Tag Justice Department

One last fact and a call for noise

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

The sands of time slip away.  The days dwindle down to a precious few.  Whatever your favorite allusion to the inexorable march of time (that’s a good one, too), realize this good news: after tomorrow, our TVs will finally be freed from the scourge of political advertising insulting our intelligence with lie upon lie for another year.  Or so.  The other good news is this: tomorrow is the day things can start to change, if we choose to take action to make it happen.  Tens of millions of American have already done so, and I’m looking forward to joining them tomorrow.

The latest polls, fallible though they are, carry strong hope that the wave of anti-Trump sentiment is still strong on the day before election day.  Democrats across the country are expected to do well tomorrow, even in places (like my state of Texas) where they haven’t done well since even before we knew there was a thing called MAGA America.

If we’ve learned nothing else in the last ten years, we know that Donald Trump is a man who is used to getting his way and generally doesn’t let facts or history or even good sense get in the way of whatever it takes to scratch that itch.  That includes going to court with the flimsiest of arguments demanding that “his judges” find a way around the plain meaning or intent of the law to clear a path for his self-aggrandizing plans.  But remember, he’s losing in the courts (with only a few exceptions) and that losing streak is going strong.  Our country’s judges – even many judges that Trump himself nominated to the bench – are doing their jobs and shooting down the shoddy motions from the government lawyers.  For example, yesterday a federal judge threw out the Administration’s effort to block certification of the vote for U.S. senator in Alaska – but only if the incumbent Republican were to lose!  It’s gotten so ridiculous that last week a federal judge ordered a “formal inquiry into potential misconduct by Trump Administration officials in the lawsuit over East Potomac Park” after Department of Justice lawyers urged the judge to ignore the president’s own statements about plans for the golf course there, statements that directly contradicted those that the DOJ lawyers made in court.  (Yes, your honor, please ignore that man behind the curtain; who you gonna believe, me or the president of the United States?)

There seems to be a reasonable chance that tomorrow’s election could swing control of both houses of Congress to the Democrats.  If so, we can expect that next year we will see the end of the “yessir, anything you want” Congress that Republicans have given us the past two years, a barely-there branch of government that has utterly and deplorably given up its Constitutional responsibility of checks and balances.  With a Democrat-controlled House and/or Senate, it’s likely that the worst intentions of TFG will finally run into some Congressional resistance to back up that already coming from the Judicial Branch.  I like the sound of that.

Speaking of sound, I saw a great thing on television last week.  It was a very brief message in the credits of a broadcast network comedy show where the executive producer likes to sound off; it struck me as a smart call to arms before this critical election, so I took a picture of the screen.

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Fact is, this tortured abuse of the legal process is likely only the beginning

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

OK then, I guess up is down, right is left, the sun sets in the north and I was People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year in 1984 (a test of concept, before rolling out Mel Gibson the next year).  That we now live in Bizarro World is the only reasonable explanation for how Donald Trump’s Justice Department today could – with a straight face – ask a federal court “to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent loses.” [emphasis added]

The Justice Department, in a court filing, argued that confusion over another candidate on the ballot with a name very similar to the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result. Mr. Sullivan is in what polls suggest is a close race against Mary Peltola, a Democrat, but the ballot also features Daniel J. Sullivan Jr.

A number of tight races across the country, including Alaska, could tip the balance of power in the Senate. The legal gambit also comes shortly after the administration sued the state of California over what it claims are 20,000 “likely noncitizens” on the state’s voter roll.

David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonpartisan group that advises election officials, said he could not recall a similar instance in which the federal government sought to block certification of an election, “and certainly not 11 days before an election.” The issue of another candidate with a similar name has already been addressed by state officials, he said.

“D.O.J. making this claim this late smells of political interference and is against D.O.J. policy,” Mr. Becker said. “The feds have absolutely no authority to tell Alaska when and how to certify. The state officials are following Alaska state law, as the Constitution requires.” He said he expected the courts to reject the administration’s lawsuit.

