The White House is still feeling heat from President Obama’s comments suggesting it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to overturn a law passed by Congress. And much of it has to do with the fact that the media is actually doing its job and calling the president out on his falsehoods:
During robust questioning when [White House Press Secretary Jay] Carney was told at one point that he had mischaracterized what the president had said, the press secretary was forced to repeatedly defend the remarks of his boss as an observation of fact.
“Since the 1930s the Supreme Court has without exception deferred to Congress when it comes to Congress’s authority to pass legislation to regulate matters of national economic importance such as health care, 80 years,” Carney said.
“He did not mean and did not suggest that … it would be unprecedented for the court to rule that a law was unconstitutional. That’s what the Supreme Court is there to do,” Carney said.
Take a look at the video to see Carney try to spin the president’s comments as the “reverse of intimidation.” Politifact also checked into Obama’s assertions, and rated them false in a scathing review:
There’s simply no support for the assertion that the law was passed by a “strong majority.” It was passed along party lines in a sharply partisan climate, and the 60 votes in the Senate were the minimum needed to keep Republicans from bottling it up in a filibuster.
But the “unprecedented” idea is more nuanced. It’s without question that the Supreme Court overturning a law passed by Congress — by any margin — is a common and routine occurrence, and by no means without precedent. Volokh gave us a close analogy with the case of Boerne v. Flores, a religious freedom law that glided through Congress but was held unconstitutional by a majority of the court, including two of its liberal justices. …
But we’re taking Obama literally, and that historical perspective was not reflected in his original statement, which is what we’re ruling on. He simply said the law passed with a strong majority and overturning it would be unprecedented. Wrong and wrong. We rate the statement False.
Many have questioned why Obama, a supposed constitutional law scholar, would make comments so obviously inaccurate. I doubt it’s out of ignorance. As a former student of Obama’s pointed out, he didn’t seem concerned about the courts overturning “duly constituted and passed laws” when he was teaching at Chicago.
The reason Obama made these comments might be simpler. He thought he could get away with them. In the past, the media simply hasn’t called him out on the inaccuracies and distortions in his speeches. That changed this week, and may be a sign this presidential election may at least have fairer news coverage than the last.
Will Aytola Khamenei visit the Western Wall and insert a prayer? n nDon't be silly AG.
The Media isn't going to get harder on him. But he said something that rubbed liberals the wrong way (people like Ruth Marcus were criticizing him) too. That's why they were critical. Now WaPo is congratulating the President for backing off and taking a more "nuanced" position. They just need a fig leaf. (It's a similar phenomenon to the liberal Catholic columnists who criticized the president's contraception/sterilization etc mandate. They opposed when he stated it bluntly, but now that he's spun it differently without changing policy, they're supporting him. n
Good post , but to what media credibility are you referring ? (a mythical construct like the unicorn)
Heh!
Media credibility was destroyed sometime in the Camelot era..