Tag Archives: government

The Obama/Lynch Justice Department

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A federal judge in Texas has ordered hundreds of US Department of Justice lawyers to undergo ethics training, accusing the agency of a “calculated plan of unethical conduct.”

The extraordinary order by US District Judge Andrew S Hanen says Justice Department lawyers intentionally misled him in the course of a lawsuit filed by Texas and 25 other mostly conservative states challenging the Obama administration’s immigration policy.

Hanen wrote in his order

What remains before this Court is the question of whether the Government’s lawyers must play by the rules.
…
The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ” or “Justice Department”) has now admitted making statements that clearly did not match the facts.  It has admitted that the lawyers who made these statements had knowledge of the truth when they made these misstatements.

And this:

The decision of the lawyers who apparently determined that these three-year renewals…were not covered by the Plaintiff States’ pleadings was clearly unreasonable.  The conduct of the lawyers who then covered up this decision was even worse.

Such conduct is certainly not worthy of any department whose name includes the word “Justice.”

In fact, it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.  There were over 100,000 instances of conduct contrary to counsel’s representations.

Nor has this been simply a “first offense.”

This Court in at least one prior order has detailed the multiple times attorneys for the Government misrepresented the actions being taken (or, according to their representations, not being taken) by their clients.

Hanen’s reference to 100,000 was to 100,000 deferrals under the Obama edict that had already been granted, contrary to the DoJ lawyers’ representations at trial.

Unfortunately, Hanen has no authority to disbar these despicable liars.  It’s interesting to note, however, that while Hansen assures us that he’s satisfied these misbehaviors did not occur after Attorney General Loretta Lynch ascended to her AG-ship, Lynch herself has chosen to remain silent on the matter—and by clear implication, to do absolutely nothing concerning these…lawyers…who now work for her.  In particular, these persons are still on the Government’s payroll.

Is there any way at all this DoJ can be trusted with any case before it or potentially before it?

Elections have consequences.

Not Only a Correct Ruling

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…but a correct rationale, also.

US District Judge Henry Hudson upheld Virginia’s voter ID law that requires prospective voters to show a State-approved photo ID before they vote.  In response to the Democratic Party’s (it was the plaintiff, of course) claim that the law was politically motivated, Hudson held in part

The court’s mission is to judge not the wisdom of the Virginia voter ID law, but rather its constitutionality[.]

Hear, hear.  Hudson went on:

While the merits of this voter identification law, and indeed all aspects of Virginia’s voting regime, can be reasonably debated, it remains true that Virginia has created a scheme of laws to accommodate all people in their right to vote[.]

Indeed.  Such a debate is important to be held, in all of our States.  But the debate is a political one, to be held among the citizens of each State and their elected representatives in their legislatures and governor’s mansions.  It is outside the realm of our courts to conduct political debates.

Still, the cynicism persists.

Lawyers representing the state Democratic Party said in a filing that the Republican-dominated state legislature passed the photo ID law “to stall, if not reverse, the growing success of the Democratic Party in Virginia.”

Not at all.  The suit is nothing other than a disingenuous effort by the Democratic Party to wage lawfare in an attempt to stall, if not reverse, the growing success of protections for the sanctity of each citizen’s vote in Virginia, a sanctity at risk from voter fraud.

Clinton Doesn’t Like It

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Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s list of folks he’d like to see on the Supreme Court, that is.

Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman has released a scathing statement in response to likely rival Donald Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court picks.

John Podesta says Trump’s list of 11 Supreme Court candidates includes “no people of color, but does include a judge who upheld a law requiring doctors to use scare tactics to impede reproductive rights and another judge who equated homosexual sex to bestiality, pedophilia and necrophilia.”

I’ll ignore the naked distortions that only the Left can make.  Never mind, on the other hand, that skin color confers no special skill or aptitude—or even empathy.  If there are no blacks or Hispanics on the list, maybe it’s because there are too few who are qualified.  Which only means the Left needs to get out of the way of our children’s education so we can get more qualified.

In the end, if Clinton or any of her fellow Progressives and Socialists don’t like the list, it can’t be all bad.

An Objective Court

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Can a court that begins hearing a case while spring-loaded to deference in favor of the Legislative (a law is likely Constitutional, or a law should be read in a manner consistent with it being Constitutional) or the Executive (a Department’s or Agency’s Rule is likely proper) actually hear the case impartially?

There’s an interesting symposium recently held by the Institute for Justice’s Center for Judicial Engagement that bears on the matter; the papers presented are about to be published by the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy.  Professor Randy Barnett, head of Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution, has a (draft) Foreword that’s available now.  That Foreword is titled Why Popular Sovereignty Requires the Due Process of Law to Challenge “Irrational or Arbitrary” Statutes, and it bears directly on the question I asked above.  Below are a couple of dispositive excerpts [emphases in the original] from the Foreword.  As they say, RTWT.

In other words, before sovereign individuals can justly be deprived of their “life” (by capital punishment), “liberty” (by imprisonment), or “property” (by penalty or fine), the “due process of law” entitles them to a judicial evaluation of whether a statute being enforced against them is within the “just powers” of Congress or state legislatures to enact.  And the “due process of law” requires that such a statute be a “law.”

Notice that.  “Due process of law” is not one phrase, it’s two—”due process” and “of law”—each of which must be considered separately in adjudicating the legitimacy of a law.

And the bit about judicial bias in hearing cases—and it’s not Liberal vs Conservative bias:

Crucially, the “due process of law” requires that the magistrate or judge hearing such a challenge be impartial.  If the judge hearing a challenge simply “presumes” that the legislature is acting properly, or “defers” to the legislature’s own assessment of its powers, then that judge is not acting impartially.  Even worse, if the “presumption” in favor of legislation is irrebuttable, then the person dressed in black robes is not acting as a judge at all.

Either the Court and its judges/Justices are objective, impartial, or they are not.  There is no middle ground.

The answer to the question, then, is a resounding No.  There can be no judicial deference.  Every case before a court must be addressed by that court without regard to the claimed—especially without regard to any presumed—authority of either of the other two branches of government, neither of which are in any way superior to the Third Branch.

It’s long past time our courts, and especially our Supreme Court, lost their deference and resumed their place as a coequal branch of our Federal government.  Of course, that will require Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the Constitution is a living document and requires constant judicial reinterpretation to “update” it) and Sonya Sotomayor (the empathetically wise Latina) to be replaced with properly textualist (or originalist, but that takes an increasing skill at mind reading as the origin recedes into the past) judges.

Update: Bad misspelling, bad.  [sigh]

Grow Government

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It’s what Democrats do.  Here’s another installment, this one by Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton:

I would create the first ever Office of Immigrant Affairs.  [The office] would create a dedicated place in the White House to coordinate integration policies across the federal government and with state and local government as well.

Never mind that the private economy already is in that niche, groups like

CASA de Maryland, Refugee Council USA, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, the US Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services, and The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Never mind that myriad Federal agencies already involved in immigration affairs could be combined and streamlined, agencies like US Citizenship and Immigration Services; Department of Labor’s Office of Foreign Labor Certification; Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, its visa management facility; The National Visa Center, a private company under contract to the DoS that’s in the middle of the green card issuing process.

But that would shrink government.  Can’t have that.