Looks like the electorate didn’t like the assertion of Executive Privilege. Given Obama’s struggles recently, this leads me to believe whatever is being shielded by the White House is worse than what he’s going to suffer for shielding it. Either that or he’s good enough friends with Eric Holder he’s willing to take the White House down to help him. Or Eric Holder has enough dirt on people. Who knows.
Category: Government
Progress in Jury Nullification
A panel of perspective jurors seems none too thrilled about a felony trial over a small amount of coke. Of course, I can promise you none of those who answered that they would nullify ended up on the jury.
Resolution to Find Holder in Contempt Passes House Committee
From NRA. I don’t really understand why Obama invoking Executive Privilege was a smart move. It’s basically an admission of White House involvement in the scandal, and now, unlike before, the entire media is paying attention to Fast and Furious. How ironic that it might be Obama himself be the one to blow this scandal wide open.
Ending Checks and Balances
Based on the comments of the President and a Democratic Congressman, I sometimes wonder if a new platform for the Democratic Party isn’t going to be that the Supreme Court can no longer serve as a check on the Executive and Legislative branches. This morning, Rep. Gerry Connolly said:
“It’s not really up to the Supreme Court to second-guess the legitimate decision made by the elected representatives of the people, and if people want to change that law, they can do so by changing the legislators,†he said.
Of course, in April, Obama made comments that caused him trouble by challenging the authority of the Supreme Court to overturn laws passed by Congress and supported by the President.
“For years, what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or the lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” he said at a news conference.
…
Mr. Obama said the court would take an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” if it overturns the law because it was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
To continue in the over-the-top rhetoric from Connolly, he also added this statement on just how terrible opposition to the individual mandate would be:
Connolly said a ruling against the mandate would rank with the court’s worst decisions in its history. He compared the potential opinion with those now considered to be the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes: Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the “separate but equal†doctrine, and Dred Scott v. Sandford, which said that people brought to the United States as slaves are not U.S. citizens with rights.
It almost comes off as saying that those opposed to the individual mandate are like people who support racism and slavery. Another decision by the Court that Connolly cites as a problem a case he refuses to name, but rather prefers to call “the very novel interpretation of the Second Amendment, overturning D.C.’s gun control laws.” Though that isn’t quite as evil a case as the challenge to healthcare. He just considers that to be an example of extreme partisanship on the part of conservatives on the Court.
FDA Cracking Down on Cigars
One big problem I have with the Obama Administration, and really the Bush Administration before it, was that the bureaucrats have just gotten out of control. Anyone know if Obama still sneaks out of the oval office for smoke breaks? The dangers of tobacco at this point are well known. This is just bureaucrats trying to expand their little fiefdoms. Conservatives and libertarians often rag on the commerce clause as where we really went off the rails. I disagree. I think the non-delegation doctrine being loosely interpreted has caused far more problems. If we want warning labels, or other ridiculous requirements for cigars, Congress should pass a law. As it is, the Courts have let Congress delegate a substantial, too substantial in my opinion, portion of its lawmaking power to the Executive Branch. I think this is far more dangerous than the expansion of the commerce power, and it’s anti-democratic to boot.
Fast and Furious About to Blow Wide Open?
Apparently there’s a new whistleblower from DOJ. John Richardson speculates this could mean Holder is gone sooner rather than later.
Holder Contempt Vote
Scheduled for June 20th, according to CBS.
h/t Dave Hardy
UPDATE: More from Jacob. I tend to agree with him about how much impact this will have on the election.
New Information in Fast and Furious
A House investigative committee said Tuesday it has obtained new information from wiretaps related to the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious that suggests high-ranking officials know more than they are telling Congress about the flawed weapons sting.
Of course they did. If this was really a concoction of lower level functionaries, the most politically expedient way of disposing of this scandal would have been full cooperation with the Congressional oversight and heads on a platter. Their reaction almost guarantees there is more to the story than what the DOJ and White House are letting on.
Holder is going to be counting on Congressional Republican leadership not wanting to take forward any repercussions (contempt charges) for his lack of cooperation in the investigation and hearings. Republican leadership is going to be concerned that if pressed, Holder will successfully play the victim in all this, with a media establishment that will be quite happy to help Holder carry his victimhood narrative forward. We’ll see if sometime between now and the election, Boehner grows a pair and goes after Holder directly. But the best hope to punish Holder is to remove them from office in November. I don’t put much faith in the Speaker.
UN Internet Treaty Opposition
Several Congress Critters have introduced a bill to help force the UN to keep it’s grubby hands off our Internets. Now if only we could get similar bipartisan support for getting Congress to keep its grubby hands off our Internets.
They Do Need a Checkbox for That
SayUncle gets jury duty, and notes that among the reasons listed for being dismissed does not include, “will judge the facts and the law.” Well, we can’t have that, the system working how it was intended to. That would lead to chaos!
I’ve written in the past, though I can’t for the life of me find it now, about my own views on nullification. It’s really one of those things they ought to teach in civics class, to whatever extent they even teach civics anymore. Juries are a check against the power of the state, and in the United States, it’s generally worked to oppose highly unpopular laws:
In the United States, jury nullification first appeared in the pre-Civil War era when juries sometimes refused to convict for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act. Later, during Prohibition, juries often nullified alcohol control laws,[23] possibly as often as 60% of the time.[24] This resistance may have contributed to the adoption of the Twenty-first amendment repealing Prohibition, the Eighteenth amendment.
Of course, the flip side of nullification is that it was also extensively used in the reconstruction era to acquit those who committed crimes against blacks, but were unambiguously guilty.
But generally speaking, I believe in the people judging the law, as well as the facts. The only caveat there is, the legal system has to work, so I would generally frown on  one person hanging a jury because they don’t agree with the law. That has to really be over a matter where there’s a general sense of the members of the jury that the law is unjust, or it’s particular application is unjust. But in order for that to happen more often, people have to know that a jury’s verdict is final.