Obama is Brilliant and Awesome

"[Obama is] a brilliant constitutional lawyer deeply devoted to the rule of law ..." So says Laurence Tribe. I am unconvinced.

I don't see any evidence Obama is a brilliant constitutional lawyer. He sure is a lawyer, but being a professor doesn't make you brilliant, or any sort of expert. And I see plenty of evidence that his understanding of the Constitution is extremely weak.

Worse, though, I am thoroughly convinced that Obama not only is not devoted to the rule of law, but that he actively *hates* the rule of law. The rule of law is what says the government is extremely limited. Obama clearly believes in ignoring that rule of law, and he does it all the time, whether it is banning handguns in DC, illegally wiretapping, ordering companies to comply with nonlegal memoranda, or forcing all Americans to buy health insurance.

Indeed, in his inaugural address -- and many times since -- he came right out and said he puts practicality above legality, and chided us who believe otherwise as "cynics" with "stale political arguments." Sure, he didn't say "practicality above legality": but that's what he clearly meant when he said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works," because -- as a brilliant constitutional lawyer -- Obama knows the argument about governmnent being too big is largely based on the Tenth Amendment.

Ignoring Tribe's laughable claim that it is a "fact" that "precedent and historical practice alike would lead a suitably cautious court to uphold rather than overturn" the Affordable Care Act, when in actual fact the Court has in recent years forced the government to back up its claims that the law or precedent justifies particular questionable exercises of power, and almost everyone seems to agree that the Solicitor General failed in that task ... it's nevertheless transparently dishonest when Tribe shrugs off Obama's repeated criticisms of the Supreme Court while attacking Judge Smith's criticism of Obama.

I agree that Smith was wrong, as I mentioned recently: he has no authority to order the DOJ to even write that letter, let alone get involved in what is clearly a purely political exercise by the President. Yes, Obama should shut his trap about the Court while they are deliberating instead of trying to rally the public against them. But our judges should stay above Obama's lowball tactics.