FOD 2014.07.07

It was a great week for the good guys last week, and a disastrous one for the 'constitutional lawyer' currently befouling the Oval Office.

Barack Obama Got Destroyed At The Supreme Court

Two years ago, President Barack Obama stood in jubilation, hugging the White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler after finding out the Supreme Court had upheld his signature domestic achievement.

Two years later, amid the most significant challenge to the Affordable Care Act since that moment, Obama didn't have much to cheer about. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision, split along the normal conservative-liberal judicial lines, found the law's contraception mandate violated certain companies' rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

There's been little solace for Obama this Supreme Court term. In addition to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Obama administration and the causes it has supported have experienced a handful of high-profile setbacks before the high court.

... Last week, in a unanimous, 9-0 rebuke, the justices ruled Obama had overstepped his constitutional authority when he went around Congress and unilaterally appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board.

... Since January 2012, the Obama administration has suffered at least 13 unanimous defeats in cases it argued (before the SUpreme Court)...

Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, told Business Insider that while 5-4 decisions can be blamed on the conservative-liberal split of the court, unanimous decisions are "indicative of an administration that pushes and breaks through the envelope in its assertion of federal power."

None of this, of course, should come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. But what is noteworthy is the response from the obama administration.

obama's spokescreature Josh Earnest (what an ironic last name for the frontman of an administration that has shown extreme contempt for the truth) had a different perspective on the Hobby Lobby decision.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest: "Well, as the constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office would tell you is, he would read the entire decision before he passed judgment in terms of his own legal analysis. What we have been able to assess so far ... is that there is a problem that has been exposed, which is that there are now a group of women of an indeterminate size who no longer have access to free contraceptive coverage simply because of some religious views held, not by them necessarily, but by their bosses.   We disagree and the constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office disagrees with that conclusion from the Supreme Court. And that's why we--primarily, because he is concerned about the impact it could have on the health of those women."

First of all, Josh and barry, there is no such thing as "free" contraceptive coverage. Somebody - in this case, a bunch of taxpaying somebodies - are paying for that coverage.

Second, Hobby Lobby provides plenty of 'free' contraceptive coverage. In fact, the company provides coverage for 16 of the 20 contraceptives required under obamacare. The company's owners objected on a religious basis to four of the measures on the grounds that they prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s womb, which they consider tantamount to abortion.

The 'constitutional lawyer' and his mouthpiece didn't make clear exactly how providing 16 contraceptive measures impacts the rights and health of women...