Fox News Watch Marvel At Media’s Promotion Of Justice Roberts From ‘Right Wing Goon’ To ‘Hero’

Mediaite.com:

By far the biggest story of this week was the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the constitutionality of fining individuals for not having health insurance, a move that Justice John Roberts wrote fell under the taxing authority of Congress. On Fox News Watch today, the panel noted that his decision to side with the more liberal justices appeared to change the tone of liberals in the media when referring to him, who now saw him as a “hero” for what he wrote.


Jim Pinkerton joked that the turnabout by the media in warming up to Justice Roberts had been dubbed by “some wiseguy in DC” the “Greenhouse Effect”– namely, Linda Greenhouse, whose writing “moved the courts in her direction.” He also joked that a week ago, Justice Roberts was a “right-wing goon,” to which host Jon Scott interjected to point out how Chris Matthews reacted– going from claiming Justice Roberts could be “compared to a Civil War-era supreme court judge who upheld the Dred Scott Slave Act” to “a hero.”


“Here the bias is so obvious,” Judith Miller replied, noting that at least the “legal media see his reasoning as specious and his about-face as, well, an about-face.” Kirsten Powers, on the other hand, took a look at the way conservative media reacted– namely, “very, very angry.” he agreed it was “historic” and “a big victory for Obama,” but didn’t see Justice Roberts as siding with conservatives, given that “his reasoning was completely different than theirs.” Richard Grenell agreed, explaining that Justice Roberts had now “saddled ‘the President’ with a terrible scalet T… he has to go into the campaign season with the label of a taxer.”


As for Mitt Romney and the election, Miller expressed some surprise that Romney had not “taken advantage of the moment,” though “he did talk about the elements that he would have in his plan.” Pinkerton thought the President was not in the best position given the decision. People “oppose Obamacare as a thing, and if he spends the next five months defending it, that’s a bad thing,” he concluded. 

RELATED: Krauthammer To Hannity: Roberts Was Protecting The Court’s ‘Reputation’ With Health Care Decision

Liberals Can Thank George W. Bush For Passing Obamacare

Funny how this worked out. Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, sides with the liberal faction of SCOTUS and passes the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). While the initial reaction is to state what a "huge victory" this is for Obama, considering that the individual mandate passed as a tax rather than under the commerce clause (which is what Democrats wanted) when people start reading and understanding exactly how this thing passed, critics, pundits and pols (including Barry) alike may start to feel different about this decision in a day or two. Then too is the fact that Obamacare, due to its intrusive intricacies on personal choice, was never popular with most Americans in the first place...but now it's the law of the land:

The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld nearly all of President Obama's health care overhaul, in a landmark ruling that will have sweeping consequences for the economy, the election and America's health care system. 
In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled as constitutional the so-called individual mandate requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance starting in 2014. 

The ruling is a victory for the president, ensuring for now that his signature domestic policy achievement remains mostly intact. It also ensures that the law will play a prominent role in the general election campaign, as Republican candidate Mitt Romney vows to repeal the law if elected.

Obama is expected to speak publicly about the ruling later in the day. 

Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed during a Republican administration, joined the four left-leaning justices on the bench in crafting the majority decision. 

"The Affordable Health Care Act survives largely unscathed," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of those justices, declared at the end of the reading, claiming the "setbacks" going forward will be "temporary blips, not permanent obstructions." 

The ruling relied on a technical explanation of how the individual mandate could be categorized. Roberts, in the opinion, said the mandate could not be upheld under the Constitution's Commerce Clause. However, it could be upheld under the government's power to tax. 

"The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional in part  The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of Congress's power under the Commerce Clause," Roberts wrote. "That Clause authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to engage it. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income, but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within Congress's power to tax."

Roberts stressed that the decision does not speak to the merits of the law. "We do not consider whether the act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the nation's elected leaders," he said. 

The ruling did rein in one element of the law -- the expansion of Medicaid across the country to take in millions of low-income Americans. The opinion allows Washington to offer more funding to states to expand the program, but says the federal government cannot penalize states for not participating in the new program by withholding existing Medicaid funds.

RELATED: Mandate upheld: what now?

