Constitution

Steve Hayes, with Brit Hume, Juan Williams, and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

Last week, a federal judge in Washington issued a truly extraordinary opinion. Judge Janice Rogers Brown, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, went out of her way to challenge one of bedrock achievements of the 20th Century liberal legal establishment: the de-emphasis of economic rights, relative to other "fundamental rights," as a matter of constitutional law. Judge Brown's opinion already has sparked controversy, and it deserves closer scrutiny.

After Tuesday's oral arguments, in which Justice Kennedy posed pleasantly tough questions to Solicitor General Verrilli, it was hard for conservatives not to get excited about the prospects for an imminent Supreme Court decision striking down the individual mandate.

The Washington Post editorial board essentially writes that, because Obamacare is good policy (in the editors’ estimation), and because it would involve the economy, it must also be constitutional.  Here is the Post’s argument, in its entirety:

As is becoming increasingly clear, the legislation that was the principal cause of the Democrats’ historic defeat in 2010 isn’t getting any more popular as President Obama heads toward his day of accountability to the American citizenry.

It’s rare to have a governing philosophy that usually hides behind a carefully constructed rhetorical justification be laid bare for all the world to see, but that’s exactly what happened when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently shared her thoughts about the document that she’s duty-bound to apply.

Lexington, S.C.
In the back room at the Flight Deck restaurant Tuesday afternoon, a voter posed an interesting question to Rick Santorum. What is Santorum’s own view of the Constitution, the voter wanted to know, given that Ron Paul frequently casts himself as the only candidate who wants to adhere to the Constitution? In response, Santorum fished out of his pocket his miniature copy of the Constitution and held it tightly in his hand.

Normally, the Constitution requires the president to secure Senate confirmation before appointing cabinet secretaries and equivalent officers to lead federal agencies. But the Constitution carved out one exception to that rule: The president may appoint such an officer without Senate confirmation when the Senate is in recess.

The House of Representatives voted down a proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, the Associated Press reports. The House did not achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to pass the amendment and send it to the Senate.

A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that 74 percent of independents reject President Obama’s contention that (in the question’s wording)

The majority of the 50 states claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional, the Obama administration claims that it's not, and both sides have now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the question on appeal from a 3-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court.

On September 17, 1787, George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and 36 other Constitutional Convention delegates completed four months of labors at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and signed the glorious document that, upon its ratification, would become the Constitution of the United States of America.  Here is the preamble for that charter of government: