Liz Cheney, an attorney who studied at the University of Chicago when President Barack Obama taught there, told The Daily Caller that Obama is trying to “bully” the Supreme Court with “crazy” and “shameful” rhetoric.
“I thought his comments in the Rose Garden about the Supreme Court were stunning,” Cheney told The Daily Caller. “President Obama was actually teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago when I was a law student there and thankfully for him and me, I wasn’t in his class, but the notion that the Supreme Court does not have the right to review laws passed by the legislature is crazy, and he knows that’s not true.”
“I can only guess that the reason that he’s saying things like that is it’s an attempt to bully the court which frankly as the chief executive of the land, you know, it’s really shameful,” she added. “His job is to support and defend the constitution; it’s not to try to bully other branches of government so that he can continue down this path of the massive expansion of government authority.”
Cheney said that GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s accusation that Obama is “hiding” his true agenda from the public is “exactly right.” (RELATED: Romney: Obama intent on ‘hiding from his record’)
When asked if she thinks Obama may have received inside information about the court’s review of his health care reform law, she responded, “I think it’s much more likely that the president is trying to influence the outcome and trying to do more than influence, trying to pressure the court.”
Obama said on April 2, “Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
He continued, “I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”
Cheney, a board member of Keep America Safe, said that if the court upholds the individual mandate, it would “clearly, as Justice Kennedy said, change the nature of the relationship between the government and the citizens of this country.”
She continued, “I certainly think that the government had a very strong hurdle to get over to be able to make this case that in fact this law’s constitutional. It did not look to me from the oral arguments they got over that hurdle.”
Cheney is one of the two daughters of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne.