Black Robe

Supreme Court

Chief Justice Roberts´ Chambers

ROBERTS: [on throwaway cell): I´ve done what you wanted: I twisted the Constitution into a pretzel to vote for the PPACA. Now, the tape. You promised me that tape.

All right. Special Courier, my office, ten minutes. I´m getting the only copy that exists, correct? That´s what we agreed to.

Hello? Hello?

Yes, I've got my tinfoil hat on. 

Roberts is smart enough to know what he was unleashing on the country. But he voted yes. And his reasoning was bizarre by any standard.

You could argue that he wanted to bring the Court together, that he didn´t want to infringe on the powers of another branch, whatever. His vote simply doesn´t pass the smell test. I don´t think we´ll ever know the whole story behind that vote.

Obama War Room: Could Be Worse

MICHELLE: Lame ducks can still waddle around. Barack’s lost both flippers.

VALERIE JARRETT: We can’t take three more years. Can you get him to resign?

MICHELLE: [sigh] I guess. I’ll tell him to say he wants to spend more time with our dog, Bo. You should have seen them on the beach yesterday, racing each other to retrieve sticks. But Biden in the Oval Office?

HARRY REID: Absolutely not.

MICHELLE: The line of succession stipulates . . .

NANCY PELOSI: Dumb and dumber? Uh uh. It’s arranged: Biden leaves too in an act of loyalty to his Boss. You’re next in line.

MICHELLE: No, no. It’s the Speaker of the House who . . .

REID: Our Constitutional experts say the Founders’ language is open to interpretation. "House" and "Residence," as in "the Residence," are interchangeable. He was overheard on numerous occasions referring to you as "Speaker of the House" in the family quarters.

PELOSI: It’ll take years for the courts to resolve. In the meantime, we need a strong horse. Please.

[a week later]

MICHELLE: Agriculture, I want food stamp distribution kiosks in every Walmart by December. Eligibility requirement: a heartbeat. State, have a Smithsonian taxidermist prepare Assad’s head as a gift for Putin. Commerce, begin enforcing my edict prohibiting the transportation of junk food across state lines.

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: My orders, Madame President?

MICHELLE: Promulgate the new ObamaCare mandate we just discovered in the text of the bill: if you’re a Democrat, you can keep your current medical insurance. If not, into the exchanges you go. Eric?

HOLDER: DOJ task forces are targeting Big Sugar, Big Fat, and Big Salt, as you ordered, sir.

MICHELLE: Good. Defense, did you get the ball rolling?

CHUCK HAGEL: Yes, sir. The USS Pink Fist, America’s first Virginia Class fast attack sub crewed entirely by women, will be commissioned in 2016.

MICHELLE: It's good to be the "Ma'am."

Obama War Room: I Do Too Know What I’m Doing

JOHN KERRY: Our ruse of weakness and capitulation is working, sir. Everyone thinks Putin ate your lunch.

OBAMA: Yes. All part of the plan.

JAY CARNEY: Plan, sir? You never told . . .

OBAMA: Through a combination of bluster and pusillanimity, Jay, I tricked Putin into going all in on Syria--6 warships in the Med and a big push to rearm Assad. It’s taking a chunk out of Russia’s budget.

CARNEY: But our friends in Eastern Europe now doubt our commitment to protect them from the waking Bear.

OBAMA: As well they should. I want Putin to start thinking about reconstituting the Warsaw Pact and extending Russian influence to the Atlantic as we pull back.

KERRY: See, Jay, the only way to check a new Russian Empire is to encourage one resembling the old Soviet model.

OBAMA: In two years Russia becomes big, bloated, and hidebound again. More territory to defend, obscene military budgets, restive populations. The Soviet Union 2.0—a lumbering, doomed giant. Meanwhile, we’re sitting pretty on the sidelines, a no-threat former superpower watching it all go down.

KERRY: The president’s playing the long game, Jay. We retreat and let Russia become the counterweight to China and Iran so we can concentrate on implementing ObamaCare. Next week, the president will deliver an address to the U.N. calling for the dissolution of NATO as a cold war relic.

CARNEY: Better let me write this one, Mr. President. Lately your speeches have been full of ground round and curry, dignifying frothing.

KERRY: Meanwhile, I’ll announce U.S. participation in Putin’s proposed economic initiative to help ease transition to Russian hegemony on the Continent. He’s calling it the ´´Greater European Co-Prosperity Sphere.´´

CARNEY: Has a nice ring to it, sir.

(Adapted from You Hear Me, Barack?)

Obama War Room: Assad from That, Everything’s Going According to Plan

JOHN KERRY: Trouble, sir. The Security Council has voted to support Syria’s resolution that a U.N. weapons inspection team be allowed aboard our ships in the Eastern Med.

