Author Archives: Bok
Living Breathing Constitution
Scalia once said, “The constitution is not an organism. It’s a legal text.” He didn’t believe in a living breathing constitution. Obama does.
Alive or dead, the constitution gives Obama the right to appoint a successor to Scalia. It also gives the Senate the right to ignore him or turn him down. Obama agreed with that back when he was opposed to executive overreach. As a senator, he called Alito un-American and filibustered Bush’s appointment of him.
At the time, Obama told ABC News that he supported the filibuster”because I think Judge Alito, in fact, is somebody who is contrary to core American values, not just liberal values.” Obama said the court needed to “provide some check on the executive branch, and he has not shown himself willing to do that repeatedly.”
Could be a campaign theme. Here’s Joe Biden with the 2012 campaign theme.
iPhone Smarter Than Uncle Sam
Michael Hayden, the former head of the NSA, is on Apple’s side in the fight over cracking the iPhone of dead terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook. So is Ted Olson, former Solicitor General for George W. Bush. His wife was killed in the original 9/11 attack.
iPhone Smarter Than Uncle Sam
The FBI says Apple’s reluctance to co-operate is a marketing stunt. The government’s computers can be hacked but the government can’t hack Apple’s phone.
Seems hard to blame Apple for wanting us to know about it.
High Stakes Supreme Court Seats
The next president could fill three Supreme Court seats. Daniel Henninger in the WSJ says Scalia’s death has raised the stakes of the election. He expects it to “concentrate the mind”. “The great sobering up has begun,” he says.
Donald the Truther
The Donald is now The Truther. He blames Bush for 9/11.
I like Trump because he’s politically incorrect. That doesn’t mean he’s getting a valuable Bokbluster endorsement, but as a cartoonist you gotta admire anybody with the guts to take on the pc movement. Well, maybe not all cartoonists feel that way.
Anyway, birthers believe Obama is a foreign born Muslim and ineligible to be president. His father was a foreign born Muslim (according to some, that makes Barack an apostate eligible for beheading) but he has a Hawaiian birth certificate and an American mother. Cruz was born in Canada of an American mother and Cuban father.
Donald the Truther
Truthers believe 9/11 was an inside job. Trump claims it was Bush’s fault because because he didn’t act on intelligence to prevent the attack. The 9/11 commission says that’s not so. Further, the Clinton administration had established a wall between the FBI and CIA that prevented information sharing that might have helped prevent the attack.
Scalia and Casey Martin
Here’s a good one from The Federalist about Scalia’s dissent in the Casey Martin case.
Martin was a disabled professional golfer who wanted to ride in a cart. The PGA rules say players must walk. The court ruled walking isn’t essential to golf and ordered the PGA to let Casey ride.
Scalia dissented. He said the rules of games are arbitrary. That’s what makes them games. He wanted to know where the court got off deciding which rules are essential?
Or something like that – Scalia was wittier.
I drew this cartoon after the court ruled Bush beat Gore in the 2000 election.