Liberal Writer E.J. Dionne Would Like Justice Scalia To Resign For Having Too Many Opinions

Wish he'd resign or just die is how most liberals think about the great Justice Scalia:

Perennial liberal thorn-in-the-side Justice Antonin Scalia has gone too far with this “having opinions about legal matters” thing that totally defies his job description, according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne today. Justice Scalia, the staunch originalist whose dissents have made his name an indelible one in the Court’s history, mentioned the President’s executive policy on immigration after the Arizona decision, while noting that the state had one of the biggest illegal immigration problems in the court. This, Dionne writes, would make him “a heck of a columnist and blogger,” but an “arrogant” and, he implies, dangerous Supreme Court Justice. 

“So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase,” Dionne writes, citing as an example the Justice’s bench statement on the executive policy on immigration released recently. “Obama’s move had nothing to do with the case in question. Scalia just wanted you to know where he stood,” he suggests, though, solely by the virtue of quoting the bench statement itself, manages to contradict himself in the next sentence. In that statement, Justice Scalia says, “Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are simply unwilling to do so.” 

“Cue the tea party rally applause,” Dionne writes snidely, after the Justice making a legal point about the power of states versus the federal government. What Dionne leaves out of his argument on how issues that can be used in the public arena to dredge up political support should, for some reason, be exempt from discussion on the Court is that this argument is to be found right in the majority opinion for this case– an opinion that Dionne seems not to have much of a problem with, given he hasn’t called for Justice Anthony Kennedy‘s head. “Statistics alone do not capture the full extent of Arizona’s concerns,” Justice Kennedy wrote in his opinion. “Phoenix is a major city of the United States, yet signs along an interstate highway 30 miles to the south warn the public to stay away. One reads, ‘DANGER– PUBLIC WARNING — TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENTED [sic].’” Why doesn’t Justice Kennedy get tea party applause and the boot for that? 

Partially because this is not Dionne’s only grievance. He also takes a strong moral stand against Justice Scalia for hunting: 

“Recall a 2004 incident. Three weeks after the Supreme Court announced it would hear a case over whether the White House needed to turn over documents from an energy task force that Dick Cheney had headed, Scalia went off on Air Force Two for a duck-hunting trip with the vice president. 

Scalia scoffed at the idea that he should recuse himself. “My recusal is required if . . . my ‘impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’ ” he wrote in a 21-page memo. Well, yes. But there was no cause for worry, Scalia explained, since he never hunted with Cheney “in the same blind or had other opportunity for private conversation.” 

Don’t you feel better? And can you just imagine what the right wing would have said if Vice President Biden had a case before the court and went duck hunting with Justice Elena Kagan?” 

There is a lot to scoff at in these three paragraphs– for one, the fact that Dionne spends half of the article mocking the tea party before using their hypothetical reaction to an act by Justice Kagan as evidence against Justice Scalia’s wild and crazy behavior. And another, the fact that the first thing every American law student learns on their first day of class is that Justice Scalia is one of the more social characters on the Court. His “best friend” that he often goes on opera adventures with is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which doesn’t seem to disturb Dionne much– nor does the fact that Justice Scalia took Justice Kagan on one of those outrageous hunting trips, as well. And, of course, there is a bit of a problem with making the point that this week definitively proved Justice Scalia needed to leave the bench and then citing evidence for this brand new argument from… 2004. 

Generally, most calls for people to resign who are not being investigated by the FBI or Congress are chuckle-worthy slow news day fodder, and this is likely no different. It is true that with Justice Scalia gone, a powerful and often just barely not political voice that caused many a left-winger distress would go silent, which Dionne appears to believe is a good thing. But if the best he can do is point out that Justice Scalia has opinions when he is being paid by taxpayers to write opinions and that his social life involved outings with people in power almost a decade ago, the master of colorful dissents has nothing to worry about anytime soon.

RELATED:  The Court’s Arizona ruling has set the stage for immigration reform

Fox & Friends Panel Takes Media To Task For Bias In Reporting Arizona Law, Fast And Furious

Mediaite.com:

On Monday, Fox & Friends hosted a panel discussion about how the major networks have covered the Arizona immigration law, which was recently partially upheld by the Supreme Court, and the Fast and Furious gun walking scandal. The panel concluded that the major networks had reported those stories in a biased fashion. 

Fill-in host Alisyn Camerota opened the panel by playing a clip of Univision anchor Jorge Ramos speaking with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer about Arizona’s controversial immigration law. 

“This is a very sad day for the Hispanic community,” said Ramos on Monday when the Supreme Court left one key provision of that law in place. “This would only create more persecution and discrimination in Arizona and in many other states.”

