Constitution

Yesterday's ruling by a federal district judge, declaring that Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional, is a noteworthy blow to the highly unpopular overhaul and its ultimate prospects for survival. The New York Times writes:

In a short essay, New York Times editorialist Lincoln Caplan considers the increasingly popular conservative rallying cry, "constitutional conservatism."

Opponents of the Ground Zero mosque have tried to use analogies to show that their opposition to the mosque is not rooted in anti-Muslim bigotry. For example, a Japanese cultural center at Pearl Harbor would be provocative and insensitive, even though many Japanese Americans fought and died in World War II.

If someone whom a Republican president had appointed to a high government position were to give a speech defending the Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation under the heading of “separate but equal,” one would expect a political firestorm.  Yet when just such a speech was recently given, it was greeted with “feelings of relief and joy” by Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times and other liberals. What gives?

A federal lawsuit is never a laughing matter – especially when the U.S. Department of Justice signs the complaint.  But the Obama administration's complaint against Arizona faces serious obstacles in the federal courts.

God and the Founders

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recently detailed a new approach to warfare that's worth a look. In two speeches at Kansas State University and Fort Leavenworth, Mullen talked up a massive doctrinal shift in America's approach to warfighting.

A lot of people have been looking to find someone to blame for President Obama's failures: the Constitutional order, the right-wing noise machine, the dull, dim-witted American people. Funnily enough, one person rarely seems to get fingered.

Democratic postmortems on Barack Obama’s disappointing first year in the Oval Office have emphasized, as the president himself did, difficulties inherited from “the last eight years.” Republicans, for their part, credit public opposition to Obama’s overreaching policies. But a full explanation goes much deeper. Obama is failing because he has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down.