Five to Four
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Today is a historic day: celebrate by looking up Obamacare on your favorite search engine (or simply click on links embedded in this text).
Over pretty much the entire past 4 years, we've heard people on the right complain about what a horrible president we've got. They point to the extraordinary difficulty he's had getting legislation passed.
I can think of at least one other President who had just as much trouble with political opponents fighting all his new policies in the Supreme Court. Here are FDR's own words concerning judicial opposition to his New Deal legislation (emphasis mine):
A part of the problem of obtaining a sufficient number of judges to dispose of cases is the capacity of the judges themselves. This brings forward the question of aged or infirm judges--a subject of delicacy and yet one which requires frank discussion. In exceptional cases, of course, judges, like other men, retain to an advanced age full mental and physical vigor. Those not so fortunate are often unable to perceive their own infirmities…A lower mental or physical vigor leads men to avoid an examination of complicated and changed conditions. Little by little, new facts become blurred through old glasses fitted, as it were, for the needs of another generation; older men…cease to explore or inquire into the present or the future.
FDR referred to his opponents in the Judicial branch as the "nine old men." What a coincidence that it was another Justice Roberts 75 years ago that upheld a state minimum wage law, the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act by the same ruling, five in favor, four against. Ask yourself, where would we be today without labor relations and social security?
Whatever you may think of our current President, he is making necessary changes in our national healthcare system and immigration reform, and I believe he deserves another term in office to continue the great work he's started. Let's take a moment to reflect on the positive changes we've seen, remind our friends and go to the polls this November to keep our own FDR in office.
Please vote for Barack Obama on Election Day 2012.
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