Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But
for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial
thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.
To be sure, it is the fraud —
the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices —
that grabs our attention. As I’ve recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly
and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep
your health-insurance plan, period.” The incontrovertible record — disclosures by the Obama
administration in the Federal
Register, representations by the Obama
Justice Department in federal court — proves that Obama’s promises were
systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing, and not just
because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama also insults our
intelligence. It is one thing to tuck evidence of falsehood into a
few paragraphs on page 34,552 of a dusty governmental journal no one may ever
look at. It is quite something else to announce it in a legal brief
publicly filed in a case of intense interest to millions of Americans aggrieved
by Obamacare’s religious-liberty violations. To be so bold is to say, in
effect, “The public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press
is too deep in my pocket to raise alarms.”
From David’s keyboard to God’s ears.
But meantime, two other quick thoughts:
1.
Courts cannot function unless Congress funds them — meaning both houses of
Congress approving spending on them.
2. The
Constitution vests in Congress decisions about what federal circuit and
district courts we need. It does not say that once courts and the judgeships on
those courts are established, these must be maintained forever.
If senate rules are now to be changed
on the dime by the majority, all kinds of seemingly impossible things become
possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment