Thom Hartmann: Important! Newt is right about the Supreme Court. It Can Be Overruled.

Here's the exact language -"[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make." Yes, that's what the Constitution says -in plain black and white. If Congress disagrees with, for example, the Citizens United decision, they can simply pass a law that says that the Supreme Court has overstepped its authority and that's the end of that.

The Founders... wanted the greatest power to be closest to the people -and Congress is up for election every two years... which is why it's defined in Article One of the Constitution -the first among equals. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1820 letter to Mr. Jarvis, who thought Supreme Court justices should have the power to strike down laws, "You seem to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy....The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal... I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves."

Nowhere in it does it say that the Supreme Court can strike down laws passed by Congress and signed by the President. Nowhere. And for the first 14 years of our Republic, the Court never even considered the idea. As Newt pointed out, Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 -"[T]he judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever...It proves incontestably, that the judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power; that it can never attack with success either of the other two."

But in 1803, a hard-right-wing Chief Justice named John Marshall ruled, in a case named Marbury versus Madison, that the Supreme Court could strike down laws as unconstitutional. President Jefferson went apoplectic. He wrote that if that decision wasn't challenged by Congress: "[T]hen indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de so [a suicide pact]. ... The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they may please." But Marshall and the Court backed down, somewhat. For the next 20 years, he never again ruled a law unconstitutional, or said that a few unelected Judges were the Kings of America, with nobody who had the power to undo their decisions. But that's what Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito want you to believe. They can make GW Bush President, without any appeal, make money into speech, turn corporations into people, and the rest of us have no say in it.

And they're wrong.

We don't have kings in America, and it's time to seriously debate and challenge the doctrine of Judicial Review - the claim by the Court itself that it has that power. Jefferson wrote - "The judiciary is... constantly working underground to undermine our Constitution... I will say, that 'against this every man should raise his voice,' and, more, should uplift his arm." Why? Because, Jefferson said, "For judges to usurp the powers of the legislature is unconstitutional judicial tyranny....One single object...will entitle you to the endless gratitude of society; that of restraining judges from usurping legislation." The power of We The People should be with the People and their elected officials, not 5 lawyers who have claimed the right to rule over every other branch of government.

Wake up Congress.