Hat tip to Allahpundit that who says:

A constitution is as good as the political culture that surrounds it. Ginsburg would have been better off reminding Egyptian TV of that.

Please! This is one of the main reasons that you need to vote against Obama when it is time. I don’t want him to have the chance to appoint another justice as liberal as this one! Perhaps she should recuse herself from any rulings based on Constitutional grounds since she isn’t so fond of our Constitution. Or maybe she should move to South Africa!

Others: Jeff Goldstein

Skip ahead on the video to 9:28.

(Politico) Think the Supreme Court is where the future of President Barack Obama’s health care law will be settled? Think again.

The real verdict on the future of Obama’s signature achievement will come in November — and the law’s supporters say a Republican sweep could pose a bigger threat to the law than the nine justices ever could.

The court is expected to hand down its decision at the end of its term in June. But most legal observers doubt that it will strike down the whole of the Affordable Care Act, even if it finds the mandate unconstitutional.

In contrast, the Republican candidates are all on record as promising to scrap the whole thing.

Yes, they are, though I think The Politico is underestimating what a SCOTUS decision against the ObamaCare mandate would mean, since there is no severability within the law.

While a Republican president wouldn’t be able to hand out waivers for states to get out of all of the health law’s requirements, as some of the presidential contenders suggest, he’d be able to direct the new Health and Human Services secretary to slow-walk pivotal programs, dramatically relax the regulations and possibly defund the law.

Why not? Perhaps the Republican could give a waiver to right handed people on January 20th, 2013, and left handed people on the 21st. Let’s not forget that the waivers Obama has handed out have a limited time-span of a few years. They aren’t permanent.

Front-runner Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal the law, and his policy aides are figuring out just how much dismantling could be done through the White House and HHS, without congressional action.

Now that’s a good idea. I’ve said time and time again that the GOP cannot simply focus on defeating Obama, but must retain the House and retake the Senate.

And it’s unknown whether the Senate or House will be controlled by Democrats, who could stop legislative efforts to repeal or defund the law. Even if they lose control of the Senate, Democrats may still have enough votes to be able to slow down or block efforts to repeal the law signed by Obama nearly two years ago.

Obviously, the media and Democrats will all of a sudden have no problem with the minority party being “obstructionist”.

For those who listen to talk radio, especially Hannity, we get a constant dose of “this being the most important election of our lifetime” every election cycle. In this case, that’s correct: doing away with a law that affects every single one of us along with 1/5th of the US economy is, as Joe Biden would say “a pretty big f**king deal.”

Any GOP president would not be able to do away with all the provisions, as the article points out. But, that person can certainly do away with the most burdensome parts, such as the mandate, and work with Congress to enact real world fixes that help actually lower health insurance costs while extending the possibility of obtaining health insurance to the 30-45 million who are without, which, if you remember, was the original point of health insurance overhaul, before it truly became a step down the road towards single payer.

That said, how does Obama run on his “signature achievement”? Democrats, including Obama, declined to discuss the law in the run up to the 2010 mid-terms. How can he run on the need to give so many waivers, excluding tens of millions of Americans? How does he run on ObamaCare when the majority of Americans are against the law? If the eventual GOP is smart, he’ll almost immediately attempt to engage Obama on these issues.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

In what may be its most significant religious liberty decision in two decades, the Supreme Court on Wednesday for the first time recognized a “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that churches and other religious groups must be free to choose and dismiss their leaders without government interference…
The administration had told the justices that their analysis of Ms. Perich’s case should be essentially the same whether she had been employed by a church, a labor union, a social club or any other group with free-association rights under the First Amendment. That position received withering criticism when the case was argued in October, and it was soundly rejected in Wednesday’s decision.
“That result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “We cannot accept the remarkable view that the religion clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers.”

I bet the ACLU will be sad. Unbelievable the Obama DOJ believed that religious organizations shouldn’t have the right to practice their Constitutional First Amendment rights. They are pesky things towards the brainwashing agenda of multiculturalism and appeasement. Hat tip: Hot Air

Like nearly every conservative in America today I am unimpressed by the current crop of GOP nominees for president and feel they all have major flaws — especially the two frontrunners Newt and Romney, both of whom have major deficits as far as staunch conservatives are concerned. But at this point I’ve come to realize that I don’t think I care which one of them is nominated. In fact, I think the White House is not where we should be focusing our intensity in 2012.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying we shouldn’t vote for whichever GOP nominee wins the game show plaudits. We should absolutely pick one of them and then we all, conservatives and Republicans alike, should vote for him (or her).

