The Empty Rhetoric Continues

As Sarah Palin has proven time and time again, when you have nothing of substance to discuss and when you come to the realization that your chances in a battle of ideas are futile, you become desperate and grasp for anything and everything to throw at your opponent. As reported by ABC News, her latest outlandish charge is that Barack Obama seeks to “re-write the U.S. Constitution and appoint radical Supreme Court justices and judges who would confiscate the property of American citizens.” In reality, Obama (a former Constitutional law professor) has argued the opposite. Nevertheless, the empty Palin attacks continue…

At two rallies in Western Pennsylvania last night, Palin referenced at the top of her remarks a 2001 public radio interview with Obama that surfaced this week, in which Obama discussed the role of the courts in the civil rights movement. "There he was talking about the need for quote 'redistributive change,'" Palin said on the campus of Shippensburg University Tuesday night. “Sen. Obama said that he regretted that the Supreme Court hadn't been more radical. And he described the Court's refusal to take up the issues of redistribution of wealth as a tragedy. And he said he also regretted that the Supreme Court didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers there in the Constitution”

Obama had in fact argued the opposite in the 2001 interview, saying that the civil rights movement had become too focused on making change through the judicial system, rather than from the ground up through community organizations. But Palin used Obama's words to follow an argument Sen. John McCain has made this week that Obama has long-advocated for "spreading the wealth." "Obama says that he wants to spread the wealth," Palin said to boos from the crowd. "In other words he thinks that it's your job to earn the wealth and it's his job to spread it."

But Palin then went beyond any argument McCain has made, using the 2001 interview to insinuate that Obama wants to re-write the U.S. Constitution and appoint radical Supreme Court justices, while also suggesting that under Obama, judges would confiscate the property of American citizens. Referencing the interview, Palin said, "So you have to ask, is this a suggestion that's he’d want to re-write the founding document of our great nation to accomplish his goals. And what does that say about his ideas on future Supreme Court justices?"

"Let me remind Barack Obama of something else. When judges don’t confiscate your property and your hard-earned -- all of your hard-earned money and then re-distribute that, he may call that a tragedy. But I call it fairness and adherence to our U.S. Constitution," Palin added later in her remarks.

In the interview, Obama described one of the "tragedies of the civil rights movement" was that "the civil rights movement became so court-focused". "I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways, we still suffer from that," Obama said in the interview.

When a caller asked whether economic redistribution should come through the courts or the legislative process, Obama replied, "I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn't structured that way." Obama's 2001 interview made no mention of judges confiscating property. The Palin campaign did not provide clarification on what Palin was referring to with the remark.

The Court

Katie Couric recently sat down with the two Vice Presidential candidates to ask them about Roe v. Wade and other issues before the U.S. Supreme Court. The contrast in the candidates' depth, knowledge and basic logic could not be more stark.



It's not surprising that the skepticism of Sarah Palin grows and grows and grows.

Will on the Supreme Court

George Will lays out his thoughts on last week's Supreme Court rulings: "One ruling benefits Barack Obama by not reviving the dormant debate about gun control. The other embarrasses John McCain by underscoring discordance between his deeds and his promises." More:

The DC gun control decision:

Obama benefits from this decision. Although he formerly supported groups promoting a collectivist interpretation -- nullification, really -- of the Second Amendment, as a presidential candidate he has prudently endorsed the "individual right" interpretation. Had the court held otherwise, emboldened gun-control enthusiasts would have thrust this issue, with its myriad cultural overtones, into the campaign, forcing Obama either to irritate his liberal base or alienate many socially conservative Democratic men.

The Millionaires' Amendment decision:

The amendment, written to punish wealthy, self-financing candidates, said that when such a candidate exceeds a particular spending threshold, his opponent can receive triple the per-election limit of $2,300 from each donor -- the limit above which the threat of corruption supposedly occurs. And the provision conferred other substantial benefits on opponents of self-financing candidates, even though such candidates cannot be corrupted by their own money, which the court has said they have a constitutional right to spend.

Declaring the Millionaires' Amendment unconstitutional, the court, in an opinion written by Alito, reaffirmed two propositions. First, because money is indispensable for the dissemination of political speech, regulating campaign contributions and expenditures is problematic and justified only by government's interest in combating "corruption" or the "appearance" thereof. Second, government may not regulate fundraising and spending in order to fine-tune electoral competition by equalizing candidates' financial resources.

The court said it has never upheld the constitutionality of a law that imposes different financing restraints on candidates competing against each other. And the Millionaires' Amendment impermissibly burdened a candidate's First Amendment right to spend his own money for campaign speech.

This ruling invites challenges to various state laws, such as Arizona's and Maine's, that penalize private funding of political speech. Those laws increase public funds for candidates taking such funds when their opponents spend certain amounts of their own money or receive voluntary private contributions that cumulatively exceed certain ceilings. Such laws, like McCain-Feingold, rest on the fiction that political money can be regulated without regulating political speech.

The more McCain talks -- about wicked "speculators," about how he reveres the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as much as the Grand Canyon, about adjusting the planet's thermostat, etc. -- the more conservatives cling to judicial nominees as a reason for supporting him. But now another portion of his signature legislation has been repudiated by the court as an affront to the First Amendment, and again Roberts and Alito have joined the repudiation. Yet McCain promises to nominate jurists like them. Is that believable?