“Was that an objective report by an anchor,” Camerota asked her panel guests. 

“It’s not that Jorge Ramos is opinionated, he’s simply wrong,” said former George W. Bush Labor Secretary nominee Linda Chavez.

Camerota asked if her panel found it surprising that ABC News would allow Univision’s opinion without an opposing view on their network news broadcast. 

“Nothing surprises me anymore in the media,” said Jon-Christopher Bua, a U.S. political analysis for Sky News.

“I think it is tragic when people are relying on listening to news, you know, at the dinner table and they’re getting somebody’s opinion,” Interjected Tamara Holder, Fox News legal analyst. “What makes Fox great is that you get crazy people like me on the left giving an opinion and other people who are giving just the news. And there needs to be a separation.”

Camerota said that the network broadcasts have largely ignored the Fast and Furious scandal and, those networks that have covered the story, did so briefly until “other, lesser stories have eclipsed it.”

“Is it newsworthy,” asked Camerota.

“Of course it’s newsworthy,” replied Chavez. “And the irony is, President [Barack] Obama – by invoking executive privilege – has actually now forced this issue onto the major, mainstream media.”

Holder said that it is not uncommon for House committee votes to not make it onto the news – which is what Attorney General Eric Holder’s contempt citation remains at this stage. 

RELATED: Supreme Court immigration ruling: A win for Arizona, a call to action for Congress

Compulsive Liar Rachel Maddow When Cornered Pretends She's a Private Person With No Opinions

When you're a morally bankrupt, gay activist pretending to be journalist, this is how you react when you're cornered outside of the safe haven within the studio that's inside the offices of the failing, hack, partisan network you work for:

You don't know me, Rachel Maddow complained  -- twice -- to Reason magazine editor Nick Gillespie in her hissy fit Friday night on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher."

Yet again, Maddow gets it wrong. By the incisive questions he asked, and Maddow's reluctance to answer them, Gillespie showed he knows her all too well.

Seguing from a discussion of the Fast & Furious scandal, Gillespie condemned Attorney General Eric Holder for his role in the war on drugs --

What a shock, the opinions held by Maher and Maddow have remained frozen in amber for two decades. Saves them all that trouble of thinking things through ever again.

Maddow's "you don't even know me" defense was strange enough the first time. (A friend told me it was Maddow's version of "Don't you know who I am?!"). The second time Maddow resorted to it was outright bizarre, several minutes later during a discussion of the health care law enacted in Massachusetts while Mitt Romney was governor -- aka, Romneycare -- leading to the federal Affordable Care Act in 2010, aka, Obamacare --

Followed by that rarity from a Maher audience -- a moment of tomb-like silence as the sheer hilarity of what Maddow just claimed sank in, before Maher uttered a feeble "oh" and an audience filled with Maddow fans as shown by their boisterous applause earlier when she was introduced began belatedly cheering for her again, lest their continued awkward silence make for a YouTube video that might doom Maddow's career.
There it was again -- "You don't know anything about me" -- as if Maddow has more in common with Emily Dickinson than Joan Rivers.

As if this ambitious media climber was actually a timorous wallflower suddenly thrust into the media spotlight amid all these brutish men with their impertinent questions, over and over and over! (wave arms for emphasis).

To make matters worse, Maddow followed this with a claim that initially silenced even a partisan audience  -- "My job is to cover these things, not to tell you how I like them or not."

Which is the opposite of what Maddow does every weeknight on MSNBC, as anyone who has spent even random seconds watching her show while channel surfing is aware. The program is officially titled "The Rachel Maddow Show" but would be more accurately subtitled, "Liberal politics I like, conservative politics I loathe."

It's a formula Maddow followed at left-wing Air America Radio, then during guest spots and filling in for former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, and when she was given her own cable show three years ago.

Maddow doesn't limit herself to opining there, but also does so in venues such as, ahem, the Maher show, regular appearances on "Meet the Press," her Twitter feed, chummy chats with David Letterman and Jay Leno, her book that was published this year, "Drift," and frequent fawning interviews in the media.

Maddow does not remain so engaged to tell us the news, which was invariably reported long before she got to it. She lives and breathes to opine on this, that and everything else -- and denying it shows that Maddow knows less about herself than does her new acquaintance, Nick Gillespie.

