SOUNDBITES — “I think it’s an outrage that they’ve got the best and brightest lawyers in Washington working overtime to defend the law when nobody at the White House has an actual legislative plan to repeal it this year.” —Richard Socarides on DoJ’s latest DADT filing (via)
Richard Socarides
‘I think it’s an outrage that they’ve got the best and brightest lawyers in Washington working overtime to defend the law when nobody at the White House has an actual legislative plan to repeal it this year’
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Josh AZ
We ALL better go handcuff ourselves to the White House fence.
Wait, that didn’t work for Mixner 16 years ago and well, it didn’t work for Dan Choi, either. Oh, oh … we need thousands of people to handcuff themselves. Many of us already have the handcuffs. This weekend?
the crustybastard
Our Fierce Advocate sends his lawyers to fiercely advocate that gay plaintiff’s cases should be thrown out of court.
Obama doesn’t want the Constitutional issues to be aired, and when they are, he says there’s no Constitutional problem with the law as written.
The reason he defends the law? “Tradition.”
His own words.
“Tradition” has long been the refuge of the civil rights scoundrel.
He is welcome to take that position, but it unmasks him as the bigot he really is.
B
The “soundbite” is unfortunately hyperbole. Just because they are arguing a case in court does not mean that they sent “best and brightest lawyers in Washington working overtime” to do it. It probably was whoever was available when the case came up – just some random attorney on the staff.
Also, what they are arguing is that Congress had a rational basis for the law, which is why they quoted Powell’s 1993 statement. That Powell subsequently changed his mind is not legally relevant as the argument is about whether Congress acted rationally in 1993, the year the law was passed. Legally the term “rational basis” does not imply that something is factually correct, but rather that it was believed to be factually correct at the time the law was passed.”
In other words, if Congress passed a law in 1993 based on the belief (at the time) that a neutrino had a rest mass of zero, that law would not become unconstitutional in 1998 when neutrino oscillation was discovered, which is only possible if neutrinos have a non-zero rest mass. Instead, it is up to Congress to change the law.