Summer is hot upon us, another Supreme Court term is ending, and now it is time to evaluate America’s most tutored — and tortured — constitutional law student.
It is unusual for a pupil of the Constitution to have such exhaustive continuing education courses, with such arduous nine-on-one tutoring from the foremost experts in the entire world. It is especially unusual since the pupil in question has actually had a constitutional law degree conferred upon him by an esteemed Ivy League institution and lectured on constitutional law at an equally esteemed institution of higher learning.
Indeed, this is no ordinary student. This is a very special student with very special needs. Nine patient teachers. Limitless free school supplies. And a class size of one.
Yet still, he cannot seem to grasp the most elementary concepts of constitutional law.
This would all be just kind of sad and as pitiful as if we were talking about how many times John-John Kennedy failed the New York bar exam, except that here we are talking about the most powerful man on earth. A man who believes he knows the Constitution better than any man to previously occupy the presidency. Just ask the White House.
The latest Supreme Court smackdown came this week over whether the federal government has the authority to force a person to provide employees with contraceptives that run afoul of his religious beliefs. The White House response was about as funny as it gets for a discussion about constitutional law.
“Well, as the constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office would tell you, he would read the entire decision before he passed judgment in terms of his own legal analysis,” mouthpiece Josh Earnest said.
For you kids out there unfamiliar with legal process or the terms used when running for political cover, that statement from Mr. Earnest was political legalese for, “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”
He is hoping that (A) you will be impressed when he says “constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office”; and (B) you will forget the whole question by the time President Obama has gotten around to reading the “entire decision,” which, of course, he never will — just to be on the safe side.
Cut Mr. Earnest some slack, though. It is his first week on the job. The pressure is especially high because he was, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the only American in the entire country who got a new job last week.
But you know who should not be cut any slack? The president of the United States of America, Barack Obama.
That is because he is, as he is constantly reminding us, a constitutional lawyer with a constitutional law degree who taught constitutional law classes to university students that paid somewhere north of $60,000 a year in tuition for his great tutelage.
Tutelage, it turns out, that has the standing of cooked spaghetti when it gets in front of the actual Supreme Court.
Mr. Obama has been rejected, slapped down, overturned, tossed out, ridiculed, and laughed out of the courtroom so many times that Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas — genuine constitutional scholars — don’t keep count. They only keep count of the number of times Mr. Obama has been unanimously rebuked by the Supreme Court.
That means all four Democratic justices — including the two nominated by Mr. Obama himself — side with the five Republicans in order to smack down some crazed, power-drunk gambit by this president. Oh, how it must burn a transactional politician like Barack Obama to have his own justices rebuke him!
At last count, he has suffered 12 such humiliations. This earns Barack Obama the much-heckled award for Supreme Court’s Biggest Loser.
At this rate, he is on track to retire that title for life.
Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com and on Twitter @charleshurt.