Is anyone surprised that the ink wasn’t dry on Chief Justice John Roberts’ incoherent switcheroo before Team Obama was again denying ObamaCare is a tax? Why did he do it?
There is no doubt that the Left waged a war on the court’s public image. Just as Obama lectured at the justices during his State of the Union address for the Citizens United decision, so Obama and his media minions prepared for this verdict with blatant mob pressure: Side with us, or your image is ruined.
NewsBusters' associate editor Noel Sheppard spent part of his Sunday discussing with CNN's Don Lemon the media's coverage of last week's ObamaCare ruling by the Supreme Court.
Although the encounter was quite friendly, the two clearly didn't see eye to eye on how the press has handled this controversial matter in recent months (video follows with CNN transcript and commentary):
The day before the Supreme Court's decision on ObamaCare, CNN is already giving credibility to the Democrats' spin if they lose the case – conservative judicial activism.
"[W]hen you combine the two biggest decisions of the Roberts court, Citizens United and health care – if they lose health care – that is a pretty clear Democratic, capital 'D,' indictment of the Supreme Court," insisted CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Wednesday's The Situation Room.
Dismissing Republican accusations against Eric Holder as "politics," CNN legal analyst Jeff Toobin claimed that allegations of corruption against the Attorney General have "not been proven at all, at least as far as I can tell."
Exasperated anchor Carol Costello teed him up by wondering why Republicans in Congress won't believe the Attorney General's admitted ignorance of tactics used in the infamous "Fast and Furious" operation. "Eric Holder has testified before the House Judiciary Committee nine times. Each time he has admitted 'Fast and Furious' was a dreadful mistake, and each time Holder says he was unaware of the tactics of the operation," she insisted.
The fact that CNN's senior legal analyst squared off against a conservative legal scholar should be telling for the network's liberal bias. On Thursday night's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN's Jeffrey Toobin was confronted by Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice over his defense of President Obama's comments on a pending Supreme Court case.
"Jeff, do you know another President of the United States during a case that was argued and pending that made a statement about how the outcome of the case can be and talking about unelected judges?" Sekulow grilled Toobin. "And calling someone that would strike the law as unconstitutional 'judicial activist'?"
CNN's senior legal analyst said on Thursday's Starting Point that "some of these Republican judges are just deranged by hatred of the President." Jeffrey Toobin was railing against the three-judge panel on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court that had made the Justice Department write a three page memo about the Obama administration's take on judicial review.
Toobin called the act a "disgrace." However, though President Obama had said the Supreme Court overturning his health care law would be "unprecedented" and "judicial activism," Toobin defended his remarks as "entirely appropriate."
Did CNN's Jeffrey Toobin just hint at his liberal bias? Toobin told Politico "I'm not exactly famous for my hatred of the Obama administration," and added that "If you're [sic] read my books, you know – I don't have a primetime spot on Fox News."
CNN's senior legal analyst had made headlines for his dire analysis of ObamaCare's chances in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. He was explaining to Politico's Dylan Byers that his criticism of the Obama administration's defense of the bill was probably all the more noteworthy because he himself is not a big critic of Obama.
After another bad day at the Supreme Court for the Obama administration's health care law, journalists on MSNBC and CNN marveled at how the President's signature legislation seemed to be unraveling. Appearing on MSNBC, HD Net reporter Brooks Silva-Braga compared the Solicitor General (who defended the law in front of the court) to an embarrassed child.
Silva-Braga mocked, "If you've ever been to a fifth grade play and looked into the eyes of a kid who is not sure if he's going to remember his lines, that's what Donald Verrilli looked like yesterday." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] On CNN, Jeffrey Toobin, who on Tuesday reversed a previous prediction of an easy win for Obama, sneered that Obamacare had become a "plane wreck."
If the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare, would it really be by an eight-to-one margin? CNN's senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said it's possible, expressing more confidence in that prediction than the common analysis that the Court is evenly split on the issue with Justice Anthony Kennedy as the tiebreaking vote.
Toobin's analysis echoes the overwhelmingly positive liberal meme that ObamaCare will be upheld by a wide margin. He had already knocked the opposition case as "really weak."
One week before the Supreme Court hears arguments on Obamacare, CNN's legal analyst has already come down against the conservative side as "really weak." Jeffrey Toobin gave the legal precedents for an individual health insurance mandate and insinuated that it was constitutional on Monday's Starting Point.
Toobin said, regarding those who believe Congress does not have the power to force people to buy health insurance, "basically that is a really weak argument, in that the United States Congress has been regulating health care for years, has been involved in this market for years, and this is a perfectly ordinary use of Congress's power."
During CNN's Thursday evening coverage of Occupy Wall Street, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin dismissed worries that the protesters in New York City had disrupted the afternoon commutes of city workers– but his claim was flatly contradicted by CNN's own report from the previous hour.
Toobin, who was giving his legal analysis at the top of the 7 p.m. hour, said that the First Amendment protected protesters, they were on "good ground," and that "they're not disrupting people's trains home, or car rides home."
On Monday, PBS talk show host Charlie Rose decided to discuss the passage of a "gay marriage" law in New York with two New York Times reporters and a writer for The New Yorker -- not exactly a divided or diverse panel. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin (also with The New Yorker) predicted to Rose that we're less then ten years out from the Supreme Court proclaiming "gay marriage" must be recognized in all 50 states:
The question I have is, when will the Supreme Court arrest the issue, because I don't think they are in any rush to do it. I think at the end of the day they will say that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. You can`t have one kind of marriage for straight people and one kind of non-marriage for gay people. But I don't think they are in any rush to do that and I think it will maybe be five years or maybe be ten years, and at that point the whole country will have it.