>>JR, before we go any further, you "do" realize that (9 times in 18 months) the President's own Supreme court nominees repeatedly joined the other justices in unanimously rejecting his administration's arguments? Add to that his defeats in federal court on his immigration orders, and you have a president with much higher rate of judicial loss than either Bush or Clinton. Would you expect this from a man who is supposedly a constitutional scholar???

I'll ask again: where does Obama say his (or his administration's) policies are predicated on his status as a constitutional scholar? Seems to me he's driven more by what he sees as fair and proper, followed by acceptance of the checks and balances you describe.

>>And you "do" realize that at the time Obama graduated from Harvard, over 50% were graduating with honors? (Though yes, in fairness the "magna" is more rarified air).

As you say, magna cum laude is quite different from cum laude. The only higher honor than magna is summa that really means an awful lot in Harvard law, not being awarded every year. But even if he hadn't graduated m.c.l ... so what? We're talking about a Harvard law degree, not a University of Po-Dunk home economics accreditation. ;-)

>>More later, because you've raised some interesting points...putting Katy to bed...I think I'll read "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" to her, but will tell it more like "The President who stole from the middle class" :)

Quoting Bill Maher:

Yeah, those damn Democrats. Always fighting the Republican Party’s efforts to stick up for the little guy. There is no shame in the Republican game. This is the party that used to like to say a rising tide lifts all boats, which is easy to say when you’re on the yacht. So what’s happening is the Democrats are proposing to nibble around the edges of our middle-class problem, and the Republicans are pretending to care while they go back to servicing eight rich d***heads who own coal mines, and no one is telling the truth, which is that the large thriving middle-class that America used to have didn’t just appear out of the blue.

It was created using an economic tool called socialism.

Oh, I know when never use that word here in buzzword nation, but that is exactly what our government did after World War II. It taxed the rich up to ninety percent and massively redistributed that money through the GI Bill so that more than half the population benefitted from free college, free job training, cheap mortgages, and much much more. Yes, for a brief shining moment, we were Finland. Now we can debate whether that is a good thing or bad thing to go back to, but what is beyond debate is that is what happened. The Fifties and Sixties are the era of socialism in America.
….
Here’s the reality. A middle-class is actually not the byproduct of capitalism. Ask any historian, a middle-class is actually a fluke in history.