So, what am I saying? I am saying that the White House is less important than people are saying it is. Instead, we need a two-point focus for 2012 that doesn’t include the White House. We don’t need 999 points. Just two. 1). Gaining control of Congress and 2). turning Obama out. The identity and purity of our presidential nominee is the last thing we should be worried about at this point. It is a bit late for that anyway.

Let me assure you that I don’t have a favorite in this GOP race. And I have three real dislikes: Romney, Huntsman, and Ron Paul. This article is no stealth shilling for any particular candidate. I really do have big problems with all of them. But, again, I don’t think it matters which of them we pick if we focus on the two points I note above.

First of all, any of the GOP candidates (yes even the cranky uncle of the GOP, Ron Paul) would be better than Obama. But that goes without saying because I am a conservative that votes Republican. No surprise there, really.

But there are reasons besides blind partisanship that any of the GOP nominees is better than Obama. In fact, it can really be boiled down to but one issue that makes getting rid of Obama imperative: the courts. He has been thoroughly destructive to this country with his judicial picks.

Aside from the courts, of course, Obama has been a very destructive president in many ways — another reason to be rid of him. He’s presided over the continued destruction of our business sector and our economy, we all understand. But there’s more.

Obama has already turned his power to regulate into a tool of Big Labor and United Nations-styled socialism. He’s unleashed his extremist appointees and given them the freedom to push every anti-business, anti-worker, anti-American idea they can possibly get through.

There’s more.

Obama has also created all sorts of extra-constitutional czars and “advisory” committees, the President has issued a slew of dangerous executive orders, and he’s made all sorts of horrible moves in foreign policy. But all this can be quickly negated by a new president — quickly in terms relative to how Washington works, anyway. An active new president could make headway to reverse these Obamanations almost immediately. None of these changes, as bad as they are, have the misfortune of being irrevocably permanent.

But there is great danger that another four years of Obama will create, one that cannot be easily reversed. Obama has been steadily placing radical judges on benches throughout this land. His nominees tend to be abortion activists (not just abortion supporters, but out-and-out activists), Big Labor dupes, anti-Second Amendment activists, and the like. Many are so radical that even Democrats haven’t been able to convince themselves to vote them in.

Let’s just take his latest nominee for the DC Court of Appeals for example. Caitlin Halligan, a close associate of the disgraced Eliot Spitzer in New York, is an extremist anti-Second Amendment activist. If she gets on the bench she will take every opportunity she can to damage the Constitution.

A past example is his attempt to put a radical racemongering ACLU member on the bench in California. Obama’s attempt to place Edward Chen on the bench succeeded, unfortunately.

Let us not forget that the Supreme Court of the United States is already in a delicate balance tipped only barely in favor of conservatives. It is easy to see that with the ages of the current oldest members of the court, the next presidential term will see perhaps as many as three chances to replace retiring justices.

As conservatives we must put our desire for a pure conservative president in second place to the pursuit for the next nominees for the US Supreme Court. The fact is, if Obama gets a chance to put more judges on the bench, especially on the SCOTUS, he will be able to damage this country for decades to come.

I can hear just what you are saying at this point. But Warner, you are saying, if we don’t get a pure conservative president we will still get bad judicial picks, won’t we? If we get an abortion lover like Romney (Or is he? Do you believe his miraculous conversion? I don’t) we’ll still get squishes as judges, won’t we?

I’m hearin’ ya, friends, I’m hearin’ ya.

That is why we desperately need to focus on point two: taking the entire Congress under GOP control. And not just GOP control but conservative GOP control. We have the House now, certainly, but we need to make that control stronger. But more importantly we need to take control of the Senate. Both houses of Congress need to be under GOP control and we need to put conservatives in there to do the controlling.

This is the thing, folks. We need to have the most conservative Congress that we can get. A conservative Congress, you see, will drag the squishy Romney, the unpredictable Newt, the isolationist Paul, or any of the others along behind them whether those folks want to go or not. You see, if we have a more conservative Senate, a president will understand that soft, moderate or leans-left judicial nominees will not be acceptable. A conservative Congress — if we as voters force them to toe the line and get active — will force a president to be more conservative despite his inclinations.

As far as judicial nominees go, even if we do get soft nominees that lean conservative only 70% of the time we will have justices that at least act like Americans! If Obama gets another four years he’ll continue to put people on the bench that despise this country. And these people serve for life, don’t forget, so they will be there to continue destroying this country for decades.

This is something we must work hard to prevent. It is imperative that we deny Obama and his extremist, under-the-table agenda from continuing.

