President Obama continues to take criticism for his preemptive attack on the Supreme Court on Monday, when he claimed that if the justices found his health care law to be unconstitutional it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

AFP writes today, “Barack Obama’s health care blast at the Supreme Court is provoking an inquisition into whether a law professor turned president unwisely trashed political and constitutional convention. Few court watchers can recall a recent precedent for Obama’s public warning Monday to the nine top justices in America that his legacy-boosting health reform legislation should stand. Presidents generally avoid comment on cases before the court, to avoid prejudicing proceedings and infecting the respected body with the polarized political stew swamping the rest of Washington.”

CBS News adds, “President Barack Obama has been running against Congress for a while, but as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of his health care overhaul, recent comments appear to have put him at odds with the courts as well. . . . [Tuesday] was the second straight day the president gave his take on what the high court should do. On Monday, he seemed to suggest the court didn’t even have the power to strike down the law.”

Even the Washington Post editors were taken aback by Obama’s initial comments, writing, “President Obama’s comments Monday about the Supreme Court were jarring. If the court were to strike down the health-care law, Mr. Obama said, it would be a blatant example of judicial activism. That ‘an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,’ the president said, would be ‘an unprecedented, extraordinary step.’ Well, not exactly, and the comments strayed perilously close to a preemptive strike on the court’s legitimacy if it were to declare the individual mandate unconstitutional.”

The Wall Street Journal put it more bluntly in an editorial yesterday: “Mr. Obama’s remarks suggest he is joining others on the left in warning the Justices that they will pay a political price if they dare to overturn even part of the law.”

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