More Notes from Fantasyland

E. J. Dionne is someone who I read to check in with the crazed left wing of the Democrat party. Dionne is always good for a laugh; he spins everything. Dionne's latest effort is a rousing huzzah for the attacks last week by president Obama on the Supreme Court and the GOP budget passed by the House. Here is the essence of what Dionne had to say about the Court:

Progressives would be wildly irresponsible if they sat by quietly while a conservative Supreme Court majority undid 80 years of jurisprudence. Roosevelt wasn't a wimp, and Obama has decided that he won't be one, either. Conservatives are unhappy because they prefer passive, intimidated liberals to the fighting kind.

As you can see, the kernel upon which all of Dionne's analysis is based is that for the last 80 years, the Supreme Court has upheld efforts like the individual mandate on a regular basis. Striking down that mandate as unconstitutional would be a total shift in the precedent of the Court.

Dionne is a much better polemicist than legal historian. His facts are just plain wrong. During the last 80 years, indeed during the last 225 years, the Supreme Court has never upheld any law like the individual mandate. That is the point! The individual mandate was and is and unprecedented expansion of federal power under the purported authority of the Commerce Clause. The issue before the Court is not a change from years of precedent; it is a completely novel case. Dionne makes no attempt to address how the mandate satisfies the constitutional requirements; no, the issue to Dionne, as always, is evil conservatives seeking to destroy liberal progress. Dionne is blinded by politics.

Dionne does the same with Obama's budget comments. He does not even try to consider their validity; they are just right because Obama said them in criticism of an evil conservative.

What a waste of space in the Washington Post.