kyle Wingfield
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252 comments Add your comment
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:09 pm
The Founding Fathers were FOR socialized medicine.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/
But you want to complain about the word “unprecedented” like it’s meaningful. Slow day, Kyle?
Wade Hampton
April 2nd, 2012
5:10 pm
If you have ever wondered why modern tyrannies always feel the need to put their horrific enforcements in writing first, THIS is why. Oligarchs understand that the law provides the slave with a means to rationalize his participation in the crimes of the state.
VBC
April 2nd, 2012
5:10 pm
A 2,700 page law is ridiculous. Who can understand all of it? Who can read all of it? The health care system needs to be fixed incrementaly. In my opinion this is a classic case of failed leadership. The President saw an opportunity to make history and his ego drove him to put healthcare ahead of the economy and his own stated principles of governence, namely that one can’t govern based on 51%. I think the term is hubris.
HIPPOCRIT
April 2nd, 2012
5:10 pm
bring on the build-a-burgers
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:11 pm
MarkV: Of course it it: “Circular reasoning, or in other words, paradoxical thinking, is a type of formal logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises.”
The premise here is that it should be upheld: Therefore, Obama says, it will be upheld. But that initial premise is an assumption on his part.
HIPPOCRIT
April 2nd, 2012
5:14 pm
kyle
stop it
logic is to liberal thinking
as
oil is to water
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:14 pm
A 2,700 page law is ridiculous. Who can understand all of it? Who can read all of it?
Aw, too tough for you to read? Lots of big words? Poor baby. I feel for you. Private school education?
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:16 pm
I should be kinder to Kyle (my bad!). It was probably a very busy day to get to 4 pm and have to resort to dropping this in the blog just to post something.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:16 pm
ByteMe: And anyone who didn’t want to pay the tax and participate in the insurance could avoid that line of work. Which is a far cry from mandating that every single person have insurance.
And let’s not pretend this was a throwaway line by the president. He’s laying the groundwork for discrediting the ruling should it go against him.
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:18 pm
“The Founding Fathers were FOR socialized medicine.”
Sounds more like an early form of Medicaid, which I guess could be a form of socialized medicine. Doesn’t sound like what we’re currently debating though.
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:18 pm
Or Medicare…. whatever
dbm
April 2nd, 2012
5:19 pm
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:09 pm
The Founding Fathers could make bad choices too.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
HIPPOCRIT: Stick to the issues, not personal attacks. You may be new to this blog, but that’s not the way we operate.
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
“And let’s not pretend this was a throwaway line by the president. He’s laying the groundwork for discrediting the ruling should it go against him.”
Exactly. And they’ve been doing a lot of that lately with many different issues.
HIPPOCRIT
April 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
yes kyle
sorry i digress
Road Scholar
April 2nd, 2012
5:20 pm
Oh great Swami, what happens if the law is upheld? More “that isn’t his legal passport” Derision? He’s a Muslim? Socialist? Communist? Fascist? Whining?
Hillbilly D
April 2nd, 2012
5:21 pm
“I am confident 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.”
What other kind of law would they overturn?
As for activist judges, at the Supreme Court level, they’re all activists.
RJ
April 2nd, 2012
5:21 pm
VBC,
“A 2,700 page law is ridiculous. Who can understand all of it? Who can read all of it?”
Thanks for repeating that insane talking point. It is truly a sign of people who have no earthly idea what they’re talking about.
In legal terms, I’d argue 2,700 pages is short. Case in point, your house. Go look up the law that governs how your home is built. 2700 pages doesn’t get you past chapter 2.
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:22 pm
And anyone who didn’t want to pay the tax and participate in the insurance could avoid that line of work.
because back then, there were so many alternative job opportunities posted on the internet, right?
He’s laying the groundwork for discrediting the ruling should it go against him.
Or maybe he’s just trying to rally the base for an upcoming election. He tried to discredit the ruling for Citizens United in a SOTU speech… did you support him on that? Didn’t work, of course, but I’m just wondering if you do this for all the rulings he tries to discredit… or just this potential one.
BobNMO
April 2nd, 2012
5:23 pm
IF they do keep this montrosity called Obamacare, the next things mandated will be your lifestyle as it affects your health. Afterall, it is not fair for you to do things (i.e. eat fast food, drink soda, alcoholic beverages, etc) that may cost us collectively more than necessary…
The other things that kills me is the name… Affordable Care Act??? What is more affordable? Bring 30 Million more people in and its more affordable? More affordable to whom?