Did DOJ argue that confusion might also work the other way, that voters who would have otherwise elected the other Dan Sullivan might be confused into voting for the incumbent senator?  That that might be another reason to stall certification until the confusion could be sorted out?  No, no it did not.  The new politically-supercharged Department of Justice (We Punish Trump’s Enemies; Just You Try Us!) has bravely stepped up to try to protect a poor, defenseless Republican senator from suffering at the hands of the stupid voters of his own state.  And it did so because, apparently, Trump himself told them to do it.  This would be the most pathetic example of the tortured relationship with the concept of truth by people living in Trumpworld that I found in the news today were it not for the sad claim that Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire in Ukraine.  Yes, that  Melania Trump.

Remember, Donald Trump has the emotional maturity of a two year old and cannot admit to losing, or even to making a mistake.  That he is trying to corrupt the conduct of this election in the hope he can steal enough races to maintain his control of the Congress is a given.  That he is doing so while simultaneously sowing the seeds for the excuses he’ll rely on later to blame others for the loss…well, that dexterity may be his only remarkable talent.

Equal justice for all: the gay rights tide has turned

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

The fight to keep homosexual Americans from enjoying the full rights of citizenship is over; the opposition is giving up.  A federal judge has enjoined the Pentagon from enforcing the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy anywhere in the world, and the expected reaction to that news was…nowhere to be heard.

Sure, hard-core haters had their say, but I’m struck by just how quiet it has been.  At the risk of fanning the flames, I’d say it looks like the usual suspects in the anti-gay effort have finally run out of steam, perhaps because it’s so clear that courts are going to enforce the Constitutional protections that have been denied to homosexuals.

First, the DADT (ugh!) policy is a crock and it should be repealed; it should never have been imposed.  Was anyone really in favor of a regulation that permitted gays to remain in the service unless they were discovered?  How in any important way is that any different than the old system, where gays were discharged when they were discovered?

The law’s days are clearly numbered.  Although the Justice Department asked the judge not to halt enforcement of the law while it prepares an appeal, the president has promised to get rid of the law—and Congress almost did so earlier this year!

The secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs favor repeal of DADT, but they want to go slow.   Excuse me, gents—why?  Because it would force an immediate change to benefits or buildings, or protocols for social events?  That’s why you want to wait until an internal review is completed, in a month a half?  Really?

I never understood the argument that allowing gay people in the service to be open about their sexuality would hurt morale (and hurt it even worse in time of war, or wars).  I don’t believe that most men and women in the armed forces are so closed-minded and prejudiced on this topic, because I don’t think most Americans outside the military are, either.

Think about the reality of the situation: if DADT has legally cleared the way for gays to serve since 1993, then people in the military have had at least since then to get used to the idea that gays are there: to get used to the idea that they don’t leer at you in the shower or rape you in your bed, at least not in any greater numbers than heterosexuals do those things; to get used to fighting next to them in a shooting war, and to know that they can be brave and trustworthy comrades, at least to the same extent that heterosexuals can be.

We can proclaim not to understand why people are homosexual, or embrace a religious belief that homosexual activity is a sin, but none of that matters in a tolerant, secular, civil society.  The experts can’t say why a person is sexually attracted to one gender or the other.  And it violates the rights of due process and free speech guaranteed to each American in the Constitution to treat someone differently because of their sexual orientation just as it would to treat them differently because of their gender or their ancestry. 

The tide has turned.  Homosexual activity is no longer illegal.  If you read or watch Ted Olson’s argument as presented on Fox News in August, the same argument he made in the California court case, you can see that the case for gay marriage will prevail.  States are giving up trying to stop homosexuals from adopting children.  Republican political strategists recognize that opposing gay rights is a long-term losing proposition.  One officer discharged under DADT has successfully sued to be reinstated in the Air Force.

You don’t have to “understand” gay people any more than you have to “understand” people of a different race or a different religion.  You only have to understand that these people are Americans like you, who believe in American rights like you do, who want to enjoy American freedoms like you do, who support our country with their work and their taxes like you do, and who want the opportunity to serve to protect this way of life, just like you do.