The Republicans In The House Want To Defend DOMA? Bring It On!
Last week, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he would in fact spend your tax dollars to hire private lawyers to defend DOMA, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act already declared unconstitutional by a sitting federal district judge. Some conservatives applauded this action, while liberals and others decried the waste of the people’s time and money (a great deal of money at that) on a social agenda that does not create jobs — except perhaps for trial attorneys — and reinforces the false concept that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals should be treated as second-class citizens.
But after great consideration, I say, bring it on!
DOMA is a grossly unconstitutional law that serves no just legal purpose. It has been rightly deemed unconstitutional, and I have full faith that it will be deemed unconstitutional again, this time at every one of the current ten or more DOMA challenges currently making their way through the federal courts.
Read: “The GOP’s Sanctimonious Defense Of The Sanctity Of DOMA“
Given Monday’s news that this week, a bill to repeal DOMA will be introduced into the Republican-held House, and as we await a companion DOMA repeal bill that will be introduced by Senator Feinstein into the Senate, the only certain way we can remove the shackles of DOMA is through the courts, as there is no way we will pass a DOMA repeal bill in this Republican-controlled House and in a pre-presidential election year Senate.
I reached out to Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom To Marry, and the man considered to be the father of the modern-day marriage equality movement, and asked him what he thought about the Republican House’s decision to defend DOMA in court. He responds:
“The President and Attorney General had it right when they said that morally and legally, the discriminatory so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ is indefensible. Whatever legal briefs the House leadership pays for — out of our tax dollars — will only be able to rehash the anti-gay arguments and absence of evidence that led the Administration — and the Nixon-appointed federal judge who ruled against DOMA at the trial level — to conclude that DOMA is unconstitutional. And that rehashing won’t make DOMA any more palatable .. or constitutional.”
I whole-heartedly agree.
One of the reasons we can and should let the Republicans be the ones to try to defend DOMA in court is the fact that we need to educate America about why DOMA is unconstitutional, and about why the law should be on our side. As if to prove my point, I came across a well-written but terribly misguided letter-to-the-editor in a local Kansas newspaper, titled, “Going Against God.”
The letter begins,
“President Obama’s decision to subvert the law and usurp the prerogatives of the Federal Judiciary by declaring the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to be unconstitutional should be cause for great concern for Bible-believing Americans.”
As many people know, the country is not ruled by the law of God but by the law of man, and any attempt to introduce biblical law into the books must be as vigorously fought on the left as the right is fighting the false specter of Sharia law introduction into America jurisprudence. And this decision neither “subverts the law” nor “usurps the prerogatives of the judiciary.”
The writer continues with,
“The president announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend DOMA. By deeming the Defense of Marriage Act to be indefensible and unconstitutional, President Obama has once again exposed his willingness to subvert the checks and balances at the heart of our Constitution.”
Stop right there sir! It is critical that we spread the word that a president has the legal right to not defend laws in court. While the executive branch must enforce the laws, it is under no obligation to defend them if they believe them to be unconstitutional, as this president, the attorney general, and a federal judge have all stated.
He continues,
“This, in spite of the fact that DOMA has been in federal law since 1996 – and has withstood many court challenges. The president and his attorney general have a duty to defend lawfully passed legislation, especially when the essence of the law has been upheld by many courts.”
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Again, presidents have a duty to enforce, but not defend the law in court.
We absolutely must make absolutely clear that other presidents have refused to defend laws they believed unconstitutional also, including Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Truman, Ford, Clinton, Bush 41, Bush 43, and yes, Reagan.
NPR’s Nina Totenberg explains:
“During the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Truman administrations, the presidents, in one form or another, refused to defend separate-but-equal facilities in schools and hospitals. The Ford Justice Department refused to defend the post-Watergate campaign finance law, much of which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court. The Reagan administration refused to defend the independent counsel law, a law subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court by a 7-to-1 vote. It also refused to defend the one-house legislative veto of many executive actions; in that case, the administration was more successful, winning 7-2 in the Supreme Court. The Clinton administration refused to defend a federal law mandating the dismissal of military personnel who were HIV-positive. The George W. Bush administration refused to defend a federal law that denied mass-transit funds to any transportation system that displayed ads advocating the legalization of marijuana. And in the George H.W. Bush administration, the Justice Department refused to defend a federal law providing affirmative action in the awarding of broadcasting licenses — a law subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court by a narrow 5-4 vote. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr was recused in the case, so the lead counsel for the government in the case was Starr’s deputy, a fellow by the name of John Roberts, now the chief justice of the United States.”