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:23 pm
Kyle, thank you for pulling my counter-punch to H’s punch. Much appreciated.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:23 pm
RJ: Well, my understanding is that the text of Romneycare comes to only about 70 pages (I’ve never seen a physical copy myself, but nor have I ever seen or heard anyone dispute that figure). There’s a lot of unrelated stuff in the other ~2,600 pages of Obamacare.
MarkV
April 2nd, 2012
5:24 pm
Kyle, go back to school. You need it. Either a school of logic or a school of reading. Obama did not say, according to what you have written, that the law will be upheld because it should be upheld. That would be circular logic. But according to you he said “I am confident this will be upheld because it should be upheld.” That is an ordinary statement of judgment, not a proposition assumed on a premise.
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:24 pm
The Founding Fathers could make bad choices too.
What?!? I thought that wasn’t possible… at least that’s the impression I get from the way some people talk about them.
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:25 pm
There’s a lot of unrelated stuff in the other ~2,600 pages of Obamacare.
About half of it concerns how the law affects the alternative medical plans already offered by the USG (like the ones for railroad workers, which caught my eye when I read the bill).
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:27 pm
“Oh great Swami, what happens if the law is upheld?”
Well since a good majority of the population favor repeal, there would be an even greater effort to repeal it. Unless some of the Republicans lose their spine and use the ruling as cover to do nothing about it… (or worse case scenario, Congress using the ruling to even further expand the Commerce Clause to mandate every citizen buy an American vehicle, or a cell phone, or eat a serving of vegetables at dinner, etc., etc., etc.)
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:28 pm
Bring 30 Million more people in and its more affordable? More affordable to whom?
Here’s the theory: those 30 million use health care services anyway and don’t pay for them. People would regularly go bankrupt while they HAD health insurance. So remove lifetime limits and get everyone who can pay to get on a plan. That reduces the number of deadbeats, lowering the costs to the providers, which in turn should lower the costs to the consumers.
Operative word “should”. Hard to know until about 5 years into it whether that turns out to be true. However, we know what we had and it sucked badly, so trying something else is often a better way to go… even if it’s not the most optimal solution.
ByteMe
April 2nd, 2012
5:31 pm
The other part was to require that preventive care would be cheap for all. That way, you incentivize people to go to doctors before something becomes a huge expensive issue. That also lowers overall costs for all.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:32 pm
MarkV: Maybe I should go back to school, because I’m having a hard time understanding the distinction you’re trying to make.
But I tell you what: I’ll take back my “circular logic” line as soon as Obama takes back “unprecedented.”
Wade Hampton
April 2nd, 2012
5:33 pm
Anyone that believes that Obamacare/Federal government will lower costs…………..should not be allowed to vote…………………………..EVER.
killerj
April 2nd, 2012
5:34 pm
Kyle attacking the Prez?,seems to me half this country did not want him either,can someone get the voting results for us to see? seems to me he won the electoral votes right?
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:37 pm
‘That way, you incentivize people to go to doctors before something becomes a huge expensive issue. That also lowers overall costs for all.”
Not necessarily true.
Does Preventive Care Save Money?
“Sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching. Studies have concluded that preventing illness can in some cases save money but in other cases can add to health care costs.3 For example, screening costs will exceed the savings from avoided treatment in cases in which only a very small fraction of the population would have become ill in the absence of preventive measures. Preventive measures that do not save money may or may not represent cost-effective care (i.e., good value for the resources expended). Whether any preventive measure saves money or is a reasonable investment despite adding to costs depends entirely on the particular intervention and the specific population in question. For example, drugs used to treat high cholesterol yield much greater value for the money if the targeted population is at high risk for coronary heart disease, and the efficiency of cancer screening can depend heavily on both the frequency of the screening and the level of cancer risk in the screened population.4″
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0708558
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
April 2nd, 2012
5:38 pm
Peter Suderman, Reason.com: “What can explain liberals’ widespread failure to anticipate the Court’s wariness of the mandate? Research conducted by University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests one possible answer: Liberals just aren’t as good as conservatives and libertarians at understanding how their opponents think.”
If you ever find yourself being shot at, just step behind a liberal cause they are dense and impenetrable.
Logical Dude
April 2nd, 2012
5:39 pm
After reading about the Supreme Court decision to uphold strip searches in ANY situation that someone is sent to jail (ooh, you didn’t pay a ticket and have to stay in jail until bail? STRIP SEARCH!!), I really don’t know which way they’ll go.
