2 Republican Senators Call on Obama to Stop 'Attacks' on Supreme Court

[TomCADem]

Source: Fox News

Two Republican senators on Wednesday called on President Obama to stop attacking the Supreme Court, lending support to Chief Justice John Roberts, who took umbrage at the president's criticism of the court's controversial campaign finance decision during his State of the Union address.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch told Fox News that he agrees with Roberts, who said Tuesday that Obama's address was "very troubling" and that the annual State of the Union speech has "degenerated into a political pep rally."

"Look, it was a political pep rally," Hatch said. "I guess I'm tired of it myself, just bouncing up and down at whatever strikes you as interesting.

"But the president was wrong on the law, he was wrong on the facts and I thought it was unseemly for him to criticize the Supreme Court while they're sitting there," he said.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/10/gop-senator-calls-obama-stop-attacks-supreme-court/

---

Please cue the youtube of "Leave Britney Alone."

The odd thing is that Fox News is actually trying to get the American people are going to side against President in support of corporations spending unlimited amounts of money in elections. For goodness sakes, President Obama has not exactly tried to pack the court ala FDR, yet Republicans are throwing hissy fit for calling the Court on the fact that it upset decades of precedent in giving corporations unprecedent influence in elections in a decision that threatens to dramatically weaken our democracy.

Yet, with corporate media like Fox News pulling the strings of the American people, you are likely to have Tea Partiers who are angry at Wall Street siding with Republicans who defend Wall Street against regulation. It is ironic really.

Plus, that little pep rally. It is the frickin State of the Union address.

[LakeSamish706]

1. Obama needs to tell them to go F*** themselves! n/t

[midnight]

13. I will second that.

[pundaint]

19. What's a bipartisan word for F***?

It's F*** followed by "the People"

[damyank913]

26. Massa gave us "frack"

Frackin Bastard.

[msanthrope]

32. Battlestar Galactica gave you "frak." Massa's just a poseur. n/t

[Xenotime]

33. Agreed. Time to open up an investigation on these two senators.

[EFerrari]

2. Beth Calls on the Supreme Court to stop attacking the constitution. n.t

[DBoon]

3. "Impeach Earl Warren"

the battle cry of the John Birch Society

The long ago ridiculed-as-insane John Birch Society

The same one that is now indestinguishable from the modern republican party

[MichaelHarris]

4. I can take

you to a forum right around the corner here at DU that just love this Supreme Court. It's a one-track mind forum.

[thediggity]

5. NO NO NO NO NO!!!!

WE NEED TO GET LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER!!!

[Lasher]

6. But they're activist judges, right?

So why are GOP Senators and Faux Noise defending activist judges? I thought they didn't like them.

[ShamelessHussy]

7. Mein Führer, I can walk!”

they can sure dish it out, but surly can't stand the truth thrown back in their faces... they are determined to rip this country apart, and fantasize about stepping into the breach with Führer like powers.

what scares me is that this scenario is plausible considering the increasingly rocky times ahead (peak oil, unemployment, climate change, multiple wars, corrupt body politic, corrupt financial institutions) and seems to be xactly the course being plotted by the reTHUGs (palin, beck, rush, etc)

[Webster Green]

8. Impeach Roberts!

Judicial activism at it's very worst. He should be removed.

[matt819]

9. You do know the proper Dem response to this, don't you

Not from Gibbs or Rahm or Reid - from the president himself - to the Republicans - STFU. Then all the Dems fall in line with the same talking point - STFU. Take a page from the RW playbook - hell, take the entire playbook. No more defense. WE have the majority in both houses. The SCOTU is simply another branch of government, and if the president has a few choice words, so be it. As Will Pitt says on another post. Bite me.

[demwing]

10. Hatch is a dick

He never gets angry or passionate about anything, he just calmly lies his ass off about EVERYTHING. I met him at a town event in Utah once, and he tried to shake my hand. I wouldn't, and he looked so snarky and pushy about it. I thought he was going to grab my hand and force the shake.

[Jennicut]

11. The public disagrees so that argument won't fly.

Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want on political campaigns, and most favor new limits on such spending, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court's Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent "strongly" opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html

They agree with Obama on the ruling. Hatch is an idiot.

[bemildred]

12. Or what? nt

[Umbral]

14. As soon as I saw the thread title I knew it was Orrin Hatch. What a sanctimonious prig. nt

[Chipper Chat]

27. Yup, yup! Same here.

We both saw the Hatch light bulb turn on.

[laconicsax]

15. Did I miss something here?

-Obama's State of the Union address: January 27, 2010.
-Today's date: March 10, 2010.

