It was as close to a failed week for President Obama as any, as he suffered his biggest court setback yet when the Supreme Court junked his immigration executive actions and England turned its back on his pleas to stay in the European Union. Our graders summed it up this way:
John Zogby
Some weeks leaders of the free world take it on the chin. This was one of those weeks. President Obama publicly pleaded with Britons to stay in the EU. They said no and have given elites here in the U.S. plenty of reason to be scared of what might happen in November.
The Supreme Court gave the president a drubbing on his executive orders to not deport illegal immigrants — a huge setback. And regardless of your feelings about gun control, a 24 hour sit-in in Congress looked principled — and a bit cheesy.
This was a bad week to be president of anything.
Grade D-
Jed Babbin
It was a big week for President Obama in the courts. He suffered the worst legal defeat of his presidency this week when the Supreme Court, by a 4-4 vote in the U.S. v. Texas case, let stand a lower court decision stopping the president’s deportation amnesty program. The lower court ruled his action improper because he “enacted” it unilaterally — and clearly unconstitutionally —without getting congress to pass a bill enabling it. To understand his reaction, you have to go to an earlier decision in the week in the Strieff case. In Strieff, the court voted 5-3 in ruling that approved the action of a Utah cop. The cop had stopped a man without sufficient cause and then discovered an outstanding arrest warrant against him. During the search pursuant to the arrest, the cop found illegal drug paraphernalia which was the basis for a subsequent conviction. In that case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, wrote a screeching dissent that had nothing to do with the law and reads as if it were a “Black Lives Matter” point paper.
Reacting to the SCOTUS decision on immigration amnesty, Obama railed against Republicans for refusing to confirm Judge Merrick Garland, his latest nominee and, of course, another liberal. After Sotomayor’s Strieff rant, Obama’s lecture about the Garland nomination proved the Republicans’ point.
Earlier in the week, a lower court invalidated Obama’s Interior Department rule to kill the fracking industry, holding —like the Supremes did in the deportation amnesty case — that the Executive Branch lacked the legislative authority to impose it.
Economic news continued to be dismal. A Harvard study showed that the number of Americans paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing continued to rise and reached the 40 million level in 2014.
And then the Brits decided to leave the EU, ignoring Obama’s advice to the contrary.
Grade D
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the senior analyst for Zogby Analytics and author of We Are Many, We Are One. Follow him at @TheJohnZogby
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
