In his unfortunate “robot” debate in New Hampshire, Marco Rubio raised the great mystery about the Obama presidency:

Are the many catastrophes of the past seven years the results of incompetence, or, as Rubio insisted, does the president know “exactly what he’s doing?”

Right now, there is a solid consensus that Obama is out of his depth, a consensus you can easily see in the stock market, in the big votes for “socialism” a la Bernie Sanders, from European allies (notably France) and from enemies like Iran, where the regime reenacted the capture of American sailors, quite literally a dramatic demonstration of Iran’s contempt for the United States.

So is it idiocy or, as Rubio claims, the systematic, perhaps even brilliant, implementation of a well elaborated world view?

I don’t think we will know the answer for sure until the Obama archives become public. That is, IF they become public. Remember we still do not have his college transcripts! Still…

This past week, a majority of the members of the Supreme Court gave notice that there is a limit to how much of their and Congress’ power they will allow the executive branch to grab.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been expanding its own definitions of what it is able to do under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court, in essence, said enough is enough when it put a stay on the EPA’s initiative to limit carbon emissions from power plants, in response to suits brought by several dozen states and industry groups. This was just one of several recent defeats of the EPA by the courts.

The tragic loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did, at least, ignite a discussion of the proper way to interpret the Constitution and may cause the next president to pick more justices who respect liberty. As Justice Scalia once noted: “There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”

The American Founders created three branches of government — the legislative, judicial and executive — to serve as checks and balances on each other in order to limit the abuse of the people by those in government.

The Founders also created America as a federal constitutional republic and not as a democracy. This distinction, which too few Americans understand, is what preserves our liberties, even though many have been eroded.

Like all emotions, shame serves a function; we feel it when we do something that violates our values. Shame is a particularly excruciating emotion, and it lets us know we’ve done something we never, ever want to do again.

Trying to let go of shame without changing our behavior is like trying to let go of physical pain while continuing to hold our hand on a hot stove. If we keep burning our hand, we’ll keep feeling pain; and that pain and the damage it reflects will intensify. If we keep behaving shamefully, we’ll keep feeling ashamed, and the damage our shame reflects will intensify.But holding onto shame after we’ve learned from and corrected our mistakes is like holding a match to our formerly stove-burned hand to remind ourselves how much it hurt. The pain we inflict is no longer relevant. And we’re actually more likely to repeat the shameful behavior when we continue to torment ourselves.

The loser:

This week: the magnitude of Hillary’s debacle in New Hampshire, the defection of women and young people to Sanders, Cruz’s frugality, Rubio’s fragility, and Jeb and Marco’s “War on Women”: their call to draft teenage girls. Also, Cruz’s status as a natural born citizen defended by none other than James Madison and George Washington (no kidding: it’s definitive), “the most right-wing Supreme Court in U.S. history” (or its opposite), “rapefugees”, and the hidden cost of socialism: this one will leave you unsure whether to rage or to cry.

It’s all right here, in this week’s Half Full Report.