Campaign 2012 Obama Miscellaneous

Social issues – On abortion I support the basic position of Roe v Wade, but I wish it had been argued on the basis of the 9^th amendment rather than fairy dust.  I pretty much stand with Obama in this area, including gay marriage.  (WRT the last I think that it is true, but not widely known that spousal rights in Social Security cannot be obtained by civil unions.  The wording requires “marriage”.)  I personally wish all of those laws were changed to require civil unions done by the government or other authorized agencies and have the government get completely out of the “marriage” business and make it a non-legal social question.

Immigration - on the one hand he has deported more illegals in 4 years than Bush did in 8.  But he made no effort that I know of to solve the general immigration problem. I believe that he has used it as a political football.  (successfully I might add) 

Education - I would like to see the Federal Government’s involvement in K-12 education be more in the area of measuring how well the states are doing rather than direct involvement.  On his change from bank lending to government lending for student loans I think that that is fine – of course it will not be paid for.

The Court is the area in which I am most conservative.  I do not agree with the system of constitutional interpretation preferred by Obama which can be summarized as: “If it feels good, then I can find it in the living Constitution or somewhere nearby.”  It is the system that gave us Dred Scott and Plessy-Ferguson.  It is currently very fashionable with liberals and they use it to further their political objectives.  They either don’t know or don’t care that in the past that same system has been used to (more or less) claim that the Constitution says that our economic system must be capitalism.  It should be noted that, in the future, that system could be used, for example, to declare that the Constitution “says” human life begins at conception and therefore all abortions are murder.  I believe that a SCOTUS justice should be tethered to something and I know of nothing more appropriate than a reasonable interpretation of what the constitution says.  So I will probably continue to be unhappy with Obama’s selections for the SCOTUS.

One additional point that troubles me is the inclination to lawlessness.  The most important of these is related to the drone targeted assassinations (DTAs).  I applaud his use of this method and I believe that they are likely to be a better way to deal with terrorism than invading the host country.  The problem comes from the left’s obsession with denying the “war on terror” and insisting that this whole thing is just regulation crime fighting.  I am sure you see the problem.   If you are in a war on terror and an American citizen declares himself to be on the other side then DTA boom – laws of war - no legal problem.  However, if you are just fighting crime, then DTA boom uh-oh what happened to the Bill of Rights.  The administration says that the review within the Executive branch is sufficient to ensure that the Bill of Rights is followed.  The second was the decision that, since the “dream act” didn’t pass congress, Obama would just pass it himself by decree that those affected by it would no longer be at risk for prosecution.  The third and most recent example was the directive to certain industries to ignore the law and not notify their workers of the possibility of layoffs, presumably because the notices would come just before the election.  The additional specification that - if it caused the companies to be sued, then the government would pay the bill for it - is a bit much.

So in this area he gets D from me.  (Note part of that is policy differences not qualitative performance.)