It isn’t a happy predicament to be forced to settle for a less conservative president, to be sure. But that is where we are whether we like it or not. Better than we start to realize where the important matters are located and it ain’t in the presidential election as far as GOP nominees is concerned.

This past weekend the Washington Post published a hit piece on the grand opening of a museum in Georgia dedicated to the birthplace of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The paper was desperate to make some grand conspiracy, some lawbreaking evil from the project. But whatever is going on with the museum, this story was just one more shot orchestrated by the left aimed at forcing Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the upcoming hearings on whether or not Obamacare is Constitutional. Of course, this is all a smoke screen to hide the fact that it is really left-wing darling Justice Elana Kagan that should recuse herself from the case.

The Post story was a mish mash of innuendo, guesswork, and partisan claims, all amounting to much of nothing for proof of wrong doing. The Post even took the opportunity to use the word “whitewashed” when describing the color of the building housing the museum commemorating Justice Thomas’ birthplace. None too subtle, that.

There was plenty of other coverage of the opening of the museum that was positive, of course. Still it is apparent that the left hates Justice Thomas so much that they can’t even stand it that a small commemoration of his place of birth be created.

But real facts weren’t on the agenda for this article on Thomas. This article was meant as yet another slap at Thomas in order to mount pressure against him for the upcoming case against Obamacare. The left has been floating the demand that Justice Thomas recuse himself because his wife has worked as a “conservative activist and lobbyist, where she specifically agitated for the repeal of ‘Obamacare.’”

Contrary to the left’s new attack on Thomas, in America we do not hold the work of a spouse against someone. If we did that, half the members of Congress would have to be removed for the boards, or agencies, or organizations that their spouses work for. The pertinent fact is, though, that Justice Thomas himself was not the one working for any group that advocated for or against Obamacare.

This, however, is not true of another member of the Supreme Court. Justice Elana Kagan was actually involved in advising how to defend against challenges to Obamacare. If that isn’t directly relevant, what is?

Last week it was discovered that when Obamacare passed, Kagan sent euphoric emails to Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe who was then serving in the Department of Justice. This in itself should be enough to show that Kagan’s opinion on Obamacare has already been decided easily bringing into question her unbiased judgment on the case.

But that isn’t the only problem with Kagan’s serving as one of those that will have the final word on the constitutionality of Obamacare. She wasn’t simply elated that Obamacare passed. She was also part of the team that advised the Democrats on how to support Obamacare and keep it from being challenged.

You see, at the time, Kagan was Solicitor General and was, “personally involved, even if only to a limited degree (though without a complete record, it’s difficult to know how limited), in advising how to defend against challenges to Obamacare.”

Yet, here we have the left attacking justice Thomas because his wife said she doesn’t like Obamacare and saying that is a basis to force him to recuse himself from the case while ignoring Kagan’s actual involvement in favor of Obamacare. Not too blatantly partisan, is it?

So, how is the Old Media reporting this story? A recent piece by Politico is a perfect example of how the left is minimizing the facts. The meme du jour is to report that there is, “No sign Elena Kagan, Clarence Thomas will recuse on health care law.”

Politico isn’t the only one. The Week did a similar piece juxtaposing calls for both Thomas and Kagan to step down as if the calls were equal in seriousness.

In other words, by linking the two calls for recusal as if they are coequal in import minimizes the call for either to recuse themselves. Readers will simply see the calls for recusal as a partisan maneuver and Kagan’s more legitimate reason for having to step back from the Obamacare case will more likely go unaddressed.

Further, the left also knows that the right is traditionally spineless in the face of criticism. They are banking on the fact that the right will cower — like it always does — and Thomas will remove himself from the case, even though there is no legitimate reason he should, while Kagan will never in a million years remove herself despite that there is good, legal reasons for her to do so. The left doesn’t care about propriety or legality when it comes to pushing its agenda, we all know.

The case for Kagan’s recusal, though, is quite serious, indeed. So serious that Eric Holder was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee where he said that Kagan was not involved in Obamacare. Holder’s testimony is questionable, though. Recently Republican leaders in the Senate sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder expressing their belief that Holder’s testimony about Kagan’s involvement in past Obamacare policy making was “belied by the facts.” Holder’s office has been stonewalling calls by the Senate that he provide it with documents regarding Kagan’s involvement in the healthcare law.

