Unconventional Wisdom

It’s 2012 on the East Coast but still 2011 in the Central Time Zone currently!

Althouse who is a law professor in addition to a blogger talks about last night’s Republican Presidential debate at the Reagan Library. Another blogger Andrew Sullivan wants to stick it to TX Gov. Rick Perry on the death penalty. This was her concluding paragraph:

That’s the answer, plainly and appropriately stated. Sullivan’s straining to use this to portray Perry as evil is — to my mind — and I oppose the death penalty — demagoguery.

You can check out Gov. Perry’s response [VIDEO] to the question on the death penalty especially his application of it as Governor of Texas.

Marathon Pundit refers to Milbank of the Washington Post as liberal supporter. Here’s his recent column:

When he began his speech (and as cable news channels displayed for viewers), the Dow Jones industrials stood at 11,035. As he talked, the average fell below 11,000 for the first time in nine months, en route to a 635-point drop for the day, the worst since the 2008 crash.

It’s not exactly fair to blame Obama for the rout: Almost certainly, the markets ignored him. And that’s the problem: The most powerful man in the world seems strangely powerless, and irresolute, as larger forces bring down the country and his presidency.

The economy crawls, the credit rating falls, the markets plunge, and a helicopter packed with U.S. special forces goes down in Afghanistan. Two thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track (and that was before the market swooned), Obama’s approval rating is 43 percent, and activists on his own side are calling him weak.

Yet Obama plods along, raising gobs of cash for his reelection bid — he was scheduled to speak at two DNC fundraisers Monday night — and varying little the words he reads from the teleprompter. He seemed detached even from those words Monday as he pivoted his head from side to side, proclaiming that “our problems is not confidence in our credit” and turning his bipartisan fiscal commission into a “biparticle.”

And what do you know Instapundit has this column and other links of interest related to Milbanks article!

Marathon Pundit says that Obama has lost another liberal supporter. Yes I’m aware he has his critics on the left, a group I consider his natural constituency. Then Instapundit says that the MSM who was solidly behind Obama in 2008 is starting to wane on him now!

[VIDEO] I was alerted to this commentary from an e-mail from PJTV. Whittle attacks those who believe that the poor has a rough ride in this country. Except that many of them own things that surely many in well-to-do households would take for granted. Refrigerators, TVs, microwaves, video games, PCs, even air conditioning!

So how much worse off is the poor in this country if they can afford those luxuries?

That image was via Instapundit! BTW, this is what that image is referring to:

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S.’s AAA credit rating for the first time, slamming the nation’s political process and criticizing lawmakers for failing to cut spending or raise revenue enough to reduce record budget deficits.

S&P lowered the U.S. one level to AA+ while keeping the outlook at “negative” as it becomes less confident Congress will end Bush-era tax cuts or tackle entitlements. The rating may be cut to AA within two years if spending reductions are lower than agreed to, interest rates rise or “new fiscal pressures” result in higher general government debt, the New York-based firm said yesterday.

“The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics,” S&P said in a statement late yesterday after markets closed.

Yeah now to come up with some content and enough teasing too!

Originally posted at It’s My Mind on March 4, 2010!

This time what we might see is bringing up an old case just to overturn Obamacare. In this case it involves a high school student bringing a gun to school.

A Texas high school student’s decision to bring a .38-caliber handgun to school in 1992 could end up at the center of the legal fight over President Barack Obama’s health care reform plan.

Alfonso Lopez Jr.’s arrest at Edison High School in San Antonio set in motion a legal battle that may prove crucial to 13 state attorneys general fighting the new law.

Lopez, a senior when he was arrested for handgun possession in March 1992, ended up facing federal charges of violating the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. But the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 vote, threw out his conviction five years later on the grounds that Congress exceeded its regulatory authority under the Constitution when it approved the 1990 law, which makes it a violation of federal law to possess a firearm in a school zone.

In filing a lawsuit last week challenging the new health care law’s mandate that everyone must have health insurance, the 13 state attorneys general — including Greg Abbott of Texas — cited the same legal reasoning that went into the Lopez ruling.

At issue in both cases is the Constitution’s commerce clause, which limits the regulatory powers of Congress to matters involving interstate commerce. In the Lopez decision, conservatives on the court led by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist ruled that the 1990 gun law was unconstitutional because it had nothing to do with commerce between states.

Upholding the federal government’s right to control guns in school zones would give Congress “a general police power of the sort retained by the states,” Rehnquist wrote for the majority.

Close to 20 years later the states are making the same argument regarding Obamacare. Here’s more!

Prior to the Lopez ruling, the Supreme Court had for 60 years mostly followed the lead of Congress, ruling that congressional claims of regulatory power were valid under the Constitution. With the Lopez ruling, court watchers predicted a wholesale scaling back of such claims, clipping the wings of Congress to legislate in any area it wanted.
…
The lawsuit “is definitely not frivolous,” said professor Randy Barnett of Georgetown University in an interview with the National Law Journal. “Anyone who says it is — and I know a lot of law professors have — they’re whistling past the graveyard,” Barnett said. “Anything that has never been done before has no precedent for it. And this (health care reform law) has never been done before.”

Since the Texas case was decided, Rehnquist has died and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a swing vote who sided with the majorities in the 1995 and 2000 rulings, has retired. In their places are two solid conservative votes, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Last year, moderate-liberal Justice David Souter resigned and was replaced by a like-minded jurist, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Well I could exceprt more, but I think you should read the whole thing. It may well be worth your times if you’re following the battle over Obamacare. Besides it’s not quite over yet! The bill was signed into law, but will it or will it not stand. We will see eventually.

Via Newsalert!

BTW, you might find this post over at The Provocateur interesting with regards to Illinois Democratic Congressman Phil Hare. He was recorded as commenting that the US Constitution doesn’t matter in this health care debate. Then as it reached a firestorm he had another video to address those comments saying that they were taken out of context.