Nowadays Slacker Online steers pretty clear of mainstream politics, but today we make an exception.

As you know, efforts are under way to pass an… ambitious and quite socialistic package of legislation euphemistically billed as an “economic stimulus” package. Obama has a divinity complex and quite clearly feels entitled to do as he wishes in the name of whatever he pleases.

The last time this happened the world was turned upside down, I am referring of course to the catastrophic (although rarely acknowledged as such) Roosevelt presidency.

Roosevelt has been posthumously elevated to the Arcane Triad of presidents who must not be questioned, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, curiously, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

I wish to emphasize that from any objective standpoint, Roosevelt was likely the worst, ever, detriment to Constitutionality in U.S. government policy. His alphabet-soup agencies were all illegal and wrecked havoc with the economy, permanently re-aligning it on the grounds of faulty Keynsian economic theories. Roosevelt kicked off the modern tax and spend and deficit state, he also usurped vast amounts of power from Congress, a trend which every president since has continued, and established the hysterical notion of the Federal Government of the U.S., in general and the Presidency in particular as the savior of the world in times of crisis.

One has only to look at the case of Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States to see the extent of FDR’s abuses, not only was the actions of the NRA, in regulating the poultry industry an illegal delegation of the Congress’s powers under the Interstate Commerce clause… but the whole idea was an abuse of the clause in the first place.

Considerable portions of FDR’s “New Deal” were found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, FDR thus hit upon a plan to violate the ancient and then still widely accepted doctrine of the separation of powers.

For readers outside the U.S., the Federal Government of the U.S. is divided into the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, it is an important classical doctrine of law that these branches must not interfere with each other except to the extent permitted by The Constitution, for instance the Presidency (part of the executive branch) has limited power to veto acts of Congress (legislative), and theoretically the Congress is to supervise and oversee the actions of the Presidency. In another example: the justices (judges) of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President but must be confirmed (approved) by Congress.

Roosevelt, under the patently ludicrous pretext of “the justices are senior-citizens and therefore out of touch” sought to add new judges to the court who would be more favorable to his illegal policies. This is widely referred to as the “court packing scheme”.

The bill was a total failure, it was destroyed in committee, provoked the wrath of the public, enraged the bar, turned the Democratic Party against itself and cost Roosevelt a vast amount of political capital.

Back then, the general public practically equated the Supreme Court with the very Constitution itself, an attack on the court was unthinkable. Nearly a century of Government policy and operations that ignore, mangle and undermine the constitution, the improprieties of the Court during the sixties and seventies and ever more and more subversion of “separation of powers” have destroyed the idea of the sanctity of the Court in the public mind.

So now we have a dangerous situation. Bush already weakened the Courts considerably with his obscene  extrajudicial “tribunals” and prisons for supposed “enemy combatants”. It seems to me probable that Obama will attempt even more radical assaults on the constitution and the division of powers.

There is a significant chance that some or all of the legality of the gun-the-economy package, and at least some other policies of Barack Obama will be challenged.

I suspect that Obama will take a page from FDR. The “conservative bloc” of the Court, those most likely to be disinclined to Public Policy Adventures is comparatively young. Roberts, Thomas and Alito are in their fifties and early sixties. Realistically, they are not going anywhere. It is somewhat uncommon for a justice to retire under a president who is likely to appoint a judge with a significantly different juridical outlook.

The other “conservative” justice, Scalia is in his seventies and it is also very probable that he will not go anywhere either.

It is virtually impossible to remove a U.S. Supreme Court justice, it is theoretically possible to impeach one for illegal behavior, but this only happened once, long long ago and the impeachment failed to remove him. Impeachment of a justice is generally considered an extinct idea.

It is possible, and legal, for an act of congress to reduce the number of justices on the court, but again it is impossible to remove a justice during his or her tenure and therefore the court would not contract until such a time as a justice died or retired. Besides no one could predict which justice would retire or die, the eldest judge on the court is John Paul Stevens (88), and he is considered liberal, so is the next eldest, Ruth Bader Ginsberg (75). If the court were reduced in size and one of these two vacated their seat or died, it would shift the court even further to the juridical equivalent of the right.

It is quite probable that Obama will try to increase the size of the court (currently nine) to ten or eleven under some pretext or other in an attempt to pack the courts in favor of his ambitious and improper agenda. Keep an eye out for this and oppose it at all costs.

Even if you are favourable to Obama’s agenda, it is highly important to recognize that the courts are now the last barrier to executive tyranny. The Congress has long ceased to fulfil its role in this matter. Stay tuned.