Alito, Obama, And The Constitution
01/30/2010
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When Obama said "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.", Justice Alito was seen to mouth "Not true." (Already a T-shirt, as Kathy Shaidle points out.)

Megan McArdle writes:

I'm sorry, I'm having a really hard time getting worked up about Alito's "breach of protocol".   It's totally true that justices usually sit there like a stone.   On the other hand, president's don't usually call out said justices for being too wrapped up in that dumb first amendment—much less call them out with statements that seem to be unequivocally false.

McCardle is right that it's "unequivocally false"—the speech that McCain-Feingold is meant to suppress is core First Amendment speech, and the Supreme Court was right to decide "Citizens United" the way it did.

On Chuck Wilder yesterday I said that if Obama doesn't want people shouting "You lie" or saying "Not true," (which may have been unconscious on the part of Alito) then he needs to stop lying.

But what's amazing about this is that Obama, in response to a Supreme Court decision that something is unconstitutional, promises to pass more laws that are just as bad.

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