Since they just raped the 4th amendment to unreasonable searches, they may (or may not) keep the constitutional part about the healthcare bill.
PS. I hope the news about the strip search was an April Fools joke, but in this day and age, the Supremes really are unpredictable.
Logical Dude
April 2nd, 2012
5:42 pm
Quoting Kyle’s Obama quote: “I am confident 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.”
I am not sure he knows what that word means LOL.
It’s the Supreme court, they overturn laws on a regular basis. And guess what. . . any law on the books was passed by a MAJORITY.
Sorry Obama, you sound silly with this sound bite.
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:43 pm
Uh oh.
US Postal Service Wants Out Of Government-Provided Health Insurance
Stephenson Billings
April 2nd, 2012
5:44 pm
“I am not sure he knows what that word means ‘
Inconceivable!!
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
5:49 pm
Btw, dbm @ 4:52 nailed it re: judicial activism.
carlosgvv
April 2nd, 2012
5:58 pm
Kyle – 4:56
1.”because as much has been said at every turn” – A fine amount of goobledegook. ???????
2. “Because the AG reports on fees paid to outside counsel demonstrate as much” And, of course, you believe everything our good, honest, upstanding elected Republicans say?
3. “Rivkin and Cavey”? http://www.multistatelawsuit.com
InAtl
April 2nd, 2012
6:00 pm
MarkV, yours are the most incoherent posts I read on these blogs. And you say “Yeh, Kyle, you only used a nasty innuendo of “will cave in.”
Seriously? You think “will cave in” is nasty innuendo? Nobody should waste anymore time arguing with your kind of logic. In addition, the word “unprecedented” has a very, very clear and important meaning in law. It’s not a term to be thrown around lightly, especially by a part-time constitutional law professor. He knows better, or he should know better.
Rafe Hollister
April 2nd, 2012
6:00 pm
Kyle, you need some help, looks like you stepped in a fire ant mound. The first 25 to 30 posts were all from rabid liberals, looking to take out their frustration on the messenger, rather than the speaker our dear leader, Pres Oblamer. You did an outstanding job defending yourself, hopefully no bites.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
6:01 pm
carlosgvv: I admire skepticism, but if you’re simply going to distrust all the supporting documents that don’t show what you want to see, you might as well sign up with the birthers.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
6:02 pm
And about Rivkin and Casey: They might have participated in the 26-state lawsuit, but there are …. wait for it … 26 states involved.
MarkV
April 2nd, 2012
6:07 pm
Kyle @5:32 pm
Kyle, I think you understand perfectly well the distinction, which is why you changed Obama’s words from one post to another.
As for Obama’s word “unprecedented,” I am quite sure that he would gladly take it back. I suspect that there is some historian somewhere who would find something “unprecedented” in the current case, but I agree that the word was inappropriate. However, after the barrage of lies, ridiculous statements and misstatement from the Republican candidates who aspire to that office in the past months and weeks, I wonder why it was worth the treatment.
Orange12
April 2nd, 2012
6:08 pm
Pres. Obama needs to sit down and shut up and let the justices do their job.
MarkV
April 2nd, 2012
6:09 pm
InAtl @ 6:00 pm
If you lack comprehension skills, do not complain to me.
Linda
April 2nd, 2012
6:11 pm
Kyle, there’s a bunch of ways to kill yellow jackets. If you can’t kill them by pouring gasoline in their holes in the evening, you can use a trap with a lure.
I see that you have used the second alternative.
Poor liberals/yellow jackets. There’s no way out of this.
Rafe Hollister
April 2nd, 2012
6:12 pm
Oblamer is just getting his ducks in order, gotta set up the next villain to blame, the SCOTUS. He has done it before in the State of the Union address. You can count on him attacking again if the ruling goes against him. The man has never had a problem, that he couldn’t find someone else to blame for.
He is on record saying that he doesn’t like the US Constitution in that it limits government, yet does not put any requirements on the federal government. IMO, he thinks it is a restriction on his elitist view of what government should do. His oath of office is to defend and protect the Constitution, however, I do not believe he takes that seriously, as he thinks it is an outdated and incomplete document.
Kyle Wingfield
April 2nd, 2012
6:12 pm
MarkV: Which words did I change?
George P. Burdell
April 2nd, 2012
6:12 pm
If you throw out or change “unprecedented”, the whole statement has to be thrown out. He knew darn well what that word meant and now he is being called on it. What word would you insert there that has anywhere near the same impact?