Finally it is interesting to note that the Old Media knocked itself out to send reporter after reporter to Alaska to uncover dirt on 2008 GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin. Then the media wanted to uncover every single piece of dirt it could find. Yet in this case the Old Media is uninterested in discovering to what extent a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court had in a case that she will be tasked with adjudicating. Remember, a vice president has little real power, but the Old Media was losing its mind over Palin. On the other hand, a Supreme Court Judge has incredible power and the media are disinterested in finding out about this judge.

If this all doesn’t show the left-wing bias of the media, well, “you can’t handle the truth.”

“I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan said to Tribe in one of the emails.

The Justice Department released a new batch of emails on Wednesday evening as its latest response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by CNSNews.com and Judicial Watch. Both organizations filed federal lawsuits against DOJ after the department did not initially respond to the requests. CNSNews.com originally filed its FOIA request on May 25, 2010–before Elena Kagan’s June 2010 Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

The March 2010 email exchange between Kagan and Tribe raises new questions about whether Kagan must recuse herself from judging cases involving the health-care law that Obama signed–and which became the target of legal challenges–while Kagan was serving as Obama’s solicitor general and was responsible for defending his administration’s positions in court disputes.

According to 28 USC 455, a Supreme Court justice must recuse from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” The law also says a justice must recuse anytime he has “expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy” while he “served in governmental employment.”

In response to questions from CNSNews.com, Prof. Tribe said on Thursday that other than the references in his email exchange with Kagan on March 21, 2010, he never had any communications with Elena Kagan while she was solicitor general relating to pending or enacted health-care legislation or actual or anticipated health-care related litigation. Tribe also said he sees no reason to believe 28 USC 455 would require Kagan’s recusal from cases involving PPACA.

If you read the entire exchange of emails it is obvious she was rooting for Obamacare and involved in discussions of the pending legislation. They speak vaguely, but putting double exclamation points on them getting the votes is pretty obvious, if not highly questionable. If she doesn’t want a stink of controversy she needs to do the right thing and recuse herself from this upcoming SCOTUS decision.

National Journal:

The Court has asked lawyers to answer four legal questions about the law in their briefs, signaling that it will issue rulings on each of them.

They are:

The individual mandate. The law’s requirement that every individual purchase health insurance is at the heart of the many challenges to the law. The challengers contend that such a requirement is not permissible under the Constitution, because the commerce clause that authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce should not able to compel individuals to purchase a product they do not want.

So far, two appellate courts have rejected this argument, ruling that the mandate is acceptable. One court has sided with the challengers, overturning the mandate.

Severability. When the law was passed, members of Congress said the mandate was essential to make other insurance reforms in the law work. If the justices strike down the mandate, they will have to decide whether that means the law can stand without it, or the whole law must fall.

The one court to overturn the mandate, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, found that the mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the law, and it ruled the whole law should be overturned.

Medicaid expansion: The health care law requires the states to expand eligibility for their Medicaid programs by offering coverage to anyone earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty limit. Critics have said it is an unconstitutional imposition on the states.

Jurisdiction. Judges in two appellate courts have argued that the time is not right for the courts to even consider whether the law is constitutional. They have cited an 18th-century law that prevents individuals from challenging their taxes until after they’ve been assessed and paid.

The justices will have to decide whether the law’s penalty for not buying insurance functions enough like a tax that these rules should apply. If they agree with the argument, lawsuits will be barred until after the mandate goes into effect.

Ed Morrissey:

The timing is highly consequential. It means that Obama almost certainly won’t get a chance to name a new court member before the Supremes decide whether the Commerce Clause is an opening through which Congress can force any kind of regulation and mandate. If they end up supporting ObamaCare, Barack Obama will claim vindication for the next few months of the campaign for his re-election bid. If they strike it down, Obama loses his signature achievement and has to explain that for the next few months leading up to the election — and explaining is not winning.

Of all the possible outcomes being tossed around as the Affordable Care Act litigation heads for Supreme Court consideration, one is usually overlooked: If the court upholds the act’s constitutionality and its “individual mandate,” it could sound the death knell for the tea party.

Well, if pooping on cop cars, rampant drug use, violence, murder, sexual assault, and rape hasn’t shut down the Occupiers, a loss at SCOTUS wouldn’t eliminate the Tea Party. For one thing, the TP is not a single subject movement, unless you consider the over-arching idea of a limited federal government as the starting point.

The challenges to the mandate are perhaps the most concrete manifestation of the tea party’s vision of the Constitution and the role of government. The tea party has made its name by promoting a constitutional vision of a weak central government, incapable of addressing national issues — like the health care crisis, environmental protection and financial system reform — and this theory is at the heart of the lawsuits challenging the mandate. Progressives have long argued that the tea party’s vision has more to do with the failed Articles of Confederation than our enduring Constitution.

