DOJ's Tellin' All Y'all It's a Sabotage (Ben)

Unfortunately(or is it fortunately?) I'm not a lawyer, but Gabe passed this gem along. I won't try to offer much, if any, analysis. I'll leave that to the JD's in the comments.

It appears as though the Obama administration, particularly the DOJ, is openly admiting that they are sabatoging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Don't Ask Don't Tell cases by offering a, shall we say, less than stellar defense to law suits.

AAG West is quoted:

"I think that the best example -- let me give you one -- in the Defense of Marriage Act -- you'll notice that we have not only discharged our responsibility to defend the constitutionality of a congressional statute, but we've done so in a way which reflects the policy values of this administration," West said.

"We disavowed some arguments that we believed had no basis in fact, and in fact we presented the court through our briefs with information which seemed to undermine some of the previous rationales that have been used defense of that statute," West added.

"We believe that's being an honest broker with the court, and that's the way we'll continue to discharge our responsibility," West said.

I think the take away is that the Obama DOJ is intentionally sabatoging the defense of these laws, because they cannot overturn them through the legislature.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that the DOJ is required to defend laws passed by the Congress to the best of their ability regardless of their personal political beliefs.

H/T Gabe. Please read the entire article at Talking Points Memo.

posted by Open Blogger at 03:47 PM

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