The Faux News article is using present tense to describe an event that, to the best of my knowledge, took place over a month ago. Did Obama do something in the intervening 42 days that I missed?

[liquid diamond]

17. I think the issue is being revised because Roberts recently

cried like a little girl while addressing students at Alabama University.

[gtar100]

16. Jeezus! The republicans are alway, always, always on the wrong side of every issue.

Day after day, year after year, they keep taking the side that hurts the most people. I sure wish stupid was fatal.

[Democat]

18. Is this the same Republican party that bashes the 9th Circuit nonstop?

What a joke.

Obama has been wimpy enough in the last year that he might apologize to make sure the Republicans are happy, but what he should do is to increase his criticism of the court every time a Republican mentions it.

Obama needs to learn that the only thing the Republican party understands is bullying. Every time they attack him, he should hit back twice as hard.

[JDPriestly]

20. Hilarious! Remember all the court bashing that the Republicans

were doing just a few years ago. Oh, how short are Republican memories.

Remember when Republicans were threatening the courts? Here's the story.

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the Judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our Constitutional freedom. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents, or the Congress, or governors, as she put it, really, really angry.

But, she continued, if we don't make them mad some of the time, we probably aren't doing our jobs as judges. And our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation's founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent Judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government, those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O'Connor, as the founding fathers knew, statutes and constitutions don't protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortion, prayer and the Terry Schiavo case. This, said O'Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress' one-time-only statute about Schiavo as it was written, not, said O'Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written.

The response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O'Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts. It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she says, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn't name him, but it was Texas Senator John Cornyn who made that statement after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge's home.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712

And here is a Washington Post article dated in March 2006 in which Justice Ginsburg describes conservatives' death threats against certain members of the Supreme Court:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg assailed the court's congressional critics in a recent speech overseas, saying their efforts "fuel" an "irrational fringe" that threatened her life and that of a colleague, former justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

. . . .

She then quoted from what she said was a "personal example" of this: a Feb. 28, 2005, posting in an Internet chat room that called on unnamed "commandoes" to ensure that she and O'Connor "will not live another week."

. . . .

Reflecting the tension between the two branches, O'Connor used a speech at Georgetown University Law Center last week to repeat her own past warnings about the threat to judicial independence posed by Republican criticisms of the court's rulings. She referred to comments by former House majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) but did not name either man.

. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031601860.html

Republicans should not criticize Obama for doing what they did for years and years -- even to a court that was then quite conservative.

[Hubert Flottz]

21. It was okay for Bush to lie and start a war using the SOTU speech

for his springboard.

[Supersedeas]

29. Bush also criticized the SCt on a number of occasions

[Art_from_Ark]

36. He should have criticized Scalia for not recusing himself

in bu$h vs. Gore, since Scalia was duck-hunting buddies with one of the people who would stand to benefit directly from a decision in bu$h's favor.

[samurai7]

22. The Republicans are crying (again) over a legitimate criticism

that was made of a Supreme Court decision. They are acting like the Supreme Court is somehow so sacred that they should not be criticized. That is a dangerous position to take; no governmental or judicial body or office should be above scrutiny and criticism, particularly when they make a decision that has such potential to negatively affect all Americans and the nation's entire democratic process.

But we all know the real truth--that the Republicans are just fussy children flapping their arms around desperately trying to find any possible way to make a stink.

[HughBeaumont]

23. Never, EVER let up on the Failure Fuhrer/Reagan majority SCOTUS.

Big Corporate Supreme Court - Screwing this country bareback since 2000.

[SpiralHawk]

24. "Sniffle. Whine." - Republicon Chickenhawks

What a pack of weak-kneed whiners...get a life, dudes.

[WVRICK13]

25. Call On Roberts To Stop

being political. The SC is supposed to be free from that influence (in theory).

[City Lights]

28. What whiners!

The truth obviously hurts. These losers need to suck it up!

[jayfish]

30. Every Tim A Pub Whines About Overturning Roe Or...

"judicial activism" in the SCOTUS; are they considered to be attacking the SCOTUS? :eyes:

Jay

[msanthrope]

31. Is Hatch gonna read from the Exorcist again???? Isn't that how he usually

defends these fraks???


http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1665&dat=19911013&id=GEcaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=niQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6754,2501551

[leftynyc]

34. Fucking hypocrites

When they stop trying to overturn Roe v Wade, then we can talk. Sick to death of these pukes. If Roberts is too candyassed to handle some criticism, he can step down and get an adult in his place. When they decided to step in and decide an election, they lost all rights to bitch about anything being political.

[Brother Buzz]

35. I believe Obama should take stock in Adlai Stevenson's words

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." — Adlai Stevenson