Liz was on the right track right up to the word “incapable.” That is incorrect. We understand that the federal government has a role, and what that role should be, as established by the pesky Constitution thing.

That argument by the progressives is a new one to me, though. Perhaps that’s how she thinks about it, without any real facts and knowledge.

But what if this message were delivered by the conservative Roberts Court in a high-profile defeat for the tea party in the health care litigation?

There is a distinct possibility that the high court could uphold the health care law’s constitutionality, not just with a 5-4 ruling — in which swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy sides with the court’s more liberal members — but with the support of conservative heroes, like Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Got that? A distinct possibility. Why?

After all, Scalia concurred in the 2005 decision, Gonzales v. Raich, in which the court upheld a federal ban on possession of marijuana grown in accordance with local law for personal, medicinal use — because the ban was part of a broader regulation of interstate commerce.

Except, marijuana, rightly or wrongly, is a Schedule I drug, banned and illegal, under federal law. Unlike the individual mandate, no one is being forced to purchase cannabis simply because they are a citizen of the United States under the Commerce clause, because they might possibly cross state lines at some point. Heck, the federal ban on drugs itself may be overbearing, if the drugs never cross a state line or US border.

The health care law might also pick up conservative support in the Supreme Court beyond the Commerce Clause argument. Another constitutional basis for the law’s individual mandate is that it is a “necessary and proper” means of carrying out Congress’s constitutional power to regulate commerce.

I love when Liberals cite the Constitution without context. The last line of Article I, Section 8, states

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The powers of Congress are laid out in Section 8 prior to that line. Necessary and proper points to what Congress is tasked with doing, not that I really have to point that out to people who can read. Section 9 lays out what Congress cannot do. How about this one in 9?

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

The Obama administration has, at times, proclaimed that the mandate is a “tax.” So, the Constitution defeats their, and Elizabeth’s, argument.

Even if the Mandate was upheld by SCOTUS, it would only make the Tea Party work harder, and would not erase the primary purpose, which is to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.

“The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided not re-hear the case of a memorial cross located in a public park in San Diego, Calif., that was deemed unconstitutional.

However, supporters plan to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Mount Soledad Memorial Cross was erected in 1954 to honor veterans of the Korean War and has been the center of a legal battle for the last 22 years. The 29-foot cross in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla sits on public land atop a mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The American Civil Liberties Union has fought to have the cross removed, saying a religious symbol should not be on public land.

Supporters of the memorial cross are hopeful about the final outcome of the case as the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown a greater willingness to allow religious symbols on public land.

Just last year, the high court refused to remove a war memorial cross located in California’s Mojave Desert.

Source

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Washington Examiner) It’s been said a thousand times: Congress had to pass President Obama’s health care law in order to find out what’s in it. But, despite the repetitiveness, the level of shock from each new discovery never seems to recede.

This time, America is learning about the federal government’s plan to collect and aggregate confidential patient records for every one of us.

In a proposed rule from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal government is demanding insurance companies submit detailed health care information about their patients.

The HHS has proposed the federal government pursue one of three paths to obtain this sensitive information: A “centralized approach” wherein insurers’ data go directly to Washington; an “intermediate state-level approach” in which insurers give the information to the 50 states; or a “distributed approach” in which health insurance companies crunch the numbers according to federal bureaucrat edict.

What could possibly go wrong in handing over being forced to hand over confidential patient records? What if someone hacks in to the government server? What if yet another government moron loses their laptop or briefcase containing private data? What about the government getting a look at the confidential and private business practices of the insurance companies, which could “undermine their competitiveness”?

What happens to the federal government if it loses a laptop full of patient data or business information? What recourse do individual citizens have against an inept bureaucrat who leaves the computer unlocked? Imagine a Wikileaks-sized disclosure of every Americans’ health histories. The results could be devastating – embarrassing – even Orwellian.

Excellent point. What do we do when the government essentially says, in bureaucrat speak, to just suck it up and deal with it?

The HHS attempts to justify its proposal on the grounds that it has to be able to compare performance. No matter what the explanation is, however, this type of data collection is an egregious violation of patient-doctor confidentiality and business privacy. It is like J. Edgar Hoover in a lab coat.

Interesting how the Left always complained about Bush “trashing the Constitution” and invading our privacy, how they say the government should stay out of our bedrooms, as well as how the government should stay out of the doctor’s office when it comes to abortion on demand, yet, here we have a power grab that will put sensitive, personal, and confidential health records in the government’s hands.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.