RELATED: Maher, Maddow Deny Being Partisan; Can't Name Republican They Agree With

George Will Says Mitt Romney Should Pick Bobby Jindal As Running Mate

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hotair.com:

On ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, George Will made a succinct case for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as Mitt Romney’s best option for a running mate, and I’m going to go ahead and agree with him. It’s right around the beginning of the segment:

“My choice decided that he would rather be president of Purdue University, that is Mitch Daniels. [Rob] Portman and Pawlenty, they’re just fine. I prefer someone who brings a little more excitement. [Paul] Ryan would be good. The trouble is if you take Ryan out of the House, where he could in two years be the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, so, by default and that’s not to disparage him, I would go with Bobby Jindal.”

If you haven’t yet picked up on it, I’m a pretty big Jindal fan. I think it’s a shame that the average voter seems to best know him for that calamity of a State of the Union response in 2009, because after having seen him speak in person and been on several conference calls with him, the man is actually a very compelling, candid, and clever speaker.


He’s relatively young, but Jindal’s already had a bunch of policy experience (most especially in health care, which is going to be a clutch issue for awhile yet), he handled the BP oil spill beautifully, he’s been taking on some of the education unions in Louisiana, and he’s been a highly vocal and effective critic of President Obama. He’s not too “vanilla,” he’s Southern, and I think he’d round out Romney’s ticket nicely.


And while there are several other VP-options I could definitely support, given the other possible candidates’ individual situations (I think Paul Ryan, for example, is extremely valuable staying in Congress for the time being), I have to go with Bobby Jindal all the way.


Just my vice presidential-two cents — and judging by last week’s reader poll, looks like plenty of you agree!

I have a ton of respect for George Will as I think he's the most intelligent, honest and articulate conservative pundit out there, but Jindal just doesn't be move me.  

RELATED: Bobby Jindal: Obama is running against Bush, and it’s only about eight years too late for that

Famous R&B Singer and New Mother Beyonce Seen Hanging Out With Morally Bankrupt Porn Star Kim Kardashian

Beyonce is a super rich, world famous singer and new mother to a baby girl. And while she's never said that she's a role model (and she certainly isn't one what with her odd behavior, revealing wardrobe choices, risque song lyrics and suggestive dance moves over the years), millions of young girls around the globe still look up to Beyonce on how to act, deal with the social pressures of youngdom and grow into a mature woman that can help to make a difference in the world. Beyonce is well aware of this and she's spoken out about it.

Yet, there was Beyonce hanging out with talentless, morally-bankrupt, reality-TV and porno star Kim Kardashian the other day. Granted Beyonce's husband, rapper and former drug dealer Jay-Z and Kardashian's latest boyfriend Kanye West have long been friends and business partners, so maybe Beyonce's just hanging out with the world's worst role model out of love for her man. But what about being a new mom? Doesn't Beyonce know that Kim Kardashian is nothing but a fame-seeking whore, with no morals or dignity? Why would Beyonce want her millions of followers to know that it's ok to hang out with such ghetto trash? Doesn't she understand the message this sends to millions of young women? Does she not have an ounce of class left in her?

What's funny too about this pairing is that Beyonce has been on a heavy crusade lately to acknowledge her love and admiration for 1st Lady Michelle Obama. You'd think Michelle O. would be smart enough to warn new BFF Beyonce about the Kim Kardashian's on the world. But since the oft-angry, 1st Lady has never taken on an issue that directly affects young minority women since her husband took office, I guess we shouldn't be surprised at her silence on this matter.

Politiks As Usual: In The News 6/25/12

Romney Camp Fights Claims of Shipping Jobs Overseas

Obama’s Great American Novel 

Charles Barron, Black Racist and New York's Next Democratic Congressman 

Republicans Missing Chance on Education Reform

Soros-Funded Activist Gave Reagan Portrait The Finger At White House

CNN’s Belief Blog: ‘Can ‘True Catholics’ Support Same Sex Marriage?’

Howard Kurtz Scolds Andrea Mitchell for Expressing 'No Regret' for 'Deceptively Edited' Romney Video

Reuters Poll: 73% of Independents Oppose Obamacare

Obama Congratulates Muslim Brotherhood Leader

Missing The Point on Fast and Furious

Chris Matthews Explains How Obama Went From Black To White In 2008 Campaign

Video: Green-tech Stimulus Recipient Went Broke … A Second Time

Video: Follow The Ideology