Posted 1:58 PM by Robert

Completely Burned Out II: The Widening Conspiracy!

OOPS! Looks like a majority of the Supreme Court Justices are expected to vote to turn the United States into a kind of dictatorship - just as Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Von Krugman feared! He's such a prescient genius!

Only the Justices seem have a different view of the matter than Herr Doktorprofessor. They seem to think - in fact everybody involved in the case seems to think - that the case concerns a law passed in 1972 ("Federal Advisory Committee Act, an obscure open-government measure enacted in 1972. It says that when the government sets up advisory committees to seek outside advice, the committees must meet in public.") that the plaintiffs say requires (together with the federal rules of civil procedure) the President to turn over documents in judicial discovery. Herr Doktorprofessor says the plaintiff's interpretation of the law is needed to keep the US from being a kind of dictatorship. That means that before this law was passed in 1972 the United States was a kind of dictatorship. Who knew before Herr Doktorprofessor cleared that all up?

But the foolish majority of Justices seem to be indicating that they either don't think the 1972 law even applies - or that it's unconstitutional if it does apply! How can they have gone so far off track? Aren't they reading Herr Doktrprofessor's column that bypasses all that silly constitutional law and statutory construction nonsense and gets right to the heart of the matter- whatever that is after all the law is gone.

Of course, the President does not agree with the plaintiffs - and neither did President Clinton when the exact same law was used to challenge Hillary Clinton's health care task force:

In 1993 ... First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton ... set up a task force to seek ideas and to formulate a legislative proposal. But Mrs. Clinton was accused by Republicans of violating the same advisory committee act ... A federal judge and the U.S. court of appeals ruled in 1993 that the advisory committee act was violated... But the Supreme Court did not take up the dispute.

That must mean that Bill and Hillary Clinton were also trying to turn the United States into some kind of dictatorship! Worse and worse! The conspiracy detected by Herr Doktorprofessor just keeps spreading!

Thank goodness we have Herr Doktorprofessor to warn us. And thank goodness the New York Times has the courage to print his kind of quality analysis!