Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: "The Supreme Court can't overrule the other two" branches of government.
The courts have the power of judicial review. This means they can rule on the constitutionality of a law brought before the courts. Though judicial review was not explicitly laid out in the Constitution, several founding fathers called for it, and the Supreme Court's 1803 ruling on Marbury v. Madison confirmed the court's prerogative. It remains a cornerstone of the United States' judiciary system. While there are certainly tools the president and Congress can use to go around a Supreme Court decision it doesn't like -- such as amending the Constitution or selecting justices that support the alternate position - these are difficult to accomplish and usually require years of effort, making them rare. The much more common result is for the executive and legislative branches accept a Supreme Court decision as the final word. Huckabee may not like this state of affairs, but on balance, Politifact rates his claim Mostly False.
ISIS: Al-Qaida by another name?
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush: "ISIS didn't exist when my brother was president. Al-Qaida in Iraq was wiped out when my brother was president."
Technically, yes, a group with the name "ISIS" did not exist under President George W. Bush. The group's roots, however, trace back to 2004. In 2004, longtime Sunni extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi established al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and more recently the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In 2006, the group was renamed the Islamic State of Iraq. In 2013, the group was referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism expert told Politifact "Al-Sham just refers to the Levant and reflects the group's increased focus on Syria," he said. "It reflects a geo-graphic shift rather than change in political focus. It's the same group throughout."
Al-Qaida's power waxed and waned over the years, but was it "wiped out," as Jeb Bush said? Two experts interviewed disagreed with each other on the extent that al-Qaida was "wiped out" under Bush.
"There is no doubt that the surge hurt AQI/ISI deeply," Fishman told PolitiFact. "The group was much weaker as a result. But it remained vibrant by the standards of any other AQ-linked jihadi group in the world."
Derek Harvey, a retired U.S. Army colonel "The fact is that the few remnants of the organization found refuge in Syria, and it was there that they found the space and time to rebuild in 2009-11, and by summer 2012 they were strong enough to reemerge in Sunni Arab provinces in Iraq. Although there will always be remnants of terror groups, I say that Jeb Bush is accurate that AQI was wiped out."
Michael O'Hanlon, an expert on defense policy at the Brookings Institute summarized Bush's claims: "ISIL is a relatively new creation, but its roots are in al-Qaida in Iraq. Al-Qaida was significantly weakened by President Bush and company, but it was not wiped out. Moreover, the dynamics that the Iraq war set in motion contributed to the rise of ISIL, because Syria facilitated movement of many foreign fighters in and out of Iraq, and some of them resettled in Syria after the Iraq surge. Also, al-Qaida in Iraq didn't really exist before the 2003 invasion, so it's too clean and neat for Gov. Bush to make the statement he did; there are kernels of truth in his claim but it misses a broader reality."
Chip Tuthill lives in Mancos. Website used: www.politifact.com.