Bully Pulpit

Dennis Kneale.  Still an idiot.

Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious.

Bam is a bully. Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in putting the wrong kind of “bully” back into what Teddy Roosevelt had called the bully pulpit.

Obama’s latest broadside came over the weekend, when he vehemently criticized the state of Arizona and its (Republican) governor for passing a tough new law on illegal immigration.

The President called the measure “misguided” and all but labeled it un-American. He even ordered the Department of Justice, before the ink on this bill-signing has even dried, to examine the civil-rights “implications” of the new law. Seems like the courts and rights groups could handle that once any problem actually emerges.

Can you remember any other modern President, wagging a finger from on high, so directly and bitterly criticizing a new law passed by any state?

This is hubris at best and ignorance of the Constitution at worst. The U.S. was founded in part on the precept of states’ rights as an important counterweight to a rapacious federal government. Thus a President must step softly here, questioning gently but avoiding rancor and browbeating.

To recap, Constitutional expert Kneale here thinks the Tenth amendment gives Arizona the right to violate Amendments 4 through 9, as well as pretty big chunks of 13, 14, and 15.  Arizona cops can pull people over because they might be in the country illegally -- in fact under the law they are required to pull over anyone they might have a reasonable suspicion about -- and Obama is the bully for saying this might be wrong.

You know, Dennis Kneale was, up until now, the equivalent of a jar of really hot picante sauce:  you put up with it and in the end you get a mildly annoyed asshole. But this guy has really crossed the line into Winger/Tenther/Teabagger territory, and CNBC really ought to be looking for a new Media and Technology Editor, because it's pretty clear that this guy is out of his mind and is ignorant to the point of incompetence.

Of all the stupid arguments I've read that defend Arizona's horrible law, the Tenth Amendment is the worst I think I've ever seen.  Under that logic, I should still be a slave.  Mean old Lincoln shouldn't have been able to tell the Confederacy they they couldn't keep slaves, you know.  That made him a bully.

And that makes Dennis Kneale a complete fool.