Tag Archives: holder
Off the Record
President Obama has proclaimed himself a fierce defender of the First Amendment . On cue, Eric Holderman called for a meeting of news honchos to clear the air about his secretive and nasty behavior toward them. True to form, the meeting was off the record.
Strange behavior for a couple of guys who only know what they read.
Update: Here’s a great Nat Hentoff piece on two Obamas. (He mentions the efforts of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to lead the pushback for the first amendment. Nat’s a RCFP steering committee member and so am I.)
Holder
Attorney General Holder signed off on a warrant that allowed the FBI to spy on a reporter’s personal email, his phones, and his parents’ phones.
Now Holder says he feels just awful about the whole thing. The president must be upset too. He has ordered the A.G. to investigate himself.
Slippery Slope
Rand Paul’s 13 hour filibuster, extracted an agreement from the administration not to kill American citizens sitting in American cafes. For those keeping score, the Holder/Obama team has whacked 3 Americans so far.
That still leaves this administration 77 short of the Clinton/Reno mark of 80 killed in Waco Texas.
However, President Obama has shown the remarkable ability to extend the kill zone for American citizens and constitutional rights for foreign terrorists at the same time! In early March Bin Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, was picked up in Jordan and brought to New York for trial. Along the way he was read his Miranda rights.
The true test of Obama’s power is – will Sulaiman be forced to buy health insurance?
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.
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.
