Obama Takes Control of DC Court of Appeals
Watch the other hand. While the herd is distracted by showy hagiographies of a former communist terrorist and the fiery crashing and burning of ObamaCare, Comrade Obama is quietly pressing the advantage his henchman Harry Reid acquired for him by discarding the centuries-old right of the minority party to filibuster judicial appointments. From Fox News:
Senators voted 56-38 to approve Washington lawyer Patricia Millett to join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second most powerful court.
Millett probably would have been blocked by filibuster — before the Senate was fundamentally transformed into a rubber stamp for Obama.
Both sides saw Millett’s appointment as pivotal. It will give Democratic-appointed judges a 5-4 majority over those chosen by Republican presidents for that court, which rules on the legality of White House actions and federal agency regulations.
Wars have been fought over less. Control of the DC district court means Obama can inflict anything he likes through the fourth branch of government, the grotesquely massive and utterly unaccountable bureaucracy.
Economically crippling carbon taxes couldn’t make it through even a Democrat-controlled Senate, due to fear of retribution by voters. But the ideologically rabid EPA has no such concerns. Consequently, oppressive restrictions on the harmless carbon emissions that result from literally all economically productive activity will be imposed with zero meaningful input from voters. This will help drive up unemployment, increasing the dependency on federal largess on which the Democrat Party relies so heavily, and move us rapidly toward a centrally planned economy similar to the Soviet Union’s.
Even with the most shameless exploitation of Newtown conceivable, Democrats were unable to ram through seriously damaging attacks on the Second Amendment at the national level. No matter; the EPA can simply declare that lead hurts the environment.
There is no freedom that cannot be snuffed out by unelected and unfireable federal bureaucrats at malevolent rogue agencies like the EPA, IRS, and NSA. Our only defense short of an armed uprising is the courts. Obama et al. are systematically dismantling that defense.
On a tip from Mr Mentalo. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.