. . . the news that President Obama violated the Constitution
The winner for best headline, best page placement, and best lede goes to . . .
. . . the Wall Street Journal for its simple, direct, top-of-the-front-page banner story.
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that President Barack Obama violated the Constitution . . . . (Melanie Trottman, Jess Bavin, and Michael R. Crittenden, "Court Throws Out Recess Picks")
Pretty far back is the New York Times. The one-column, second-from-right, front-page placement is fine, but the headline and lede give a modest pro-Obama spin -- everybody does it -- to the story.
In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of president "recess" appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution . . . . (Charlie Savage and Steven Greenhouse, "Court Rejects Obama Moves To Fill Posts")
In dead last, the Houston Chronicle, which pushed this important story back to A4 and crowned it with the limpest of headlines.
In a setback for President Barack Obama, a federal appeals court ruled Friday that he violated the Constitution . . . . (____, Associated Press, "Obama appointments broke law, judges rule")
His appointments broke the law, see. Not him.
The lede is okay, though the first seven words are unnecessary and mildly distractive. What's important is constitutional law-breaking, not the impact of the court ruling on the lawbreaker.
The Journal also wins on next-day editorial response.
President Obama has shown increasing contempt for the constitutional limits on his power, and the courts are finally awakening to the news. (Editorial, "Obama's Abuse of Power")
Third place -- I'll report on the runner-up below -- goes to the Times, which, like our president, viscerally hates Republicans and loves third-rate federal bureaucracies more than the Constitution.
For most of President Obama's first term, Republicans used legislative trickery to try to prevent the functioning of two federal agencies they hate . . . .
Astonishingly, a federal appeals court upheld this strategy on Friday. (Editorial, "A Court Upholds Republican Chicanery")
The Times, it must be said, is easily astonished.
The Chronicle comes in second for saying nothing, editorially, about the ruling.
[UPDATE: All below, which I have left intact for curiosity-seekers who wander by (and as an act of penance), is built on a fundamental error. Ms. Lisa Gray did not write the editorial in question. A Mr. Evan Mintz did. I formally confess the error here.]
The reason it said nothing is that Saturday is Lisa! Gray! day at the newspaper. The adults leave the room and turn the editorial wheel over to the resident Occupyster, who, as always, does her best to drive the Houston Chronicle into the Houston Press's 'hood.
So for Ms. Lisa!, a mere unconstitutional act by the president of the United States could not stand in the way of what is truly important: a statute for "Houston's late comedian-philospher" Bill Hicks.
Mr. Hicks, according to Wikipedia, "often criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class, meant to 'keep people stupid and apathetic.'" That is background to Ms. Gray!'s remarkable notion of the company into which Mr. Hicks should be elevated.
In a city filled with statues of important historical figures -- Sam Houston, William Marsh Rice, George Bush -- it is about time we commemorated someone who stood athwart history, providing important counterbalance in our city that at times embraces consumerist progress like a runaway train.
This sentence steals a conceit from her better, William F. Buckley, Jr., who famously said his National Review "stands athwart history, yelling Stop!"
The writer also packs at least three disparate images into this one defenseless sentence: the image of Mr. Hicks athwart history, the picture of him as a counterbalance, and the vision of a runaway train. For one sentence, it's a wearying slog.
And don't overlook the spirit of grievance -- it's about time! -- that burns so brightly in this and much else from Ms. Gray!'s oeuvre. She earnestly believes, it seems, that a statue of her little tearer-down of things (rhetorically) should be entitled to a place in the same city as our monuments to the builders-up of real things, such as Mr. Houston, Mr. Rice, and Mr. Bush.
The key point, though, is that Ms. Lisa! shares the late Mr. Hicks's elitist and sophomoric take on the Houston that is.
Which is to say, she dislikes the Houston that is, and she dislikes proles like you and me.
To Mr. Hicks -- a legend, truthsayer, shaman (shaman? a pagan priest? really?), philosopher, and much more, according to the Houston Chronicle (I kid you not) -- and to the editorialist philosopher-queen who is his accolyte, you and I are the boobooisie: superficial, mediocre, banal, unworthy, unclean, eminently mockable, embracing consumerist progress like a runaway train, whatever that might mean in English.
It's good, therefore, that she stayed away from the president's lawlessness, though it would have been fun, in a perverse sort of way, to see if she could have out-Timed the Times on the hysteria scale.
Hers would at least have been funnier.
Her essays are often funny, sometimes intentionally.
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