Can one confidently predict the editorial view of The New York Times on a “momentous” issue of the day, like ObamaCare in the Supreme Court? Does the sun rise in the east?
Speaking breathlessly from the steps of the Court just after oral argument concluded yesterday, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who like so many others had assured us that the Court would uphold ObamaCare’s linchpin, the individual mandate, called the government’s oral arguments on the issue “a train wreck for the Obama administration.” Risky as it is to predict how the Court will eventually rule, that’s how most other Court-watchers saw it yesterday, too, which meant that the Times had damage to control.
And so today we find the Gray Lady warning sternly that “the Supreme Court faces a central test: whether it will recognize limits on its own authority to overturn well-founded acts of Congress.” At least the good folks on the Times editorial board have some sense of limited government.
The problem, of course, is that it’s misplaced. The question is not whether Congress’s acts are well-founded but whether they’re constitutional. And on that score, the view of theTimes is little different than that of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who responded famously, when asked in October 2009 where specifically in the Constitution she found congressional authority to enact an individual mandate, “Are you serious?” which she repeated for emphasis.
No comments:
Post a Comment