THE MAN OUR FOUNDERS WARNED US AGAINST

[Geee]

Powerline:

n the late 1960’s Nicholas Von Hoffman published his portrait of the hippies in San Francisco under the title We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us Against. Von Hoffman’s title was a precursor to the inane messianism of Obama’s “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” though Von Hoffman’s title made more sense than Obama’s shibboleth.

 

In his assumption of monarchical powers and his accompanying demagogy, Barack Obama is the man our founders warned us against. That is the thrust of David Bernstein’s important new book, Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

 

Bernstein devotes a chapter of his book to the depredations wrought in the name of Obamacare, a few of which have been blessed by the Supreme Court. Lincoln famously disparaged the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case as “an astonisher in legal history.” I think the same can be said of the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Obamacare cases.

 

Although the Supreme Court has tied itself into knots in the Obamacare cases, your attention is warranted in the case of House v. Burwell pending before Judge Rosemary Collyer of the federal district court for the District of Columbia. Jonathan Turley represents the House in the lawsuit; the link is to Turley’s complaint. Hans Von Spakovsky writes about the case in the National Interest column “The war over Obamacare is NOT over.”

 

The complaint carefully sets forth the legal details underlying the lawsuit. Judge Collyer has held that the House has standing to pursue the first of two claims presented in the complaint, and it is the one that draws my interest.