Getting back to our letter-to-the-editor writer, who says,
“Thirty states have passed marriage amendments affirming marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Attorney General Eric Holder justifying his position says that in the congressional debates there were ‘numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate family relationships.’ He went on to describe this as ‘animus,’ or hatred.”
“There is no hate coming from Christians on this issue. God loves everyone. God’s moral laws are the best way for us to live as a society. Our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were set up by God-fearing, Bible-believing Christians. God, through his book the Bible, says homosexuality is morally wrong. We love the sinner but not the sin. Ninety-eight percent of places of worship in America are Christian churches. Our president is going against the majority once again.”
Again, the laws of man and the relationship of man to god in America are neither congruous nor should they be. In other words, keep your bible out of my civil laws!
And, as an aside, yes there is hate, there has been hate, oh, so much hate and animus. And majority rule is never a good idea when it comes to the civil rights of the minority. It was Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers the tea party likes to quote so much these days, who wrote, “that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.â€
Read: “Hate Group American Family Association: DOMA Is Unconstitutional”
Our letter writer ends with,
“The president and the attorney general took oaths to defend the Constitution. The arrogance demonstrated by them we can only hope awakens a deep resolve among patriotic citizens. God, who put us here to have a personal relationship with him, to spread his love and live with him forever, says it’s wrong. Our best chance of living a life of love and prosperity is to follow God’s word. Please don’t say, “What is the big deal, who cares whether gays get to marry?” God makes the rules. Our society and our families will benefit if we follow God’s word and not the words of man. A man, our president, is saying it’s OK for gays to marry, going against God’s word. Most of us live such a soft, spoiled life. We forget the blood, sweat and tears it’s taken to make our country great. Please, America, stand for what God says is the right and wrong ways to live.”
Let me remind this writer, and the public at large, that the president, sadly, has not said he supports marriage equality, or “gay marriage.” And also let me remind everyone, DOMA is not in the Constitution. You know, it’s so funny how modern-day self-professed “tea party patriots” and social conservatives (and the House Republicans) claim all of a sudden they need to know “where in the Constitution does it say…” yet they are so unfamiliar with the Constitution!
Bottom line, Obama has no legal requirement to defend DOMA. DOMA is not a part of the Constitution. Almost every president since Truman has refused to defend one law or another.
So, let the House Republicans spend the people’s time and money on defending DOMA. They will quickly learn unconstitutional laws are indefensible, they will lose, and we will be free of DOMA.
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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”
“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”
“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”
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“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”
Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.
“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”
“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”
“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”
She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.
On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.
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But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.
We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.
If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping,… pic.twitter.com/bKhpUkchHV
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 26, 2024
Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.
“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”
The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”
Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.
“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”
“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”
Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.
“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”
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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person interview.
“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”
“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”
But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.
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“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”
Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.
1. The media turned Robert Hur’s amateur assessment of Biden’s memory into a political crisis.
Collectively, the @washingtonpost, @nytimes, and @WSJ have run 66 articles quoting Hur: a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”
But when the transcript of the Biden interview… pic.twitter.com/cExzjuKeYz
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 14, 2024
Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”
Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.
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“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.
Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.
Incidentally, when the NYT got a chance to interview Trump, they went belly up. https://t.co/fW5kx5868d pic.twitter.com/LbrhfYMtqf
— Dan Froomkin (PressWatchers.org) (@froomkin) April 25, 2024
Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.
Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.
This is the equivalent of putting a bag of dog poop on the New York Times’ doorstep and setting it on fire. https://t.co/RhGbHH9pU2
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) April 26, 2024
The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.
Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
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Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
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Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial
‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
News2 days ago‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’
News3 days ago‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act
News3 days agoJustices Slam Trump Lawyer: ‘Why Is It the President Would Not Be Required to Follow the Law?’
News3 days agoJustices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
OPINION2 days agoPresident Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off
OPINION1 day agoNoem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’
News2 days agoCNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial