The Good.

The Supreme Court dealt a chastening blow to the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and organized labor Thursday, ruling 7-2 to reverse a decision that would force nonmembers of public-sector unions in California to pay a fee that would help to finance the unions’ activities.

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush nominee, delivered the opinion of the court, with a concurring opinion by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and dissent were given by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

The case centered on a California regulation that allowed unions to charge employees in a particular “agency shop” annual fees to pay for union activities, even if the employees opted not to join the union.

In June 2005, a local branch of the Service Employees International Union sent out a notice telling employees in its shop what the monthly dues for the year would be, but also gave notice that the fee could be increased at any time without additional notice. Shortly after, SEIU would propose a temporary increase of 25 percent in employee fees in order to fund a pro-union political campaign.

…in order to fund a pro-union political campaign.

Isn’t this what’s known as a union getting a bit cavalier with its members’ hard earned money?

Of course, we are talking labor unions.

While SEIU would later refund the fees, Alito said that nothing would stop the union from attempting to collect similar fees in the future, and maintained that a “live controversy” based on the strictures of the First Amendment, remained to be resolved.

“The First Amendment creates ‘an open marketplace’ in which differing ideas about political, economic, and social issues can compete freely for public acceptance without improper government interference,” he wrote. “…Closely related to compelled speech and compelled association is compelled funding of the speech of other private speakers or groups.”

Especially striking, Alito said, was the fact that the fees the unions were forcing employees to pay went to combat a ballot initiative that would have allowed them not to pay those fees if they chose.

“Thus, the effect of the SEIU’s procedure was to force many nonmembers to subsidize a political effort designed to restrict their own rights,” Alito wrote.

Snip!

(Surprise, surprise)

A concurring opinion by Sotomayor and Ginsburg, two of the court’s most liberal justices, agreed that the First Amendment would allow non-union members a chance to opt out of political contributions, but said the majority had addressed constitutional issues outside of the scope of the case and regarding the unions’ charging nonmembers in general.

Well, fancy that, constitution based fairness, rather than the usual left wing politics, coming from the likes of those two. Go figure…

The Bad

From Charles Krauthammer:

“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations (of immigrants brought here illegally as children) through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.” — President Obama, March 28, 2011

Those laws remain on the books. They have not changed. Yet Obama last week suspended these very deportations — granting infinitely renewable “deferred action” with attendant work permits — thereby unilaterally rewriting the law. And doing precisely what he himself admits he is barred from doing.

Obama had tried to change the law. In late 2010, he asked Congress to pass the Dream Act, which offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants. Congress refused.

When subsequently pressed by Hispanic groups to simply implement the law by executive action, Obama explained that it would be illegal.

“Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. … But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

That was then. Now he’s gone and done it anyway. It’s obvious why. The election approaches and his margin is slipping. He needs a big Hispanic vote and this is the perfect pander. After all, who will call him on it? A supine press? Congressional Democrats?

Nothing like an upcoming election to temper their Bush 43-era zeal for defending Congress’ exclusive Article I power to legislate.

With a single Homeland Security Department memo, the immigration laws no longer apply to 800,000 people. By what justification? Prosecutorial discretion, says Janet Napolitano.

This is utter nonsense. Prosecutorial discretion is the application on a case-by-case basis of considerations of extreme and extenuating circumstances. No one is going to deport, say, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant whose parents had just died in some ghastly accident and who is the sole support for a disabled younger sister and ailing granny. That’s what prosecutorial discretion is for.

The Napolitano memo is nothing of the sort. It’s the unilateral creation of a new category of persons — a class of 800,000 — who, regardless of individual circumstance , are hereby exempt from current law so long as they meet certain biographic criteria.

This is not discretion. This is a fundamental rewriting of the law.

His majesty B. Hussein Obama Rex, being King, evidently has that right. I guess he must have decided that such things as the Declaration of Indendence and the U.S. Constitution were nothing but a bad dream he’s awakened from having.

Imagine: A Republican president submits to Congress a bill abolishing the capital gains tax. Congress rejects it. The president then orders the IRS to stop collecting capital gains taxes, and declares that anyone refusing to pay them will suffer no fine, no penalty, no sanction whatsoever. (Analogy first suggested by law professor John Yoo.)

It would be a scandal, a constitutional crisis, a cause for impeachment. Why? Because unlike, for example, war powers, this is not an area of perpetual executive-legislative territorial contention.

Nor is cap-gains, like the judicial status of unlawful enemy combatants, an area where the law is silent or ambiguous. Capital gains is straightforward tax law. Just as Obama’s bombshell amnesty-by-fiat is a subversion of straightforward immigration law.

It is shameful that Congressional Democrats should be applauding such a brazen end-run. Of course it’s smart politics. It divides Republicans, rallies the Hispanic vote and pre-empts Marco Rubio’s attempt to hammer out an acceptable legislative compromise. Very clever. But, by Obama’s own admission, it is naked lawlessness.

Well put. Very well put.

And last but not least, The Ugly.

A day after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of targeting Attorney General Eric Holder because of his department’s crackdown on state voter ID laws, GOP lawmakers dismissed the claim yesterday as “hogwash.”

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) called the claim “mind-numbingly stupid.”

“I could not believe it when I heard her saying that,” Gowdy told Fox News.

“Hogwash. That is the most ridiculous comment I’ve heard so far,” Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) also told Fox.

On Thursday, Pelosi linked efforts to require photo IDs for voting to Republicans’ campaign to call a contempt-of-Congress vote against Holder for allegedly failing to cooperate in their probe of Operation Fast and Furious.

A House committee voted Wednesday along party lines to hold Holder in contempt of Congress, with Republicans claiming his department has not turned over subpoenaed documents pertaining to the botched anti-gun-running operation.

Yes, the ugly mind of Nancy Pelosi fits right in with the rest of those communistas who have taken over the Democratic Party.