Posted on July 17, 2013
Liberal
Little Caesars
To
the Left, the law is optional
by
Daniel Clark
No wonder liberals think conservatives are simple-minded. Here we are, still going by the book in Civics 101, while they’re busily rewriting the rules to grant themselves far greater powers than are assigned to them by law. In a variation of Huey Long’s Depression-era jingle, they’re dancing to the tune, “Every Liberal a King.”
If
liberals lack the votes to stop a bill from passing, they may recruit activists
to occupy the legislative chamber and disrupt the hearings. If that approach fails, then their
legislators can flee to a hideout in a neighboring state, so that there is no
longer a quorum present. Whenever their
opponents use a legitimate procedural maneuver to block a vote, liberals
protest as if they were victims of a crime against humanity, but they’re
allowed to dismantle the very structure of the legislative process, and
consider it just a good, clean game of political hardball.
Once a bill is passed into law, liberals can challenge it, in hopes of putting its fate in the hands of likeminded judicial activists. Their chances of accomplishing this are significant, because the court system is saturated with liberal judges who rule according to their feelings, without regard for the actual meaning of the written law. In the event that a piece of conservative legislation should survive this gauntlet, the liberals have yet another tactic at their disposal: just don’t enforce it.
The ACLU is challenging a Pennsylvania statute prohibiting same-sex marriage, and state Attorney General Kathleen Kane is refusing to defend it, based on her delusion that the Constitution guarantees “marriage equality.” During a thoroughly self-serving pronouncement on the issue, Kane said, “Today we represent everyone who does not have representation.” Sounds noble, but what about representing the Pennsylvanians who do have representation, in the form of elected officials like herself?
Pennsylvania law says, “It shall be the duty of the Attorney General to uphold and defend the constitutionality of all statutes so as to prevent their suspension or abrogation in the absence of a controlling decision by the court of competent jurisdiction.” Kane points out that she may refer a case to the governor’s Office of General Counsel “upon determining that it is more efficient or otherwise is in the best interest of the Commonwealth,” but this isn’t what she did. Instead, she publicly condemned the statute prior to washing her hands of it. That’s not an efficient manner of defending it, nor is it in Pennsylvania’s best interest.
Kane might argue that it’s basically a moot point, because
Republican Governor Tom Corbett will have his OGC defend the law anyway, but
what if the governor and the AG were both liberal Democrats like Kane?
Unfortunately, we already know the answer.
In California, Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris refused to defend Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban that was enacted through that state’s referendum process. In 2010, a district court judge threw out the law, for typically gobbledy reasons. The group that had promoted the initiative appealed, only to be told by the Supreme Court that they had no standing. Only “agents of the state” were permitted to stand up for Prop 8, and none were willing to do so.
Liberals at the state level are only following the lead of President Obama, who openly declared in 2011 that he would not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act that President Clinton had signed 15 years earlier. In doing so, he essentially gave himself veto power over an already enacted law, without any chance for the opposition to override his decision.
Only a liberal can get away with this kind of a power grab. It’s hard to picture anyone else even trying. Just imagine it’s the year 2017, and President Ted Nugent has just announced that, because the Brady Act violates the Second Amendment, he has instructed his Justice Department not to enforce it. Impeachment proceedings would commence before he could say, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
In truth, it would never come to that, because the Nuge isn’t that crazy. Yet when a liberal executive exhibits this kind of behavior, it’s just business as usual. Every level of our government has been infested with little liberal tyrants, who consider the law to be optional. Not only have they no compunction about perverting the lawmaking process, but they actually give speeches and issue press releases to brag about their having done it. Some, like Kathleen Kane, will even congratulate themselves on refusing to serve their constituents as the law requires.
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