The Super Majority

Obama’s State of the Union: He Still Doesn’t Get it

Justice Samuel Alito let a pained expression pass his face and muttered, “Not true.” His reaction to Pres. Barack Obama’s demagogic attack on the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision aptly summed up the entire State of the Union address.

Obama warned that the decision striking down restrictions on corporate spending opened “the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.” But the court explicitly left untouched a statute that bans election spending by foreign corporations, even “indirectly.” There isn’t even a “loophole” for U.S. subsidiaries of foreign firms, as the White House claimed in damage-control mode.

Since Massachusetts, the Left has been badly disoriented. It can’t process the fact that the cradle of contemporary liberalism elected a Republican in a contest that was a referendum on health care. So, it has thrown up a thick cloud of rationalizations and delusion from which Obama emerged briefly to man his teleprompters before the nation.

He spoke for more than an hour, but the quick gloss might have been, “It’s not my fault, and please ignore your lying eyes.” Obama did everything in the speech – reach out to the middle class, feel people’s pain, try to recapture the stirring magic of past oratory – except acknowledge what people dislike about his agenda and recalibrate accordingly.

Read the full article at the New York Post

Obama Needs to Stop Legislating and Start Leading

How bad do things look for Barack Obama? Some historical perspective is useful. His approval ratings after one year in office are about the same as Ronald Reagan’s or Jimmy Carter’s and, in fact, are a bit higher than Bill Clinton’s. The Bushes fared better than all three of them, but for unusual reasons: 41 because he presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union in his first year in office, and 43 because the nation rallied around him after 9/11. As the economy improves, Obama’s numbers will surely rebound somewhat.

Still, last week’s special election in Massachusetts is a sign that Obama has a big problem. The public has clearly registered a protest vote against him, congressional Democrats, and their signature policy proposal: the health-care bill. The size of the swing, the issues raised during the campaign and in exit polls, and the migration of independents all suggest that Obama is confronting not just generalized anger but dissatisfaction with the course that the ruling party has taken. How he responds will shape the rest of his term.

Read the full article at Newsweek

Political Blunders Doom Obama’s White House

If Scott Brown should defeat Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts special election tomorrow, it will be a fitting metaphor for the political trajectory of President Obama’s first year in office. A year ago Democrats were talking about Obama as the next Franklin Roosevelt, and suggesting that they were on the cusp of an enduring majority. Today, they are struggling to hold Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat.

Coakley will rightly get most of the blame should Brown actually pull off what once seemed to be an impossible victory. Yet much of the responsibility will have to rest with Barack Obama, who has guided his party so poorly that it is having trouble making an appeal to voters in Massachusetts.

To put it bluntly, the Obama White House has been politically inept in the last year. It has made serious miscalculations, and today it is paying a price.

Read the Full Article at Real Clear Politics

Judge Sotomayor Meant What She Said

Judge Sotomayor said the following:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Critics have seized on this as evidence that Sotomayor believes in identity politics, or what political scientists call “sociological representation,” the idea that only people of a certain race, ethnicity, or gender, can be competent to speak on certain issues or have certain opinions or represent certain constituencies.

Read the Full Article at South Dakota Politics

Canadian Socialist Leader Stumps for Obamacare

The leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party Jack Layton linked the future of his country’s universal health care system to President Obama’s public health care program in a Washington speech Wednesday.

Many conservative groups have pointed to Canada’s universal health care system as a reason to keep the American health care system in the private sector. Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s campaign, for example, launched an ad campaign last week featuring a Canadian woman named Shona Holmes who was diagnosed with brain tumor and says in the ad the only way she survived was by seeking treatment in America.

Mr. Layton accused groups like this of “sowing the seeds of fear with myths and lies about Canadian health care” and said the futures of the two health care programs are dependent on each other in an address delivered at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Read Full Article at Washington Times

Millions Unemployed as Obama Lives It Up on Broadway

Even before the Obamas left Washington, the there-and-back trip drew criticism from Republicans who questioned the president’s decision to travel to New York for a night of entertainment during a recession and while automakers struggle to survive.

His public schedule listed no official events, so President Obama had plenty of time to devote to being a weekend dad and spouse.

The president and first lady Michelle Obama watched daughter Malia’s soccer game for an hour Saturday morning in the Palisades neighborhood, a short drive from the White House.

For the evening, the first couple jetted to New York City for date night.

They dined a little more than two hours at Blue Hill, a West Village restaurant, then headed to the August Wilson Theater to make it in time for “Jersey Boys.”

Read the Full Article at Fox News

Identity Politics on the Supreme Court

Responding to early 19th-century rumors that they drank excessively, the Supreme Court justices decided to drink nothing on conference days — unless it was raining. At the next conference, Chief Justice John Marshall asked Joseph Story to scan the sky for signs of rain. When Story said he saw none, Marshall said: “Our jurisdiction extends over so large a territory that the doctrine of chances makes it certain that it must be raining somewhere — let us refresh ourselves.”

Americans have argued about the court’s jurisdiction forever. They should not stop, especially now that the president has nominated U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The 1987 fight over President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork interred the tradition that the Senate, in evaluating judicial nominees, would not delve deeply into the nominee’s jurisprudential thinking. Bork’s defeat was unjust, but the new approach to confirmations was overdue, given the court’s increasingly central role in American governance.

Read the Full Article at Townhall