It is one of the dirty secrets of the U.S. system that ultimately the Constitution means whatever a majority of the current justices on the Supreme Court says it means. Ideally, the court would be filled with honorable people who would put the law ahead of partisan interests, but that does not appear to be the current makeup of the court's majority.
So, it would not be surprising if the court's right-wing majority would overturn Judge Silberman's opinion even though it is based on a fair reading of the Constitution and the powers that the Founders granted to Congress. A chance to damage Obama's reelection hopes might prove too tempting.
After all, the larger goal of the American Right is not to uphold the ideals of the Founders, who wanted a vibrant central government, but to reverse government policies dating back to President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The plan is to return the United States to a pre-Depression "gilded age" of a society divided into a few haves and many have-nots.
The Right is engaged in an ideological war with the intent of making the rich richer and marginalizing the rest of us. Creating a false narrative about the American Founding is just a convenient way to get some ill-informed Tea Party types to vote against their own interests.
This article cross-posted from Consortium News
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