What an echo!
by Tom Sullivan
Republicans are flinging aside their crutches and shouting hallelujah. President Obama's executive powers have cured them of judicial activism sensitivity. In ingratitude, they're filing legal briefs across the country, hoping to stop Obama from exercising executive power to direct federal agencies:
On health care, Republicans in Washington have sued the president and joined state lawsuits urging the Supreme Court to declare major parts of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. On climate change, state attorneys general and coal industry groups are urging federal courts to block the president’s plan to regulate power plants. And on immigration, conservative lawmakers and state officials have demanded that federal judges overturn Mr. Obama’s plan to prevent millions of deportations.
Now that a Democratic president is flexing the executive power the Bush-Cheney administration deployed so expansively, checks and balances are back in fashion with Republicans. And trial lawyers. Coming up: leisure suits.
“What they cannot win in the legislative body, they now seek and hope to achieve through judicial activism,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia. “That is such delicious irony, it makes one’s head spin.”
No, no, no, no, says West Virginia's attorney general, Patrick Morrisey:
Mr. Morrisey, a Republican, disputed the view of many liberals that conservatives are now looking for help from the activist judges they once derided. “Quite the opposite, it’s a call for adhering to the rule of law,” he said.
Call me when they sue the Department of Justice to prosecute Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush cabal. Morrisey's statement rings as hollow as the Tin Man's chest.
Scarecrow: Beautiful! What an echo!
Tin Man: It's empty. The tinsmith forgot to give me a heart.
Dorothy & Scarecrow: [in unison] No heart?
Tin Man: No heart.
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