{"id":5408,"date":"2012-04-03T22:14:33","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T02:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=5408"},"modified":"2012-04-03T22:14:44","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T02:14:44","slug":"the-daily-blog-wednesday-april-4th-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedailygouge.com\/?p=5408","title":{"rendered":"The Daily Blog, Wednesday, April 4th, 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Wednesday, April 4th, 2012….and here’s The Gouge!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leading off the mid-week edition, a few items related to The Dear Misleader’s latest attempt as misdirection; first, James Taranto catalogues….<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Man Who Knew Too Little<\/span><\/h1>\n

President Obama’s stunning ignorance of constitutional law.<\/span><\/h2>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were half-joking yesterday when we asked if Barack Obama slept through his Harvard Law class on Marbury v. Madison,<\/em> the 1803 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court first asserted its power to strike down unconstitutional laws. It turns out it’s no joke: The president is stunningly ignorant about constitutional law.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

At an appearance this afternoon, a reporter asked Obama a question following up on yesterday’s comments:<\/strong><\/span> “Mr. President, you said yesterday that it would be ‘unprecedented’ for a Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by an elected Congress. But that is exactly what the court’s done during its entire existence. If the court were to overturn the individual mandate, what would you do, or propose to do, for the 30 million people who wouldn’t have health care after that ruling?”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Were he twice as smart as he actually is, he’d remain less than 1\/2 as smart as he holds himself to be. <\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Obama’s answer to the question was that he expects to win in court, and “as a consequence, we’re not spending a whole bunch of time planning for contingencies.”<\/strong><\/span> He went on to talk at some length about the “human element”–that is, people who would supposedly suffer in the absence of ObamaCare. Message: Obama cares, though not enough to spend “a whole bunch of time planning for contingencies.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But the most interesting part of his answer was the beginning, in which he tried to walk back, or at least clarify, his statement from yesterday. He spoke slowly, with long pauses, giving the sense that he was speaking with great thought and precision:<\/p>\n