OBAMA: What? Why . . . ?

KERRY: Assad said he had hard intelligence that we were planning to use KWMD against his forces.

OBAMA: KWMD?

KERRY: Kinetic Weapons of Mass Destruction. The resolution passed 4-0. Even France and the UK folded.

OBAMA: Why didn’t Ambassador Power veto the . . . ?

KERRY: She was having her hair done when they took the vote, sir. And it gets worse.

OBAMA: Worse?

KERRY: The team inspecting our ships is headed by Mosen Baraz, head of Iran’s "Project to Employ Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes Ha Ha Ha."

OBAMA: “Ha Ha Ha”?

KERRY: Iran’s not even trying to hide its intentions any more, sir.

OBAMA: Anything else?

KERRY: I’m afraid so. Yesterday, Senator Reid received a ten million signature petition demanding that an attack against Syria be the subject of a national referendum. In a rare moment of comity, he and Speaker Boehner agreed to support the measure and establish a time-frame. They’re talking November.

OBAMA: November? Well, that’s not too . . .

KERRY: November 2014, sir. Takes a while to set those things up.

OBAMA: All right. Agree. What choice do I have? Go out and make some boilerplate statement about the wisdom of having 200 million Americans weigh in on the matter, that we’re taking the high road in order to . . .

KERRY: Assad, Kim-Young-un, the Ayatollahs—they’ll laugh themselves silly at our paralysis, sir.

OBAMA: We counter it. Put out this statement in my name: "President Obama reserves the right to strike Syria at any time before the referendum in 2014 Ha Ha Ha."

Obama War Room: Balance of Power

JOHN KERRY: Chuck and I just talked with Assad, sir. Says he appreciates the pause but his military would find it easier to limit damage if they knew the exact date of a strike. He promised he wouldn’t use chemical weapons in the interim if we kept him informed.

OBAMA: Cheeky SOB. What did you tell him?

KERRY: That no one could predict how long the debate in Congress would last.

OBAMA: Have NSA establish a secure link between Reid’s office and Assad’s Command Center. Harry will liaise with them.

HAGEL: Um, Assad also wants a commitment that you will not hit Syria if Congress refuses authorization. Argued the War Powers Act of 1974 explicitly prohibits a president from using military force on his own authority in a situation like this.

OBAMA: I hope you told him he could take a flying leap off . . .

KERRY: Appearances matter, sir. You’ve promised to listen to what everyone has to say on the matter. Everyone. Assad asked that Damascus University Professor Firas Sabeen, a respected expert on our Constitution, be allowed to address Congress on the merits of our case for action against his country. I agreed.

OBAMA: Is that it? Is there anything more that murdering . . . ?

KERRY: Just one more thing, sir. A threat. Assad knows our cyber warfare capability is nothing short of awesome. He fears it more than a few Tomahawks.

HAGEL: So he’s drawn a bright red line: said cyber-attacks on Syria would constitute a crime against humanity, that no matter how carefully we target his military, hospital computers would go down, resulting in preemies dying in their incubators, dialysis patients succumbing, and so on.

OBAMA: I suppose he’d hire Ramsey Clark, take it to The Hague.

KERRY: Yes sir. We’d lose.

Obama War Room: More Fudge, Please

December 28, 2013 Hawaii

JAY CARNEY: Here’s the video of Kerry’s next "Address to the Nation" on Syria, Mr. President.

KERRY: Good evening. Our intelligence agencies are reasonably certain it was Syria that attacked Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday last week with missiles containing sarin gas.

Almost 1.5 million civilian deaths resulted from this wanton act, comparable only to the horrors I personally witnessed Americans committing in Vietnam almost fifty years ago.

I have just spoken to President Obama at his vacation compound in Hawaii.

He asked me to reassure the international community the U.S. will not act unilaterally unless we obtain video of Assad entering launch codes and pushing buttons clearly marked, ´´Sarin--Riyadh.´´

When or if that happens, the president may order our remaining carrier groups to the eastern Mediterranean to conduct limited ´´non-surgical´´ strikes, with targets announced well in advance so that we don’t accidentally hurt Syrians and cause them to undergo surgeries.

I repeat what I’ve said the other six times such attacks have happened since August: this will not stand. We will continue talking with everybody, including the American people, concerning what they think about Syria.

The president has asked me to run a Twitter poll on our options so that uninformed Americans can make their voices heard on something they know absolutely nothing about and for which they care not a whit.

As always, we reserve the right to make our own decisions and act on our own timelines, even if those timelines expire after the next election, or the one after that. Through me, the president asks for your patience and support.

At some point in the near future, he will invite the MSNBC news team to the White House for a candid off-the-record conversation on Syria.

Thank you, and good evening.

OBAMA: A little strong, Jay. Tell him to tone it down.