OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Perhaps it is fitting that the justices began the week by throwing President Obama a bone.
Because later this week the Supreme Court will deliver the final death blow to his “progressive” agenda and at long last set some far-out perimeter for the federal government’s galloping encroachment on Americans’ dearest rights.
On Monday, the court ruled that while the federal government has the sole right to enforce the borders, it does not have the duty to enforce the borders. The high court basically defended the federal government’s right to do nothing, if that’s what it wants to do. States cannot just come along and take over those duties just because the federal government refuses to do carry them out.
It was a killing blow to states that have so desperately taken the law into their own hands after decades of the federal government’s refusal to enforce its most essential laws — those setting the borders of this country.
After all, are we even a country anymore if we have no enforced borders? Have we become a country on paper only? Is America simply a fusty old figment of the Founders’ imaginations? Are we just kind of a feeling?
States such as Arizona have borne the brunt of the costs of this massive foreign invasion. And these states are where the federal government has poisoned the hallowed reverence of legal immigration that was the hallmark of America and has allowed it to become trashed by all the lawlessness.
The court’s ruling, while disappointing to those who want the border sealed at any cost, probably hewed as closely as possible to the Constitution. It protected the rights of the federal government from encroachment by the states.
Wouldn’t it be grand if liberal justices on the court held an equally high regard for the rights of the individual? Or, the states? It was those rights, of course, that the Founders were rightly most concerned about being trammeled. Yet, we continue to have debates about the individual’s right to bear arms or the primacy of the 10th Amendment’s protection of states’ rights.
If conservative jurists on the high court had as little regard for the constitution as the activist liberals, they would have twisted to Constitution in this case to support the ends of the Arizona law.
During his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. talked about the importance of judicial “humility,” which is probably why he issued the court’s immigration ruling Monday and won’t issue the ruling on Obamacare until Thursday.
He wanted Mr. Obama to savor a major, sweet victory for the better part of a week before dropping the hammer on what his agenda and all “progressives” stand for.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com.
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