Category Archives: Law
Rule of Law
The president has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and ordered the Justice Department not to defend it.
What is the DOMA you ask? Well, according to the WSJ…
it was passed in 1996 by large majorities in both houses of Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.
The law says the federal government will only recognize marriages that are between a man and a woman. States can still allow same-sex marriages—and five states plus the District of Columbia have done so. But people married under those state laws aren’t accepted as married under federal law.
Same sex couples get unfavorable death tax treatment under the law…
For example, a woman inheriting money from her deceased same-sex partner doesn’t get the tax benefits that federal tax law allows for a person inheriting from a spouse.
A Washington Post editorial, however, points out the two edged swordiness of the president’s approach by asking if a future Republican president might refuse to defend Obamacare from constitutional challenges.
Rule of Law
Judge Vinson, ruling in favor of 26 states, found the individual mandate unconstitutional and threw out the entire healthcare law. It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court will move for checkmate. As it stands now the law doesn’t apply equally to everyone. The administration has already granted over 700 waivers.
Federal Power
A federal judge ruled that the federal government doesn’t have the power to make you go out and buy something you otherwise wouldn’t – health care in this case. The government claims its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce gives it the right to do just that.
Nat Hentoff doesn’t think any clause of the constitution gives the government the right to assassinate its own citizens who become jihadists.
Show Trial
Marc Thiessan makes the case, in the Washington Post, that the best way to protect the U.S. legal system is to keep trials for enemy combatants out of it.
The Best You Can Do
Obama is ignoring David Ignatius‘ advice to take credit for saving the economy and run with it. In his column, Ignatius calls the voters “willfully stupid” – possibly not a winning campaign slogan. So instead, the president is taking Joe McCarthy’s advice to make a wild accusation and then demand that the accused prove his innocence. The accusation being that the Chamber of Commerce is selling out the country to foreign corporate interests. The New York Times debunked this but that didn’t stop David Axelrod from telling Bob Schieffer, on Face the Nation, that we don’t know that the Chamber is not taking foreign money until they prove it. Shieffer’s response, “…is that the best you can do?”
P.S. While Ignatius thinks the people are “willfully stupid”, Victor Davis Hanson says they’re being “played for fools”.
